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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.
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.
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.
I agree that correlation !=causation, and would further that Americans DO need to worry about race and entitlement.
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. I'm not trying to hang on to concepts of the 1960s, rather, the death of service by a thousand cuts usually means that the labor costs shift into the quarterly earnings report to Wall Street as a "labor savings".
There are people that lead good honest lives in occupations like: janitor, food server, and the jobs that aren't in tech, health care, that don't lead to glorious McMansions and Estates by Lake of the Gravel Pit. But they need jobs. Not installing kiosks.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You remind me of how some black people say that going to college is "acting white" and therefore derided.
Or you accept some level of theft, which will probably be lower than the fees charged by banks to accept cards in the US (also theft, just legal).
You remind me of how some black people say that going to college is "acting white" and therefore derided.
I spent my last few High School years in the US at a majority black High School and was surprised to witness this at my school very strongly. A lot of really intelligent black kids would "act dumb" and get bad grades by not doing homework, etc, not because they were lazy, or unintelligent, but because there was a lot of social-pressure on them to act-dumb.
There are probably thousands of would-be highly gifted scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs doing menial work today because society pushed them in that direction instead of nurturing their gifts.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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+)
If the service is performed before it is paid for then a debt is incurred.
Legally, this is not true, if the merchant clearly states the terms of the transaction ahead of time.
Additionally, the obligation to accept cash does NOT extend to an obligation to give change. So if you take a two mile taxi ride, and the driver then tells you he only has $20 in change, he may still have to accept your $100 bill as payment, but you just paid $80 for the ride.