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Is Australia Becoming A Cashless Society? (abc.net.au)
Australia's Reserve Bank will roll out an instantaneous money-transferring technology later this year, "which will push Australia even further towards being a cashless society," according to ABC. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
In 2014, 12 financial institutions signed up to build the "New Payment Platform," partly as a way of bringing Australia up to speed with other countries that are ahead in the race to becoming completely cashless. Sweden is on track to become the world's first completely cashless economy, and just last November India got rid of its highest denomination bills, effectively eliminating 90 per cent of its paper money... The "New Payment Platform" will mean money can be transferred almost instantaneously, even when the payer and payee are members of different banks.
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy," says an economics professor at the University of New South Wales, who predicts Australia could be cash-free by 2020. The Australian Payments Association reports that over 75% of the country's face-to-face payments are already tap-and-go, and ATM withdrawals have sunk to a 15-year low.
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy," says an economics professor at the University of New South Wales, who predicts Australia could be cash-free by 2020. The Australian Payments Association reports that over 75% of the country's face-to-face payments are already tap-and-go, and ATM withdrawals have sunk to a 15-year low.
The better to track you with, my dear!
It's always interesting how the Media guys consider themselves as part of the government. "It's our money! How dare the people keep it!"
>"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy,"
"Lost in tax revenue". That is, it's the government's money, and the citizens are just thieves who are stealing it.
Let's correct that, shall we?
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is saved by the people..."
Cashless means everything costs more, including paying your child an allowance for mowing the lawn because it's taxed.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This is 99% about TAXES. No more cash between friends. Tax everything 3, 4 and 5 times.
All this cashless society has the main problem that during any serious cataclysm that kills the communication infrastructure the trade just stops. Not only the global nuclear cataclysm and EMP but any kind of local cataclysm like Katrina or war in Syria. And if the trade stops the hungry people could rob since they could not buy.
Moreover, I feel that the more Western is the society the higher the unrest. Some Somalians could organize a government-less society based on traditional law, in the First World it's just impossible. We Russians survived the wild capitalism of 1990-s because in any crisis there was impossible to foreclose or cut off the electricity and heat. Next such crisis could produce hordes of homeless.
Bring India in as an example. They royally screwed over their poorer citizens when they 'retired' their old cash and didn't have enough new bank notes ready to replace it.
It would be interesting to see a graph of household debt vs adoption of cashless payment methods. An anecdotal point: Germany has pretty low household debt and relies primarily on cash for personal transactions. The idea being; if you don't have the money in your pocket, you don't buy it. Cashless transactions are a good way to either get people to run up debt in the form of a line of credit or overdraft fees. I smell more income for banks here.
Have gnu, will travel.
Reading the article I see the push for this cashless system is to assure that the government gets their cut of the deal. I have an idea, do away with sales taxes and get your revenue by means less likely to get subverted. How many ways do people need to be taxed? Should not one form of taxes be enough? I assume Australia is much like any other Anglosphere nation where there is a sales tax, income tax, property tax, "sin" tax (on alcohol, tobacco, and such), homeowner tax, Homer tax, bear tax, poll tax, pole tax, polecat tax, poll cat tax, cat on a pole tax, and a tax tax.
Where is it written that a government *MUST* tax sales? I'm not saying governments do not or should not have the ability to impose any taxes, only that the number of taxes imposed by most governments is excessive. I know why governments impose taxes like this, it hides just how much money they are collecting by spreading it around so that it is difficult to see just how much the government is taking. I believe that a government that is honest with its citizens would make the taxes simple.
They are fighting a battle they cannot win. If they impose restrictions on the movement of cash then people will revert to barter.
This also gets into the "mark of the beast" territory from Christian tradition. You can call it just a superstition if you like but psychologists, sociologists, and economists have made connections between Christian tradition and a healthy society. I'm not saying following every Christian belief will bring an ideal society, only that we've seen Christian societies excel where others did not. I say it may be helpful to see the Bible as a historical document, full of parables, advice, and warnings for building a healthy society.
I know people will feel the urge to mod me down for getting all religious. This is not about religion though, but religion does play a part in this. There will be people that oppose this on religious grounds. There will be people that oppose this because they see the hazards this has on society. These are not mutually exclusive groups. Removing the ability for people to conduct business with cash is dangerous, and some people roughly 2000 years ago warned us of this. I believe that we should think real hard about what a cashless society means. It won't take divine intervention to destroy society, we'll do that on our own.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
On what planet do you live? How is going inside, waiting in line, paying for gas, pumping it, and going back inside and waiting again for your change faster than just swiping your card at the pump (or holding your phone up to the NFC reader), pumping your gas, and hanging the nozzle back up when you're done? For the others, you're trusting that the people involved can do basic arithmetic quickly enough and accurately enough to get your change right in a timely manner. On the occasions that I do pay cash, if I hand over $4.10 instead of $4.00 for a $3.85 purchase, maybe half the time I get a blank stare in return. Hand them plastic and you don't burden their feeble minds with having to make sense of that.
There are plenty of good reasons to hang onto cash, but transaction speed isn't one of them.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Even the fastest most efficient cashier is going to be many times slower than a contactless swipe of a card. Especially as the reader for the card can actually be at places like the gas pump.
In Australia not so much. People disappear all the time just because they don't want to be found. Sometimes (eg. battered wives with a homicidal spouse looking for them for extreme examples (which do happen)) it's not a bad thing.
I think you'll find it's not unheard of in the USA either despite efforts to track people getting onto busses etc.
There are still a lot of cash in hand jobs so it's possible to get by with no identification in a lot of places apparently.
This is 99% about TAXES. No more cash between friends. Tax everything 3, 4 and 5 times.
Actually this is 0% about taxes.
If the incompetent LNP cared about taxes they'd be looking at the big end of town. A$3-5 billion is a few days worth of tax evasion for the mining and tech giants.
This is about a conservative government trying to keep the populace distracted whilst giving a boost to their mates in banking. Yep, every time you use your card the bank collects from the merchant. The merchants have to pay the banks to get the money you paid them.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
>Free markets are where bread sits in lines waiting for me. The alternative is me waiting in lines for bread.
The real difference between those two scenarios is just that in your 'free market' a helluva lot of people can't get bread at all.
There is then more bread than people who CAN get it, and hence it sits and wait.
This is, obviously, great for you - being one of the few who can get bread - but it sucks for the people who can't.
Of course the OTHER thing it does it so perpetually increase the number of people who can't - so more and more bread goes to fewer and fewer people. We often refer to this effect by the shorthand name "rising inequality' - perhaps you've heard of it ?
But your BIGGEST mistake of all is thinking those are the only options. This is not an either-or question. Nothing that involves human beings is ever THAT simple. It's not a choice between "laizes faire capitalism" and "USSR style communism" -there are literally THOUSANDS of other ways we could organise the distribution of resources (which is all an economy is - a system to distribute resources). So while you feel the advantages of liazes-faire capitalism outweigh the problems (but only because none of the really BIG problems happen to you personally), a great many people do not and the argument that it's better than the downsides of Soviet Style communism is complete bullshit - because we don't need to choose EITHER.
Are you seriously so closed-minded that you are convinced, among the thousands of other possible ways we can organise this activity - not ONE of them may offer better pro/con ratios than the one you love ?
Because I am. None of them can... for every resource, service and product. But for every resource, service or product there is a way to organise it that would be better than EITHER laizes-faire capitalism OR soviet-style communism - in THIS location. In another town - another one will work better for the same product. And somewhere in the world, there is one product which, in one town, will work best with laizes-faire capitalism and somewhere out there is one product which, in one town, will work best with soviet-style communism. But for all the millions of other products in the millions of other towns the best answer will be NEITHER of those.
Indeed it's impossible to predict what the best answer will be. The only way to discover it is to experiment with all of them - in every town and for every product- and record the results. The only way to get an economy with minimum downsides and maximum benefits - is to have an economy that's created by the scientific method, experiment, test, improve - and consider all answers to be local to the specific parameters of the experiment. Just because in bummsville Idaho the best way to distribute apples turned out to be "plant an apple tree on every street corner and let everybody pick when they want" doesn't mean it's true for oranges in bummsville idaho and doesn't mean it's true for apples in New York.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The U.S. federal government has a $4 TRILLION annual budget, more than 22% of GDP. State and local governments in the USA spend another 18% of GDP, so call it $7 TRILLION total in government spending. That's more than $20,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Don't you think that's more than enough wealth to fund a government?
I'm glad that you feel you're getting value for your money. Would you feel any differently if 25% of your federal taxes were being used to bomb and kill people in foreign countries and to maintain a worldwide network of over 700 permanent military bases? How would you like paying taxes to house the largest per-capita prison population in the world? What if your schools were expensive as hell, but still produced sub-par results? We fund some absolutely enormous welfare programs for seniors, the poor & the disabled, but these programs are unsustainable. Anyone under age 50 is now paying taxes based on government promises that will never be kept.
(I could go on)
And that's only the spending part. The U.S. federal government has also given us GATT, NAFTA, the WTO treaty, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, the FISA Revisions Act, the 2012 NDAA, established a ubiquitous and largely secret surveillance state and militarized our police forces. And even with the $1 trillion they spend on "defense" they can't "defend" our borders against an invasion by 20 million illegal immigrants.
And you wonder why a USA resident just might have a negative view of government and be opposed to any further taxation? Not only are we being screwed out of a huge portion of our wealth, many of us are paying for shit that we don't want and for future benefits that we will never receive.