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NYC Politician Wants To Ban Cashless Restaurants (eater.com)
If New York City Council Member Ritchie J. Torres has his way, the growing trend of cashless restaurants -- establishments that accept payment only in plastic and digital forms -- will be snuffed out. From a report: Torres plans to introduce legislation before his fellow city council members that, if passed, would levy fines on any local businesses that refused to accept paper currency. "I started coming across coffee shops and cafes that were exclusively cashless and I thought: But what if I was a low-income New Yorker who has no access to a card?" he says in a Q&A with Grub Street. "I thought about it more and realized that even if a policy seems neutral in theory, it can be racially exclusionary in practice. Therein lies the problem with card-only policies. I see it as a way to gentrify the marketplace."
Torres believes the cashless business model is inherently classist and racist, as it excludes anyone who might not be able to afford smartphones loaded with digital currency such as Apple Pay or qualify for credit cards, let alone the roughly 22 million Americans who do not have bank accounts. "If you're intent on a cashless business model, it will have the effect of excluding lower-income communities of color from what should be an open and free market," he tells Grub Street. In 2009 Wall Street Journal story, Tony Zazula, co-owner of now-shuttered Commerce in New York City, explained, pretty much, yes, that's right.
Torres believes the cashless business model is inherently classist and racist, as it excludes anyone who might not be able to afford smartphones loaded with digital currency such as Apple Pay or qualify for credit cards, let alone the roughly 22 million Americans who do not have bank accounts. "If you're intent on a cashless business model, it will have the effect of excluding lower-income communities of color from what should be an open and free market," he tells Grub Street. In 2009 Wall Street Journal story, Tony Zazula, co-owner of now-shuttered Commerce in New York City, explained, pretty much, yes, that's right.
The funny thing is that Wall Street will not put up with such a ban.
Paper cash handling is one of the most unhygienic thing you can do around food.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Umm, you can stroll down to your local Walmart, Dollar Store, Gas Station and trade your cash for a pre-paid "credit-card" anytime. You can reload that card too. So even if you don't have good enough credit to get a credit card you could go this route.
Lets not even address the elephant in the room, of in modern society you just need a credit card and internet for that matter to function, so if you do not have these items you need to come up with a work around. Like above.
SImply as a last resort - if you're lost your wallet or phone you can always borrow some cash whereas not many people will let you borrow their cards!
Plus sometimes its nice to be able to pay anonymously and not always be tracked by some financial organisation by using their services.
Once cash is gone then the banks + Apple really will be the ones in charge or your life. There'll be no anonymity and if the bank suspends your account then you won't even be able to buy a coffee never mind pay your rent. All the millenials rushing to ditch cash and thinking its yesterdays payment system might want to think about that for a moment especially given how hot they are on privacy and anonymity elsewhere.
Anyone know how operating a cashless business is legal by refusing Legal Tender?
Isn't the entire point to have a common / ubiquitous currency that is available to ALL citizens?
when I look at a dollar bill, it says "this note is legal tender for all debts, public or private".
So I'd think that if you offer to pay your coffee-shop bill with dollar bills, that's legal tender for the debt you owe then for the service. "A creditor is obligated to accept legal tender toward repayment of a debt."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Politician wants you to give up your choices, want to use the police to force his own choices upon you.
Politician justifies this by telling stories, trying to make you afraid, or angry, or resentful, or otherwise too emotional to ask yourself how any of this is his business, or the business of the police, or anyone else's business. Why can't the people involved in the transaction simply choose for themselves? (Don't ask. Don't think. Emote! Otherwise politicians won't have power over you.)
There are cards you can get that are reloadable. It does not need to be tied to a bank account. I do not believe using card is exclusionary...
Are there still a ton of restaurants that accept cash? Yes? Then who cares?
Fix it when it becomes a problem.
Asking 2 dollars for a coffee discriminates those who don't have spare 2 dollars for coffee, it should be free!
I live in an urban area served by Southern California Edison (SoCalEd). Without fire, earthquake, or severe weather, SoCalEd fails more than once each year. When there is an interruption in electricity -- whether it is for 5 seconds or 5 hours -- my Internet service through Spectrum dies, sometime for over an hour after a 5 minute interruption of electricity.
Many Internet-connected devices require electricity. New York City also experiences occasional interruptions of electrical service. How does a cashless restaurant get paid when that happens?
No, going to the toilet is the most unhygienic thing you can do. Presumably we should ban toilets in restaurants.
If I cannot spend dollars to buy food, why should they be considered legitimate currency?
NYC could offer their own pre-paid card with zero fees to their low income constituents. Call it The Big Apple card. Problem solved.
If they haven't sold the coffee to you, then there is no debt, and therefore they don't have to accept your legal tender.
Most restaurants I go to, you get your meal first, and then you pay.
I guess you're right about coffee shops, though-- it's counter service, usually, where you pay then get your coffee.
What about Kenny and his family...are they also not included because they're low-income, or are you going to be racist and exclude them because they're white? He wasn't able to enjoy Halloween like the rest of Southpark, because he lacked a cellphone to ride a scooter. F'n stuck up New Yorker, you need some Tegridy.
ManBearPig is real!
There's a lot more at stake with a cashless society. Every purchase you make will be stored and analyzed. Do we want that? I thought financial privacy was important to Americans.
The problem that restaurants have with cash is that the IRS can confiscate their cash for making daily deposits under $10,000 that appear to deliberately avoid reporting requirements for depositing $10,000 or more. If the restaurant keeps cash on site to comply with the IRS reporting requirements, robbery becomes a greater risk. Going cashless fixes both problems.
Are the poor and disenfranchised relying on coffee shops and cafes for survival now?
Last trip to NY from Canada, I bought only cash with me because of the cut that my credit card get with each transactions in foreign currency.
If most of the restaurants where cashless, I don't know what I would have eaten.
So instead of banning cashless restaurants, how about the city help the people to get cashless up and running? Instead of tearing down, let's build. Get them an ID and registered to vote at the same time. The effects will show at the next election, you can count on it.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
AFAIK from my business law classes in college, if I incur a debt, all I have to do to discharge the debt is offer to pay it in legal tender, i.e. cash.
If cash is refused, the debt has already been discharged.
Someone will undoubtedly correct me if I'm mistaken.
And IANAL.
I understand that you can't refuse to let people pay a debt in cash, but if you refuse before they take the product you are fine.
I'm not an actual lawyer though, I also would't be surprised if it varied by country/state.
Why take away options to pay for your services?
Generally, places will ADD payment options... Not alienate their other customer-base that's been used to the other methods for so long.
I tend to rant.
Uh... what's next? Are we going to close all Mercedes-Benz dealerships because they don't sell any cars for $5000, or $1000? Isn't that also "exclusionary"? Are we going to shut down the subway, since some people can't afford a ride? Some people can't afford some things. That is not going to change because some Marxist city council member wants it to.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
How about instead of forcing everyone to handle paper and coins, they instead require any bank wanting to do business in NYC to issue a fee-less checking account to anyone who requests it in person regardless of ID status? Maybe cap the maximum total deposit until they meet certain ID requirements to prevent money laundering issues.
Make banking freely available to all.
The problem is consumerism. Not some kind of 1984 wet-dream-come-true.
The problem is BOTH. Corporate surveillance is terrible (how many people failed to get jobs because Facebook sold their private data, including posts, to entities that provided them to recruiters, perspective employers, or both? Many thousands by last count.), but government surveillance has never been nice, even when the government was relatively benign (something that, under Trump, is most assuredly no longer the case now that the government openly targets anyone with political ideas that disagree with His Worship).
We ignore one facet or the other of this issue at our peril--both are direct and immediate threats to our remaining rights of self-determination, such as they are in this post-constitutional, post-reason, post-fact, and post-truth mess we find ourselves in.
Ban an establishment from refusing cash, unless there is a business or vending machine within 500ft of
the entrance advertising a service where legal tender can be used to purchase prepaid cards or tokens
which will be accepted by the establishment and at least 20% of nearby businesses, AND when the customer is billed,
the customer's bill at the establishment will be discounted by the sum total of all "load fees" or other charges that could be incurred
from the time of obtaining the card or token until after it is used.
So could people enumerate just what is left in this world that is NOT racist? I am simply amazed that I find the time to be a racist and still get all my work done...whew.
Unless it could be bought anonymously with cash, this wouldn't solve the privacy/traceability issues. But here's another idea. Embed the replacement for the Metrocard (NYC subway pass) with an EMV chip, allow cash reloading up to $100 or $200, and require NYC businesses that don't accept cash to accept it.
[Legal tender] only refers to the US Government.
The notice on a Federal Reserve Note explicitly includes private debt: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." Cashless businesses avoid the legal tender rules not by asserting that they are "private" but by structuring their transactions to avoid creating a "debt" in the first place. They do this by requiring payment in full up front before handing over ownership of goods or performing a service.
Umm, you can stroll down to your local Walmart, Dollar Store, Gas Station and trade your cash for a pre-paid "credit-card" anytime.
Of course but you think there are a lot of Walmarts and gas stations in Manhattan? I'm sure there are alternatives where you can get a pre-paid debit card but it sure as hell is a lot less convenient than carrying the cash that is already in your wallet. Furthermore there is a cost to doing that. Time, fuel, financing charges (the cards aren't free), etc.
Lets not even address the elephant in the room, of in modern society you just need a credit card and internet for that matter to function
That's not even remotely true. I have had dozens of people work for me who do not have credit cards and a few of them have pretty much zero interest in the internet. You can get by just fine without the internet. Don't confuse what you find convenient with what is actually necessary to function. Hell, there are huge swaths of the US where internet access is dicey to non-existent. I've gone into plenty of restaurants and other stores that are cash only. You can pay for all your bills, get all your food, and pay for your housing and never touch a credit or debit card once. Doing so can be convenient but it's not required.
Ban businesses who don't accept plastic or some other cashless form of payment. They are avoiding paying taxes anyway so it would be good for the people to weed them out.
100% of cash only businesses under report income and do not pay their fair share of taxes.
The problem isn't a place going cashless the problem is stores having to bend over backward with all the new "policies of the day". It's not difficult or any more expensive for someone to walk into one of the hundreds of stored that sell pre-paid cards that are re-loadable. If you insist on being able to use cash, just go get one of those, no special device or app required. Load it with the cash you would have given the business and problem is solved. The same thing started happening with stores who stopped accepting checks, times change and processes change. The good thing is, you aren't forced to patronize a business, you can just go to another one that accepts cash...businesses are already penalized enough.
~I bet you were looking down here for an awesome siggy like everyone else..sorry to disappoint~
I don't understand why this is an issue in the US. Most of Europe has contactless debit cards by this time. No income discrimination whatsoever. You get the card when you open your bank account. It works as long as you have enough balance. Depending on the place, popping-up a fancy credit card may even be frowned upon as showing off.
The one occasion I regularly need cash is for buying merch after concerts and for lockers in music venues.
| They do this by requiring payment in full up front before handing over ownership of goods or performing a service.
Depends on the place and how they serve the coffee, but depending on the place you could just take a sip of the coffee if you have it already and say, I owe you money for this drink, therefore I have a debt to you.
The solution to this is the collapse of the US after increased polarization. If NYC becomes a self-governing city-state (free city) and DC is mostly bankrupt, then New Yorkers will no longer have to be worried about being robbed by the filth in DC.
A politician grossly out of touch with what technology is actually available? Well I never
I boycott fast food kiosks; I want humans to be employed, even if they're McJobs. I boycott the self-scan checkout lines for the same reason.
The flaw in your argument is that you assume incorrectly that using kiosks equals reduced employment. Your theory is simple and logical but the problem is that it isn't supported by evidence. Unemployment rates are right in line with if not better than historical norms. You're making an argument based on truthiness rather than actual facts. What actually happens is that people find other jobs doing other more value added activities. The industrial revolution replaced a lot of manual labor (the McJobs of the era) with automation but guess what? Unemployment didn't increase - people found other jobs that previously weren't available. People moved off the farm to jobs that previously didn't even exist.
Jobs need to actually add value. Jobs that exist unjustified by economic need are nothing more than charity. Charity is a good thing but it shouldn't be a permanent state of existence. Keeping an economically inefficient job out of some misplaced idea that you are helping people causes real economic harm to society and individuals. It makes companies that do it less competitive and in the long run it doesn't do the people in the make-work job any favors either.
I have no idea where this fallacy comes from, but a lot of people have the same wrong idea.
Yes, cash is legal tender. That means you're not breaking the law when you give or accept it as payment. That says nothing about refusing it as payment. No law requires anyone to accept payment in a specific form.
Politician wants you to give up your choices, want to use the police to force his own choices upon you.
This is the "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" argument. Give up choices? Someone has to give something up here. Either A) the customer has to give up choice of payment type or B) the restaurant has to accept a payment type they might not prefer. Why should the rights of the restaurant supersede the customer rights or vice-versa? Someone has to loose this argument. If the politician does nothing then they are de-facto taking the side of the restaurant. If they act then they are taking the side of the individual. But a side will be taken no matter what. There is no middle ground here.
A customer came in who bought one of those pre-paid credit cards. He wanted to put more money on it. Thing is, we have no way of doing it. He said he doesn't have online access. And he needed money on the card because the hotel he went to required a card. Even though he had cash to pay a deposit. The only thing we could do is sell him another one which cost him a $4.95 surcharge.
Imagine if you were homeless and had to pay $5 every time you needed to get a new card. In my area that's enough to get a container of instant coffee/tea, a loaf of bread, and two cans of vegetables.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
It's kind of sad they need to use the argument poorer people without bank accounts are left out, a perfectly valid and important concern.
But there's a bigger picture concern -- the feedom to transact business without the government panopticon tracking you. We're not talking tracking illegality with a warrant but stopping the removal of yet another roadblock by denying another dictatorial tool as prophylactic against the future loss of freedom.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...perhaps you shouldn't be dining out at restaurants?
Restaurant meals are a luxury, not a necessity.
Another day, another stupid politician playing the race card so that people will pay more attention to what they say
just make dine and dash not a crime in a cashless store. And they will find a way to take cash when someone does not have a non cash payment system.
Everything that is more expensive than something else would be racist. Toyota is racist because communities of color are less able to afford Toyota cars than Kia cars, and therefore they are excluded from Toyota cars. Why are so many people intent on stripping the word "racism" from any significant meaning?
All smartphones have cameras, but not all have NFC chips, especially the cheaper ones. So QR code payments, used allover Asia, in a few chains in the US (including Walmart, Best Buy) would be more accessible. All that'd be needed is a bank account (Chase, Walmart, etc.).
Interestingly for the US you appear to be correct - coins and notes in the US are basically a convenient fiction, they have as much backing as legal tender as the nearest flat green thing from a tree.
However, that doesn't explain things like this. Are you sure that's correct?
Compare that to the UK, where if you are in debt to someone then you can't be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender, that's the definition. Which kind of makes more sense from the "paid with a wheelbarrow full of pennies" perspective.
>> FTFA: "I thought about it more and realized that even if a policy seems neutral in theory, it can be racially exclusionary in practice."
So..... Because ALL white people automatically get a credit/debit card with no-questions-asked??? Is that why "cashless" is racist? Or are you claiming that "being poor" is itself a race?
As it says on every US bill, "Good for all debts, public and private"/
I'll point out, also, that decades ago, rental car companies (back then, that would mostly be Hertz and Avis) refused to accept cash. They got better....
For that matter, sounds like a *great* location to launder money....
Last time I was in NYC I had the exact opposite problem. Sit down restaurant, linen tablecloths... cash only. No sign or warning at all until after eating and being told 'we don't accept anything except cash'. There I was with cards only. Had to borrow from the friends I was with. No idea what I would have done if I had been alone or none of us had cash.
So, a NYC black politician is trying to preserve cash transactions because he feels credit cards are racist against blacks. Does he realize that if that black person has cash and really wants that $7 coffee, they can stop into that Duane Reade on the way to that coffee shop and get a reloadable cash-based card? Racism solved. Why not let the market decide if that works? If an coffee shop wants to go cashless and they're willing to lose any cash customers, that should be on them. Or does the black politician want all businesses to carry cash because they remain essentially ATMs for criminals who want to rob the joint? No cash means nothing to rob and that disenfranchises criminals. FBI numbers show that blacks rob at an extremely high rate as compared to whites. Could he be protecting crime as a new black entitlement?
And thereby disenfranchise people who have no say. Remember the "no taxation without representation"? Same deal here: you're being refused society's system without either government or judicial oversight, purely on the say-so of some no name faceless business to which any complaint will be "Just go to another bank!".
Where they will ask "have you been refused in the past?".
Your can get robbed, you need to do overnight deposits, employees can be stealing from the register... A cashless restaurant doesn't have to worry about all this. I don't know the situation in the US, but I guess it should not be too hard to get a prepaid card and top it up at a local store.
Fear is the mind-killer.
There are times I desire to simply go in, purchase my legal product or service and pay with MONEY.
There are no records, so there is no chance of getting my purchasing data sold to companies and to star seeing junk mail, spam or in the future with ATSC 3.0 HDTV, ads being pushed down to my TV Set. This has a high chance of happening in the future.
Huzzah for common sense. I hope he goes far in politics.
The Deep State has many long term goals, that are achieved with planning that stretches across decades (some even exceed 100 years).
Cashless- which really means every sh-eeple money transaction tracked and approved by the state, was a dream of evil al-phas from the first day money was invented- or even before with the dream of recording every act of barter.
Different ruling monsters have tried variants of this across the ages- but only now, in the age of the Computer- has it finally become possible. But only for the sh-eeple.
Recall in the movie 'Die Hard' how the baddies are trying to steal untraceable bonds- and why do you think your masters want access to untraceable bonds that can be each worth billions of dollars- when they want to see every cent YOU spend?
Groom, groom, groom- a major method of the Deep state is societal grooming. Start by having the kids in school go 'cashless' for their school luinches. Bottom up- so the new sh-eeple have never knwon anything else, or think the 'old way' is a saddo affectation of their lame parents.
The mouthpiece of the Deep State are controlled media outlets like Slashdot. These media outlets will always be placed under the control of the leading power cult of the day (and we all know what power cult that is).
High be-tas are taught that the future is always different from the past, so 'change' is inevitable- and thus people should just give in. Some change is semantically inevitable, but most given forms of any society are SYNTHETIC- a result of power and not other factors.
Every al-pha knows why the anonymous interchange of most money tokens is essential for any society that seeks to avoid dystopian ruin. But be-tas are far too thick to see this. Be-tas are all about 'convenience' and the shiny appeal of 'new' tech ways. Monsters seek control of any society via the 'chattering classes', never the peeps at the bottom or at the top. Al-phas know the truth of things, the mob power of the ga-mmas is ultimately too uncontroillable and self-destructive if roused.
So evil al-phas pitch to be-tas. People who are well educated in a narrow direction, but not very good at joined up thinking.
For instance, evil al-phas create organised religions, and be-tas groom ga-mmas to to join these organised religions in the name of societal stability. The Be-ta sense of 'superiority' over (and fear of) the ga-mmas plays into the hands of the evil al-pha just perfectly.
Look how easily evil al-phas introduced 'new maths' (bizarre methods to solve simple maths problems) into the American education system, generating a barrier between parental experience and the experience of their kids. Every al-pha understands the true point of this power play- the importance of 'dumbing down' and the gain of psychological hurt in ordinary families. But the dribbling be-ta will go "maybe this is a better way to teach maths- the alpha maths kids in class don't struggle". Of course those with first class maths ability don't struggle- for them perverse methods are more 'interesting' (hence the appeal of Martin Gardener's Maths Recreations in Scientic America). But for ordinary folks, making simple maths confusing by intent just makes ordinary people hate and fail amths more- the whole intention.
Today outlets like Slashdot are telling you it will be a GOOD thing for the USA to go to war with Iran, China and Russia. And how much opposition do you be-tas give to such demonic propaganda on outlets you choose to frequent?
As another poster, claiming to be a solicitor, says, you enter into a verbal contract, and if they say "that'll be $5.99", then the contract is in dollars and the debt can be paid in such. UNLESS they actually say "that will be an Apple credit payment", they are *technically speaking* now in breech of contract if they refuse to give you a cuppa when you hand over six dollars. It is not ,then, about debt, but about breech of contract.
Down side is you need to litigate this, and the usa really doesn't like poor people, god only favours the wealthy, so anyone poor MUST be in god's bad books, m'kay?
Up side is you can sue for damages MUCH easier. So instead of just getting a coffee after winning the case, you can sue for several thousand dollars for breech of contract: they failed and refused to deliver, quite possibly, then, falling foul of criminal charges for bait-and-switch if the AG really wants to put the boot in.
Besides the usual no power, no network and everything else required for electronic transactions to happen issues. . .
If everyone went cashless tomorrow, what happens when Visa, MC, Apple Pay, etc decide they want more of a cut than they already get by raising the percentage fees per transaction ?
Do we really want so few unregulated companies with that much control over, what will be, the end cost for a consumer ?
Imagine if it were PayPal only and what kind of nightmare that would turn into.
And it's the same solution given for high level executives and politicians: pay them better because if you do that, they won't feel the need to steal.
If it works for CEOs as a reason for high pay for them, it has to work for the workers.
And not over-pressure the stream? BEcause the former means you'll piss on your shoes and trousers and the other means you'll piss on the floor (and the splashback will still stain your shoes and trousers).
Me, I am smart enough to work out that holding my john thomas allows better control of the implement whilst being used to urinate, and I can even, if there is urgent pressure, moderate the stream with correct finger pressure.
I am also smart enough to work out that holding my winkie will mean I should wash my hands afterward.
The pro-privacy millenials (and last call Gen Xers like myself) already ARE pro-cash and anti-surveillance (whether public cameras, cell phone tracking, in-store surviellance tied into deep learning or provided to the government in realtime.)
The problem is the non-techie milllenials and post columbine kids. Those demographics never grew up with privacy, or rapidly traded it only for social media accounts tying their real name and photograph to their real location for everyone to find and network with them. For many of them the social rewards were worth the privacy detriments.
Those of us who held to our beliefs ARE still pro-cash, anti-app store, anti-social media, and anti-surveillance. The problem is we aren't visible in modern society because being VISIBLE is anathema to our values.
It's a classic catch 22 situation. We are the obsolete trying to keep the last of our old country lifestyles, even as gentrification and civilization encroach and take away the last remaining freedom of that world.
Pretty sure I read up on this a few years ago and the current legal situation was the following:
- Notice that on US currency bills it says "legal for all debts public and private"--this is already law.
- If you have a debt for receiving goods or services you can offer US currency to cover the debt.
- If the lender refuses to accept the US currency tendered, then they are *legally absolving the debt* and the debt is cleared.
Thus, legally, you could go to one of these stores, order a coffee, and if they hand it to you, and you then offer bills to pay but they refuse them, you can walk away with it and it is free coffee...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
they'll use destructive words like "racist" and that is FAR more damaging than yelling about your 2nd amendment and brandishing a loaded firearm at people. The latter is practically a form of ritual worship, whilst the former is CLEARLY a New World Order takeover to enable Satan's return, FFS....
(sarcasm, BTW. Grow a fucking pair, you two.)
Eh, hotels will take a cash payment, but the deposit is relatively large. 5$ compared to a 250 deposit is negligible if you don't have the 250. In fairness, the prepaid card is going to screw the hotel if he actually does cause damage.
The issue isn't the persons ability to acquire a means of payment, but rather the cost to indemnify a crestless individual is rather high. The hotel's risk is rather high and their options for compensation are rather limited.
Thats Torres's real complaint. Fuck that corrupt trash.
Though to be fair cash would have no value without the government enforcing it as legal tender.
If the government actually fucked off, than you'f have to deal with the nonsense that is "we only accept Bank X notes, your Bank Y notes are no good here", and anyone not rich enough to have an account at a bank would have to deal in pure barter.
Being able to pay anonymously is the only reason I defend physical cash. Fuck those paranoid individuals that need to know exactly where you are at any time. This is just like an abusive relationship, except it is the government doing it. If you defend this practice, just die.
Someone made the point that marijuana was only eventually made legal because the black market for it was able to exist to a large enough extent that people saw it wasn't as evil as all that.
Certainly there are problems with supporting the black market (gangs, violence, etc.), but being "off grid" allows for some societal experimentation that is not officially sanctioned.
You're not doing the math. That $5 is on an anonymous debit card that lasts 30 days. That is certainly cheaper that the $7.95 monthly service charge found on most regular debit/credit cards.
Does he realize that if that black person has cash and really wants that $7 coffee, they can stop into that Duane Reade on the way to that coffee shop and get a reloadable cash-based card? Racism solved.
Seems logically consistent to me; the Ritchie J. Torres of the world argue that we can't expect minorities to provide identification to vote, even if the ID is free and easy to obtain. Somehow the expectation is still racist and exclusionary. Guess they figure trading in re-loadable cards is too intimidating or might expose someone to abuse by law enforcement or whatnot.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If something is legal tender, any business should be forced to accept it, period.
There is a local chain grocery store. A friend works there. It was the stated goal of putting in self-scan to reduce the "cashier nightmare" they had. The goal was to reduce 90 cashiers to 60.
So what? EVERY company eliminates costs when it is possible to do so and do otherwise is foolish. Margins in a grocery store are thin to begin with. You seriously think they aren't going to cut costs whenever they can? They don't hire those people because they are feeling magnanimous but because they don't have a better alternative. Hiring someone is an exchange of labor for capital. It's not some touchy-feely crap about "dignity and respect and joy". If you get those things from a job, great, but it's not the responsibility of the company to provide them. If the company does well then it will grow and people working for it will (probably) benefit as a result. But the purpose of a company is not to provide employment.
Whose charity are you talking about?
If I hire you when I have a more economically efficient means to accomplish the labor you provide then I am being charitable to you.
Swiping the margin and paying it to a stockholder rather than an employee is a fool's sense of productivity gain.
You are arguing that companies should hire employees they don't need. If I have to explain why that is a stupid idea to you then there is no point to further discussion. You're thinking of it as a zero sum game and it isn't. The owners of the company (the stockholders) are able to do what they wish with the profits of the company but companies that are going to be around reinvest profits into the company so the company can grow and hire more people. Retaining employees which are not needed hurts the future prospects of the current and future employees (and other stakeholders) the company does need.
Maybe in that case, they fire up their phone's wifi hotspot and do it that way. Unless your cell service is down, too.
Or unless the shift manager's phone's wifi hotspot ends up connecting to a captive portal operated by the telco that returns an unknown issuer error for all HTTPS requests and redirects all cleartext HTTP requests to a form to pay a surcharge for hotspot access, as the shift manager's cellular plan happens not to include enough (or even any) hotspot data transfer allowance.
so a low skill job goes away and a few different high skilled jobs appear.
There is no lack of low skilled jobs. Just because a grocery store doesn't provide one doesn't mean the local farm or a restaurant or a machine shop or a landscaper won't hire the person. Hell, a lot of Americans of a particular political persuasion like to bitch about immigrants "taking their jobs" but despite the fact the argument is wrong on many levels it obviously implies there is a job there to be taken. Farms need help and can pay a certain price for it. If you think you are too good to do that work then that is your problem. The work will be there regardless.
You typically cannot add money to these unless you have a bank account and an internet connection. They also aren't universally accepted, particularly online. This is a way to make anonymous electronic purchases, and there are efforts to thwart that.
Whatever happened to "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." I believe it is STILL on each and every denomination of "paper" (cloth) money in the U.S.
Therefore, I don't see how a merchant can FORCE someone to NOT pay with cash.
So, what happens when you go to the restaurant, and when they present the bill, you just give the server cash, claiming you didn't know about the cashless policy?
Do you REALLY think they wouldn't accept it, rather than be "out" the amount of your meal? And do you REALLY think they could call the police on you and have you arrested for "failing to pay", when you showed the cop the money for your meal?
I think not.
Torres can carry the $148k he makes* in big rolls in his pockets. That will impress people, certainly.
It doesn't matter what side of the argument you are on: if you see nothing without first applying the filter of race YOU ARE RACIST. That includes dumb bunnies like Torres and Ocasio-Cortez, who don't govern but just shill the temporary agenda that put them into power.
* Google says he makes that much. Don't know how much he actually earns.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The bank will issue you an ATM card (NOT a Debit Card), that is only functional in bank-owned ATMs and in at the branch.
The ATM Card has no ability to make purchases, just deposit and withdrawal cash.
The card looks like https://img.letgo.com/images/8...
And it's annoying af.
You're not doing the math. That $5 is on an anonymous debit card that lasts 30 days. That is certainly cheaper that the $7.95 monthly service charge found on most regular debit/credit cards.
Do people never hear of Credit Unions? Only require $5 minimum in savings, free checking / debit card with no fees. Free ATM at many locations around the city.
Only time they charge you is if you lose you card and they need to re-issue you one, and that is only a few dollars. The first card is free (unless you want special graphics on it then you can pay a few dollars more).
I love Canada's solution to the Wheelbarrow problem.:
Coins have a legal tender limit per person per day.
the 51st penny paid to an entity in a day is not considered legal tender.
(Don't recall the exact limits, but it's about 1 roll of each deonmination of values = $1, $50 for coins valued $2-$5; Single coin for denominations $10+)
They don't have to accept your transaction terms. They can say no.
Of course they don't. Never argued otherwise. The problem is that SOMEONE is going to have their options restricted. Either the restaurant is allowed to continue to refuse cash transactions and the customers lose choices or the restaurant is forced to accept cash and the restaurant loses choices. Whether the government acts or does not, either way the government is making the choice for someone. No action is still an action even if it is the right thing to do.
For the record I agree with you that the proper course of action is for the government to stay out of it. If the company doesn't want to take cash then that is the company's problem. I don't see any compelling public interest here necessitating government intervention. There is no lack of alternative eating establishments that still take cash so it strikes me as a non-problem.
But I would never eat in a place that doesn't accept cash because I want some level of privacy about where I choose to spend cash for things less than $50 in a transaction.
Racist? Nope.
Anti-privacy? Yep.
Anti-Poor? Yep.
Anti-illegal Immigrant? Yep.
But none of that means racist. Stop using that word for anything you don't like.
There are plenty of poor people of all races and not accepting cash will impact them all equally.
BTW, what about fixing the pro-credit card laws which force cash transactions to pay 3% more than they would otherwise just because most people choose to pay the credit card tax.
A $2 fee for each deposit means that for someone with access to smaller amounts of cash at a time, the fee will make up a greater percentage of the total amount deposited than it would for someone with access to larger amounts of cash at a time.
In my area that's enough to get a container of instant coffee/tea, a loaf of bread, and two cans of vegetables.
And here I am trying to figure out how one makes a sandwich out of instant coffee and two types of canned veggies.
In the meantime, the greek government pushes all types of businesses to acquire a POS device that accepts credit/debit card payments while in parallel: 1) it forces people to prove X% part of their yearly expenditures via credit/debit card or bank transfer payments otherwise they pay even greater income tax 2) It doesn't allow paying with cash for goods/services that are above 500€ per purchase.
In short they try to outlaw cash altogether.
Hey Council Member, why not propose a city budget with more police and other enforcement so businesses will feel more comfortable with the risk of cash? I'm pretty sure the NYC robbery, larceny, and embezzlement rate is not zero.
The industrial revolution replaced a lot of manual labor (the McJobs of the era) with automation but guess what? Unemployment didn't increase - people found other jobs that previously weren't available.
Wrong. Very wrong. It's the Christmas season. We have an opportunity to remember what happened in that time period with the Dickens story A Christmas Carol. "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?"
During the industrial revolution, unemployment was far greater than anything we have ever seen and stayed that way for decades. The first and second generation wallowed in the misery that marked Dickens' stories. Only the third generation prospered and that was ultimately due to compassion, law, violent unionizing, war, and the problem Ford eventually solved. When you are an amoral business owner that is gutting your workforce to increase profit, eventually your profit decreases due to nobody being able to buy your products.
What you insist is to ignore "the surplus population" for the sake of corporate profits who care no more about us than an anteater cares about ants.
So a business like country club sets their membership fee high enough to exclude most of the population is ok? How about night clubs rejecting people not well dressed? Coffee shop is not essential service required for poor people. The hard part is that now we have to pick and choose which businesses are essential for the survival of poor people and we'll have to regulate them. This is a slippery slope.
If free market works, there still be businesses that will exist to exploit the cash-only clientele.
Pretty sure it's the same in the UK.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I have never in my life had to pay a $7.95 monthly service charge (or any other service charge) on any non-prepaid credit or debit card, and I use normal banks (not credit unions) who you'd expect to screw you over if they had a chance, and started off in this country with no credit and have had periods of great credit (when I was single), and terrible credit (it's amazing what how a baby will wreck your organizational abilities...) Who the hell are you banking with?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"But what if I was a low-income New Yorker who has no access to a card?" [...] it can be racially exclusionary in practice."
So being short on money is a race now? Or is it that you are biased on that some race associates with the inability to make money?
1) You are a fucking racist.
2) USA has a problem when simple social problems need to be disguised as something else for somebody to do something about them.
I'm not a fan of businesses that won't take my dollars. However that is something for a free market to decide. Not government. The problem we have right now is we don't have a free market because the government won't allow it. When alternative forms of payment have been tried the government has come in and shut these options down. Until recently at least there were not alternatives other than the dollar. Yea- there were credit cards and the like, but there were no private currencies, or gold-back currencies, or crypto currencies. If a company refused my dollars and didn't take crypto currencies I'd refuse to do business with them and I have. I won't buy food on a plane generally because they have gotten rid of cash without offering to take any privacy friendly crypto- or even non-privacy friendly crypto.
The notion that minorities and otherwise underprivileged individuals can't open a bank account is absurd. Many banks (both huge, multinational banks and tiny, local credit unions) have cost-free checking accounts, VISA/MasterCard debit card included.
Now, refusing to accept "legal tender for all debts public and private" is another matter entirely, but that's not what's being posited as the problem here.
Torres is so disappointing here:
"But what if I was a low-income New Yorker who has no access to a card?"
The solution to that is obvious. You just give every low-income New Yorker a card for free, and you can even put some free money on it for them.. that'd really make sure they vote for you next time, too..
It's the first result that comes up when you google legal tender for all debts public and private.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx
...great way to enforce snobbery and classism, and to keep "those people" out.
I wonder how many of the servers in the back, some who could never afford to eat where they work, are hocking loogies into the douchebags' food?
Yes.
Google "amazon cash"
Cashless businesses can't be racist, because the refusal to take paper money doesn't show hatred to a racial group
those are distinct things, but it's a fact that minorities are more likely to be poor. I mean, seriously, that's just a fact.
It's also a fact that there are more poor white children than black. The takeaway there is that poverty is indeed a class problem, hence calling out the class.
So why call out race at all? Because of de facto segregation tactics. These are most commonly used in the south, but there's lots. For example, after schools were desegregated in the 60s white folks pushed heavily to fund schools with property taxes and then set up new school districts while passing laws against sending your kids to a school outside your district.
Now think about cashless society and the poor. Imagine you're a racist, or your clientel is. You don't want blacks in your shop but you can't legally refuse service. So you go cashless, knowing that most of them don't have credit cards. Maybe some do, but you can then use another defacto segregation technique: using zip codes to influence credit scores, to weed more of them out. Well, you don't personally, but your buddy on the board of directors of so and so does....
If all this sounds nuts it's because it is. Racism isn't rational except in that the ruling class uses it to divide and conqueror the working class. But for your everyday racist they're not thinking, they're feeling. Or their nuts. Same difference.
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,,,,,,,
I thought financial privacy was important to Americans.
Why would you think that? Banks and credit card companies sell all of your information all of the time. It's 100% legal in the US.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's linked to the value a "Legal Tender" which is the official currency of a country. Usually, you are required to do business with the national legal tender or not at all. It's like national borders, and national laws. Plastic is not a legal tender. You can accept plastic in lieu of legal tender in some country because credit unions grantees the equivalent value in legal tender (they take responsibilities), but so far, to the best of my knowledge, only China is enforcing "digital" payment as legal tender.
For business to refuse the legal tender is illegal. It is the task and duty of nations to control and make laws regarding the legal tender, not local stores and business.
People without a card also can't buy stuff on the internet. If brick and mortar stores are going to be forced to accept cash and all of the extra work and liability that entails it seems only fair (and just a stupid) to force online retails to do the same. If you can't get a CC or Debit card you can still get a prepaid card.
If menu items are priced out-of-reach of lower economic classes, can the city force them to lower their prices?
In my area that's enough to get a container of instant coffee/tea, a loaf of bread, and two cans of vegetables.
That sounds like a very gross sandwich, I'm betting you're British.
Just remember, In HELL:
The police are German
The cooks are British
The engineers are Italian
The administrators are French
The lovers are Swiss
The politicians are American
That says nothing about refusing it as payment. No law requires anyone to accept payment in a specific form.
Apparently you aren't catching the word ALL there. That means no exceptions. Cash must be accepted when offered as payment.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Dollar: it's the law.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It's bad enough the rest of us have to take US paper money. Let those restaurants have to accept it too.
Put a cash-to-card reverse ATM a few blocks apart.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
how about the city help the people to get cashless up and running? Instead of tearing down, let's build
What the fuck is wrong with you? Why should the city use my tax dollars to further enrich the businesses of the restaurants and the credit issuers/banks? Fuck that and fuck you fro thinking, even for a nano second that it might be OK.
The city needs to stay out of the matter. We already have federal laws that regulate this(to death) and we don;t need any more.
Let the market decide. The poor downtrodden cashless aren't eating at these uppity restaurants anyway. If the market wants it, then the cashless restaurants will thrive. If the market doesn;t like the idea, then these hipster shitholes will wither and die like they so deserve to and the problem is solved.
There will ALWAYS be someone willing to take legal tender. ALWAYS! That these fuckstains are so full of their own shit that they can refuse paying customers, then good fro them, I guess. But, frankly, I don't see them surviving.
But, back to you... FOAD
Dude, you are just flat-out wrong about this. Nobody is required to accept cash as payment. Just admit it, and move on.
SImply as a last resort
Actually, given the typical restaurant model where you have your meal first and then pay afterwards, isn't cash still a last resort? Legal tender in most countries means that the law requires that they accept cash for "all debts public and private". So a shop or fast food place can refuse to accept cash because you pay first and, if you do not offer a means of payment that the business will accept, they can simply refuse to do business with you.
But a restaurant is different. If you have eaten the meal already you are effectively in debt to the restaurant so aren't they obliged to take cash to pay off that debt? Indeed I'd be curious to know exactly how the restaurant could force the issue. It seems unlikely that the police or courts would intervene if a customer offered cash to pay for the meal they had eaten and the restaurant insisted on a credit card...and I'm never going to find out in practice since I almost always pay using plastic!
"this note is legal tender for ALL DEBTS, public and private". enuf said.
....says that not accepting cash is perfectly fine:
https://www.expertlaw.com/libr...
For myself I wouldn't bother to do business with such an establishment, but hey.....it's a free country.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Imagine if you were homeless and had to pay $5 every time you needed to get a new card. In my area that's enough to get a container of instant coffee/tea, a loaf of bread, and two cans of vegetables.
Modcop moved into my corporate complex in Jersey City when our local building's coffee shop went under. I rarely buy but they set up a weird 1/2 day one-man kiosk at our lobby. I stopped buying their expensive coffee as soon as they stopped accepting my cash halfway thru the year, and the day I found out, I recall having almost not carried my CC to pay for what was in my hands
"this note is legal tender for ALL DEBTS, public and private". enuf said.
Well, you're fucking wrong. ENOUGH SAID.
In my country even people on social care and refugees get a smartphone and any charges are paid for by the government.
Mind you if you are earning money they will tax you to the point where you can't afford a smartphone anymore.
So there's that.
This is more common than you think. For instance, my bank will charge me $10 a month. BUT...to avoid that fee I let them transfer $25 from my checking to my savings. (I, of course, transfer it back the very next day out of spite.)
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
A customer came in who bought one of those pre-paid credit cards. He wanted to put more money on it. Thing is, we have no way of doing it. He said he doesn't have online access. And he needed money on the card because the hotel he went to required a card. Even though he had cash to pay a deposit. The only thing we could do is sell him another one which cost him a $4.95 surcharge.
Imagine if you were homeless and had to pay $5 every time you needed to get a new card. In my area that's enough to get a container of instant coffee/tea, a loaf of bread, and two cans of vegetables.
The last time I checked, all of the cards available in my area also had transaction and monthly fees which slowly deplete the balance anyway. So you are charged for the card, you are charged for possessing the card, you are charged for using the card, and you are charged for not using the card.
One reason for this is state laws which require "abandoned" funds to be turned over to the state. With a monthly fee, there will never be any abandoned funds and the card issuer gets to keep the money instead of turning it over to the state.