Slashdot Mirror
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.
What this kind of paranoid person doesn't understand is that they can already track you to an incredible degree, and there's fuck all you can do about it, so ultimately all you're doing is arguing against having the convenience. Black markets exist anyway, so that's not really an argument either.
This is 99% about control. There are multiple players here. Local governments, the US major political players, credit card companies, banks, they all get to win. Control means you know much more about transactions, you get more say about what transactions you favor or not, you get a larger percentage on transactions, you get to use negative interests in the bank because people can no longer extract their money from the bank. There's a lot. It's about power and the threat of power. For one thing it means the US can threaten to stop all financial traffic for any target they pick, on the spot. There is a big difference between using little cash and taking away the possibility to use cash.
This article http://norberthaering.de/en/ho... describes what happened in India. India is mostly cash based, or was until some people decided that was no longer the case. The result was a caricature of unchecked power.
It is also about delaying the big financial crash.In many countries of the world banks have a negative interest on money parked at the respective central bank. Of course they would like to forward this cost to their customer, but guess what would happen, if banks put negative interest on the savings of Joe Average. It would start a run on the banks, because everybody would prefer to put his money under their mattresses. This is the only reason there are still small interests of 0.01% or so on every type of savings, only because the banks know what happens if everybody tries to cash his savings. As soon as cash has been abandoned, there will be no alternative for the customers but to accept it, at least those with incomes and savings to small to buy into gold or diamonds. Which also makes clear that abandoning cash will not solve the big cases of tax evasion or to impair organized crime: Those people will just keep on using those "currencies", as they do it already.
You are sort-of right, but you are looking at the wrong 'tax'. The real benefit of cashless, is that central banks can drive interest rates negative in a deflationary environment.
Since around the 1990s, automation and competition from low labour centers basically destroyed the utility value of the working class. We still give them jobs (which are basically funded by welfare), but most of these are just a sop to our consciences so that we can enjoy our lattes and craft beer without having to stare at slum dwelling children.
The real horror for us, however, is that through the 2000s this same effect has extended well into the middle class. Some of us have quite obviously been directly affected, but these are not a majority yet so nobody cares about them. So why has the middle class not collapsed? The reason is because of the banking sector. What the banking sector has been doing since 2000s is engaging in a giant UBI process for anyone in the middle class who owned a house. Central banks have maintained broadly negative real interest rates (when you've adjusted for inflation) since then, which has ensure that anyone with access to credit (ie middle class home owners) can get connected to a perpetual money spiggot that supplements their falling income from their increasingly unnecessary jobs. This has sustained the middle class in most western countries.
Essentially the problem that occurred is that central banks let a fast bubble develop which blew open the nature of the ponzi scheme and those middle class homeowners freaked out. They then hit the zero lower bound on interest rates, and could not keep the bubble inflated. This is why they are desperate for inflation (just watch Mark Carney do nothing as UK inflation rockets) as this would force real interest rates negative, but demographics, automation and a continuing lack of confidence means that they cannot get the mild 3-4% inflation that would allow them to keep the debt ponzi scheme going.
Because of this, what they would really like to be able to do is drive nominal interest rates deeply negative. If they could do this they can get the debt bubble going again even under deflationary conditions. Just imagine how many people will rush out to buy a house for even more stupid prices if people started getting paid to have mortgages. The middle class economy would take off again as the homeowner UBI comes back on line (well, for anyone lucky enough to have gotten onto the housing bandwagon).
The biggest impediment to negative rates is cash. This is why the swiss national bank does not allow you to store francs in safety deposit boxes, and why many countries have introduced controls on cash (under the guises of preventing terrorism). Central banks want this as a tool for the next crash, and they are slowing setting things up to ensure this is possible.
If you have lots of money, then you'll know how to protect it (buy a house, basically). If you have lots of debt then the central banks have your back. If you have a moderate amount of savings, then you will be screwed. Indeed, watch Mark Carney's recent talk on the post crash recovery and he admits that the only people who have suffered since the crash are those who had savings but not assets, but he justifies letting this happen by saying they in the minority.
I exchange cashless between friends all the time. We go and have a dinner and one of us pays by card. The others then transfer the money to that person.
Where I live this is free. They are working on making it faster, but for now I can wait a day. When with the same bank, it is immediately.
No taxes.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.