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Cash Might Be King, but They Don't Care (nytimes.com)
In Midtown and some other neighborhoods across New York City, cashless is fast on its way to becoming normal, The New York Times reports, sharing anecdotes where merchants have refused to accept bills from customers (the link may be paywalled). From the report: Cashless businesses were once an isolated phenomenon, but now, similarly jarring experiences can be had across the street at Sweetgreen, or two blocks up at Two Forks, or next door to Two Forks at Dos Toros, or over on 41st Street at Bluestone Lane coffee. In the future, when dollar bills are found only in museum display cases, we will look back on this moment of transition and confusion with the same head-shaking smile with which we regard customs on the Isle of Yap in Micronesia, where giant stone discs are still accepted as payment for particularly big-ticket items. Some people already live in this cashless future. They find nothing strange about paying for a pack of gum with a swipe of a card. If you are one of these people and you are still somehow reading this article, you may be thinking, "What on earth is the big deal?" At Two Forks on 40th Street, where the lunch offerings have cheery names like Squash Goals, Kristin Junco, a 34-year-old auditor for the state Education Department, said she had not used cash for about a week and much prefers a cashless establishment to its opposite. "We travel a lot for work," she said, gesturing to a colleague, "and if they don't take credit cards that makes things difficult." [...] Not surprisingly, the credit card companies, who make a commission on every credit card purchase, applaud the trend. Visa recently offered select merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving customers of their right to pay by the method of their choice. A Visa executive described this practice to CNN as offering shoppers "freedom from carrying cash."
Visa recently offered select merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving customers of their right to pay by the method of their choice.
Clearly they are wielding monopoly power now against GOVERNMENT-BACKED legal tender. If bribing vendors to reject Bills and accept only Visa fake money that only those with good credit or a bank account can get isn't a threat to freedom, democracy, and capitalism, then I dunno what would be.
I have been carrying more cash lately since is seems to speed transactions over credit cards with the embedded chip.
I don't think my bank or credit card company needs to know where I eat lunch every day. Sure, I use plastic to avoid dealing with a cashier (gas stations and parking) and of course for online shopping where you can't use cash. I find cash convenient for me and faster than a lot of transactions I see when people have to use a card, wait for it to authorize, some then fire up a printer, then they sign it. Dunno. My bank probably thinks I'm a drug dealer. My cash machine is only a few minutes away from the office, so it's easy to get more. Lots of point-of-sale machines at small shops get malware on them as well. We've had a few instances at work where a lot of people suddenly saw unexpected charges on their cards. In both cases, a nearby lunch place had their point-of-sale system infected and it stole their information. So, it does happen.
Get off my lawn...I suppose?
...they're doing it because they think they'll have less chance of being robbed.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I agree. The "right" rests on a misunderstanding of "legal tender". It means it's valid for exchange, accepting it is not compulsory for a private business. The US Treasury has a page on the topic:
https://www.treasury.gov/resou...
"There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services."
This ignorance leads people to assume they can pay in buckets of pennies and they think they can legally force the receiver to accept it as payment.
I'm not a fan of going cashless, I just don't think faulty arguments should be used to stop businesses.
It is also illegal.
Nope, it's not.
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise.
No, the misunderstanding is 'debt.' If you walk up to a register with an item, they can refuse the cash as no debt has incurred. At most sit-down restaurants you eat before paying, thus incurring a debt. They are obligated to accept that legal tender if presented, because there is an existing debt. If they do not accept the tender, their recourse would be to take it to court, where a judge most likely will wipe the debt and go "Why didn't you take the cash when presented?"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We have a big problem with cashless businesses. Where I live you can't go swimming or take the bus with cash.
I think it's a shame. You should be careful to preserve the cash option. First of all it's good for kids to learn the value of money, you don't get the same sense of spending if you don't lose something physical. Second of all, if your bank screws up you're supposed to be able to take out your money and walk out of the bank. If you can't use the cash you take out the banks' power increases a lot.
I've been wondering how much the Salvation Army bell ringers have been hurting since less and less people carry cash with them.
If your employing thieves in retail, they will just take inventory. It's not like the tape doesn't already tell you the till is short.
They are morons, coming up with consistent short tills makes it easy to identify exactly who's dishonest, vs. inventory shrinkage.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Exactly the mentality of some small business owners I know, but the opposite of others. I see the dichotomy as such:
1. Do you hate paying taxes, but are OK with paying 2% to a bank for every single thing you do?
2. Do you trust big companies with skimming off the top, or do you trust your employees that you hand pick?
3. Do you feel OK when the rich get richer, but get pissed off when the small guy gets a bonus 1% higher than he got the year before?
Basically, I feel you should either be a Scrooge and hate losing money in any case, letting the actual measured bottom dollar make the decision (including future change)... or you should cater to your local workers and your own employees. Bigger and bigger businesses breed monopolies that eventually screw everybody if you let them. Credit cards are designed to steal from the moderately rich, middle class, and poor alike to make the richer even more so. I use them, but locally I use cash more and more to try to keep prices down.
Some merchants do offer a cash discount.
When there is no cash discount, the extra cost of the credit card purchase is 'baked in' to the price that everyone pays, including the people using cash. Which is a whole separate issue, since in that case why are the people who pay cash subsidizing those who are paying with credit?
I know for me, I pay my CC bill in full every month (often every week). Not only do I not pay any interest, but I get cash back on all the money I spend, which incentivizes me to put as much stuff on the card as I can. This is also being subsidized by the people who use cash to pay for purchases by higher cost for goods and services across the board.
Government wants a cashless world. It's about control. When you no longer have any tangible assets, they can take whatever money they want (ask Greece). Or, they can control/monitor your purchases. Outlaw cash...then make a law about healthcare tied to what you spend. Go into a fast food establishment...order a cheeseburger, fries and a coke....BZZZZZZZ sorry, your last healthcare checkup says your BMI is too high. Try to buy a sports car...BZZZZZZZ...sorry, your driving record shows too many speeding tickets. DON'T think it can't happen!
I am stating that refusing to do business with people who don't have credit cards is blatantly discriminatory, and it doesn't matter what the treasury says, because there are many, many other *laws* that matter more than the treasuries *rules*. This is a matter of law, not rules.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
accepting cash isn't free. Employees steal. You have to do the paperwork to keep track of it and account for all the receipts. Unless you run to the bank daily, you have to pay an armored car to pick it up and deposit it for you.
Er, neither is accepting cards free. There's a significant fee on every transaction, so much so that in some places (where it is allowed) businesses will offer a lower price to those who pay cash. .
(I'll grant you that a lot of the risk is offloaded to other entities when cards are used, and that therefore you might think the fees worthwhile in that respect. However, the customer and public are pissed at you, Spatula Warehouse, for having your systems compromised and their accounts hit with fraudulent charges, they are not pissed at Visa or BigBank.)
But in any case, accepting cards isn't free either.
Bullshit. Tips, as reported to the IRS, are higher when CCs were used (and there is a paper trail). What a surprise.
Even when paying with a CC, I tip in cash. Assuming it's value is stretched by the servers marginal tax rate.
It's everybody's job to 'starve the beast'. Cash is king.
I don't know, facilitating tax fraud isn't something I am particularly comfortable with. I would prefer that the tax base be as large as possible, so making it more difficult for people to avoid their legal tax burden (or making it easier for people to track their legal tax burden if that framing is more pleasant) is a good thing in my opinion.
I am sympathetic to the reality that restaurant staff are not particularly well paid, and that making it harder for the wealthy to avoid taxes is probably a better thing to focus my attention on, but paying everything with plastic is also more convenient for me personally, so I have little inclination to deal with cash for a portion of the transaction.
Unless you run to the bank daily,
This is a major issue.
I have a fiend who used to run a primarily cash business. He could easily do $10K or $15K of sales a day. And he didn't like having that much cash on hand. So he'd send the store manager to the bank a couple times a day with a $5K deposit. Until some federal agents paid him a visit. Multiple daily deposits under the reporting limit triggered a "money laundering" investigation. Never mind that he had a legitimate business, documented his receipts and he didn't really care if the bank made the requisite reports based on his daily total receipts. It was cash and an excuse to hassle a business into cutting back on cash.
Cash has gone from legal tender to probable cause of criminal activity in this country. And in some cases, just having too much cash is a crime in and of itself. No more 'innocent until proven guilty'. The feds will just make your life hell if you look 'wrong'.
Have gnu, will travel.
A lot of people use cards for payment because they don't have to have a pile of cash, it's sort of quick (so long as the bank network doesn't go down), you can track payments, but there are very serious downsides that these people who are pushing the so called cashless society do not want to consider and definitely do now want to tell people about.
1. You can track all payments. Fine if you're dopey person parroting the state's "Nothing to hide nothing to fear" nonsense, but that means they will know everything about you, what newspaper you buy, did you buy a sex toy, did you give your grandchildren a bit of birthday money.
2. You lose all control of your wealth. What I mean is, instead of having an ability to buy what you want with cash, the moment it's all electronic, the government can stop you existing by freezing your access to electronic "money". Good luck to eating / paying bills without money. This can be extended so you vote the right way in elections nothing happens, and raid your account as punishment if you voted "the wrong way".
3. With no cash, at a moment's notice, the government can decide it will raid all your bank / savings accounts for x%, just like the European Central Bank did to Cyprus - they called that state crime a "bail-in". Noticed how the US economy is $19Trillion+ in debt, reduce it by raiding your accounts one day, you won't have a say in it.
4. With electronic "money", there is NOTHING to stop the banks and card providers suddenly increasing their transaction fees. Want to protest about it? Too late, you have no alternate way of paying for anything,.
5. Much is made of the ability to track transactions, with the claim you can stop money laundering. This is false. If a drug dealer for example has a suitcase of $20 bills, it's going to weigh a lot, and attract a lot of attention. But in the electronic world, at a press of a button, that same amount of money can be sent around the world any number of times, cleaning it. Nobody does it? Just ask HSBC (and other banks) who where caught doing just that, laundering money for drug cartels.
6. Cash funds crimes and terrorism? It's far easier to move electronic "money" around to fund terrorism, just ask governments and banks and stock exchanges, they do it daily.
So before people think what a great idea going cashless is, you better be prepared to sign your life away to being totally controlled, and not cry about it when it is.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Cashless is great, convenient etc. until it isn't. Wait until the next hurricane, earthquake or N Korea shoots an EMP attack and the power is out for days or weeks. Then the people with no cash will be stuck with no ways to buy food and water or other necessities... There is a reason that hard currency is still around even when credit cards have been around for decades.
The other problem with going cashless is the invasion of privacy that is routine by big businesses and the government. If you are fine with both knowing every intimate detail of your life, go for it, but if not, you may want to make some purchases with untraceable cash.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like