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USA Today Tech Columnist: Millennials Will Live To See a Cashless World (usatoday.com)
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
Unlike this crappy columnist I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.
I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.
The day we have a cashless society is the day the cloud atlas economy takes hold. (i.e you are required to spend a certain amount of money a week on consumption and probably negative interest rates and financial fees as punishment if you don't)
That or the world will migrate to Bitcoin I suppose...
There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...you poor bastards. Hope you enjoy total surveillance.
Sure... but that's only because Earth's temperature is going to increase exponentially, and soon it'll be too hot to print money anymore. Thank god I'm old and won't be around much fucking longer anyway. I don't envy them. Good luck, kids... that's all I'm saying.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
It's also important to note that governments want this, too. They used to just have visibility on big number transactions but once all cash is gone, they'll be able to monitor every transaction, no matter how small. The concept of anonymous transactions and spending privacy will be soon be over.
Reminds me of the following Ted talk - when you make the transaction frictionless, they've found you spend more
When money isn’t real: the $10,000 experiment | Adam Carroll | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB39Jo8mAQ
The cashless society is only of interest to that portion of the population with absolutely nothing to hide. And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.
No way to buy some mushrooms or hash... no hiding your hotel tryst from your spouse... no way to hide your alcohol abuse from your insurance company... if there isnâ(TM)t something you want to hide from prying eyes youâ(TM)re living life wrong.
When the internet went out for 10 days, they were very, very bothered.
Graham Cracker should shut his stinking yappah and disclose who's really paying him. Nice to be a pet whore/mouthpiece of the banksters and tech firms. Jefferson is probably rolling over in his grave.
Everyone only sees the world they want to see. I became a landlord a few years ago. It opened my eyes to the amount and types of people who don't or can't get debit or credit cards and that's ignoring all of the people who can't handling having a credit line. I would have otherwise never learned this type of information about people and would have continually falsely believed people had access to the same resources I had. How many random people do you go around asking about their financial history?
The metric they're measuring is total cash transactions. That's doesn't include enough information to be useful. Is that 30% of the population only using cash or 1% only using cash and 29% sometimes using it? Perhaps that 70% are only buying a couple things at a time over and over where as the 30% cash purchases are buying two weeks worth of items at a time. Perhaps the majority of the cashless transaction are in cities. Etc... People will fill in the missing details with whatever they prefer to assume which makes all further claims dangerous to make decisions on.
Personally I use cash at toll booths, bi-weekly on Craigslist, paying a friend / splitting costs, when the card readers aren't working, and when any total ends up matching an exact bill such as a $20. And sometimes I randomly pay in two dollar bills to screw with people.
What about all the same aged millennials who will still be under the poverty line, and will still be underserved by banks and credit card companies?
Can't believe I'm saying this, but: check your privilege.
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
I live in Sweden and just last week we talked at work about the problem with cash as people just don't recognize them (we changed bills 2 years ago and after that most people have only handled bills a few times, and rarely the big ones).
And weeks ago I saw a father in his 30ths pay over 100dollars in groceries. I realized I hadn't seen anyone use cash for such a large amount in years. Here it's just 80+ and young criminals that keeps using cash
I really like remote places. I have been to a lot of them (Pitcairn Island, Cape Horn, the Austral Islands of French Polynesia, Palmyra Atoll, the Cook islands, etc.)
There are still a lot of places that don't have cell service. The Internet (where it is available) can be very spotty. Sites like "microsoft.com" and "google.com" cannot be reliably located online (DNS errors.)
These places deal in cold, hard cash.
I did a deal in Uruguay that involved tens of thousands of dollars. The deal was all cash. Each side counted out hundred dollar bills in $1000 increments and grouped them in stacks of $10,000. All the money got counted twice. The transaction was completely legal. The U.S. $100 dollar bill is the genuine coin of the realm in Uruguay and Argentina. I don't care who you are, nobody is going to trust your smart phone for much over -maybe- $1000,
I brought back (and declared) piles of hundred dollar bills through U.S. customs. The scrutiny was intense. But I got to keep my money.
As far as the article goes, yeah, in metropolitan first world areas cash is less and less useful.
Just as an aside, another remote place I like is Death Valley in California. Too bad every year somebody dies because they think that their smart phone will save them when they have gone too far into the back country unprepared. But...hey...at least they didn't need cash!
"Check your privilege" is something a certain class of people will say with gay abandon, but will never listen to when someone else says the same to them. It works the same with slut-shaming. The shamer probably fucks around way more than the shamee, but pointing that out doesn't work for some reason. The point therefore is simply to put the recipient of the verbal lashing back in their place. It's a social class (or should I say caste?) thing.
The underserved, the unbankable, the deplorables, the untouchables, however you call them, they're so far down the social ladder that they're not a blip on the speaker's radar. They simply don't count.
Anyway, vapid article writer is vapid. I don't have a credit card, can't get one, wouldn't want one if I could. And that's a "western" country. By that definition I'm "underserved". So you too can safely disregard this comment, since I don't count either.
Maybe they'll see that world with their artificial eye-balls, installed and purchased by the power of their universal health care plans so that they can verify the payments and make sure their $20 coffee doesn't costs $2000 "by accident" even when they are old. Oh wait, they are planning to never get old and weak.
Bourgeois will not live to see a propertyless world.
Talk about what the banks don't want you to even think about: Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%. The conversion to cashless isn't being done to help the citizen, that is for sure. Help the consumer out of their money and their privacy? Of course. Control the consumer? Absolutely. And the dumber than dumb Millennial generation can't put two brain cells together to figure it out. Cui bono?
Cashless society has been promoted since I was a kid, mostly by the credit card companies. Cash will always be king.
It's worse than the few percent. The merchant doesn't immediately get the money, it's delayed. The credit card isn't really giving you credit, its the merchant that is via the delayed payment to the merchant. They have to fund the credit.
There's a few really really bad middleman systems. For example, delivery services like FoodPanda. They charge the merchant 30% of the bill which the merchant isn't allowed to bill the end customer for, they charge you for delivery to make it seem like you're paying the delivery charge and to top it all off they pay the merchant with a delay too. If the restaurant has a delivery service, use that, pay directly in cash, they'll have the money immediately and it will be real usable money. Cash is king.
Similarly the hotel booking sites do a mass of scams. Showing listings for cheap hotels they don't book as 'unavailable' to make you think the cheap hotel is sold out, so that you book a more expensive hotel with them. Typically the listing has incorrect contact details to prevent you calling the hotel direct. Agoda are probably the worst here. Find a hotel, search their website, book them direct, pay at the desk. Over time you'll increase their profits and help cut one more scammy middleman from the deal.
Cash works everywhere. Ever had a credit card declined? Imagine you're dependent on that card... you're at the mercy of Visa.
Find a restaurant that doesn't take cash? Eat elsewhere. There's more customers than restaurants in the world, they're competing for your cash.
As long as drug dealers want to avoid having to explain all those five hundred dollar transactions done between 2:00 am and 5:00 am.
There will always be physical objects to trade for goods and services. ALWAYS. Having cash is the only way to keep things simple, consistent and stable. Why would you want to go back in time to pay for things with 3 goats?
Why does this columnist seem so damn smug about the prospect of losing a convenient payment option that has no middleman taking a cut?
CAPS required to get through thick Govt and Corp programmed skulls since birth :)
Not to mention roughly 4% transaction fees.
And TOTAL UP YOUR ASS TAX MAN 24x365 DATAMINING SURVEILLANCE SPYING probing for that apple pie and coolaid your kids "sold" from the driveway.
Or the little SIDE JOB you do for your neighbors.
Constant CONTROL CHECKPOINTING and GATEKEEPING over your life.
And the IMMEDIATE and TOTAL SHUTDOWN of your ENTIRE LIFE when the powers FUCK UP or decide they dont like you.
Cashless is a HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE.
If you want "cashless", the REAL SOLUTION is... CRYPTOCURRENCY. Specifically the ONLY type that will save your ass, that is...
Fully Distributed P2P Transaction Mineable Privacy Cryptocurrencies.
- You keep your own keys, subject to whatever % of wealth you want to leave insured in Corp/Gov/Bank custody subject to their OFF SWITCH, CONFISCATION and outright THEFT whenever they want money.
- You run a transaction miner and block relay in your basement attached to the smallest pools to guarantee no 51%.
- You send direct person to person over fully encrypted connections and anonymization networks.
Zcash.io ZEC is very good privacy coin, Bitcoin Cash BCH just added some privacy.
And in the next five years, MANY quality coins will be fully private, and MUCH MORE ADVANCED with no huge blockchain storage, only the UTXO set.
But if you don't use
Fully Distributed P2P Transaction Mineable Privacy Cryptocurrencies,
and don't uphold the philosophical responsibilities that come with it,
then you are NO BETTER OFF than using Fiat Shitcoins and taking it up the ass forever.
NOW IS YOUR CHANCE FOR REAL FREEDOM... economic, social, political... everything.
THIS ONLY COMES AROUND ONCE IN HUNDREDS OF YEARS.
You MUST ADOPT
Fully Distributed P2P Transaction Mineable Privacy Cryptocurrencies
Else it's all for naught and you will have consigned yourself and your entire future family unto SLAVERY FOREVER.
Search: Voluntaryism, Libertarianism, Anarchapulco, Mark Passio, Larken Rose, Jeffrey Tucker, Patrick Byrne, Roger Ver, Keith Knight, Gavin Seim, John McAfee, Free State Project Liberty Forum, etc...
Free your mind, LEARN, create your freedom.
You DO NOT need all this GOVT CORPORATE BANK BULLSHIT and MIND PROGRAMMING SLAVERY to them.
You can do EVERYTHING that needs done in life BY YOURSELVES working VOLUNTARILY TOGETHER.
END THE CYCLE OF KINGS RULERS GOVT WARS THEFT MURDER.
MONEY is the ONLY power GAME now, not Voting, not Speech, none of that fairy rigged up lip service bullshit.
WAKE the FUCK UP.
Cryptocurrency is the ONLY way to FREEDOM !!!
You either have it and use it or you lose.
the world economy crashes because:
Rampant hacking
Rampant 'taxation' by one and all
Because, as we will soon see in China (or won't, because it will be done covertly, until they need to make an example), all those micropayments people can watch for will allow them to track any purchases going towards protest supplies, unapproved reading materials, or even something mundane, like chemicals. (Ever tried to buy large quantities of lye in the US? Yeah, imagine that for EVERYTHING you could purchase, no matter how small and otherwise mundane.)
If we allow a truly cashless society to happen, we will be as chained as the africans, indians, and european debtor servants were during the colonial to civil war era america, only this time people won't understand the chains that bind them because they will be too removed from their immediate surroundings. Chains biting into your wrists and a whip or crop biting into your back make it easy to remember who is holding you down. Even living in the wrong part of town and having the cops treat you as less than human. But what about when it becomes whether or not you have money? Fellow wage slaves will simply look down on you as unsuccessful, rather than considering your plight, and how close they are teetering to it becoming their own.
If you can't take your money out of the bank then banks cannot be called on their "fractional reserve" bluff, and bankruns cannot happen. Even better, governments can just force you to "take a haircut" should the friendly gang of neighbourhood bankers fuck up again. What that eurogroup guy called "the cyprus template". No money in socks under the mattress for you.
the collapse of civilization, mass migration, wars, starvation, fires, floods, super-hurricanes etc
Cash won't be any good then, barter only for the survivors of climate change
Here's how you predict things correctly:
1. Start with things as they are
2. Predict they will change only a little.
That's how you get correct predictions. Nobody wants to publish them though.
The big changes that would be interesting enough to publish in an article are too few. You won't guess them.
Let's see you buy an 8-ball of crystal meth with a credit card or Apple Pay. You think Robert Kraft is slapping down his Discover Card when he goes to the Chinese rub'n'tug to get his egg roll dipped in sweet and sour?
Do you think that when the human trafficking owner of that Chinese rub'n'tug sells access to Donald Trump that they're taking credit card payments?
Fuck no. There somebody, somewhere, with a wad of currency. As it will ever be.
And no, I'm not making any of the above up:
https://nymag.com/intelligence...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Millennials can't buy everything they want without cash and I doubt that the intolerance precludes those purchases will leave as quickly as the availability to be 100% cashless arrives.
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With the population growing like an algae bloom in a pond (which leads to inevitable extinction in the pond) and the environmental destruction being done, it is an almost foregone conclusion that humanity will be extinct within the normal lifetime of millennials. Of course that will put an end to cash. But if through some slim miracle there are still people on this planet in 60 years, there will be cash.
Revelation 13:16-18 (NLT) 16 He required everyone--small and great, rich and poor, free and slave--to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. 17 And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name. 18 Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.
Gen X is the last generation that remembers what it was to live disconnected, and when we die out, nobody will know better.
Your CC comes with a new political code of conduct.
Any gov assistance program gets a new long no buy list.
No gambling, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking.
A bank account will be needed.
Detection of illegal migrants and other criminals trying to use a fake ID.
Social media use gets linked back to a cashless account and all spending is tracked.
Cash gave a person the spending power to enjoy freedoms away from big gov and the politics of a bank, CC. A cashless world returns all spending to a bank, CC.
Buy the wrong book? The wrong comment on an ISP account linked to your a cashless account?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
My prediction in the not too distant future the use of credit cards for transactions will be greatly diminished. Instead people will use bank tied "push" payment systems for electronic payment without transaction fees.
Cash will still be widely used and smartphone based payment systems (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, ad nausea) will be phased out entirely.
Decentralized Cryptocurrency is the Only way out, the True Path of Freedom to the Saviour.
All other paths lead to the Slavery enforced by that Beast.
Do Not Fall Slave to that Evil which Infests Governments and Banks and their so called money systems.
not "Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green"
but rather "Banks and credit card companies want this to charge for every fucking transaction regardless of how pissy small the amount is"
and of course, so they can have a record for all eternity (a hackable, exploitable, and government infiltrated, record) of what you bought, used or paid for, where and when and for how much and from whom.
we CAN fight this. we MUST fight this.
Finally everyone agrees capitalism sucks
A cashless society gives TOTAL control to government. If this happens it will be eventually be abused.The other day it became known that the Trump administration has been tracking journalists. Should Trump seize even more power, how hard it is to imagine he might freeze the assets of those journalists from "fake news" outlets as he likes to call them. Just one very easily imagined scenario where this could be abused. Next election Right Wing Christians take control? Maybe they will prevent funds from being transferred to pay for abortion. I could go on and on but the abuse is easy to imagine yourself. And that's not even considering the tracking power of a cashless society.
Call me back when checks actually get killed, which is a simpler problem to solve (the payer has a bank account, and the payee either has a bank account, a place to cash checks, or endorses checks over to someone else). Even when most people write few if any checks, there are still some transactions that can only be done with a check (or cash), and some transactions where you are given a check (no direct deposit). Even at jobs with direct deposit, there are still some employers who can't get your direct deposit started fast enough and pay your first payday with a paper check.
Cash is also nice to have during power outages or more frequently, payment processing system outages.
While the market share may fluctuate, one important thing cash does is limit the fees that banks can get away with.
We've all seen Apple decide that they're entitled to 30% of all transactions, because they've made sure there's no alternative. Any time there's no alternative, a middleman starts monopoly pricing.
But as long as cash is around, credit card fees can't deviate too far from cash-handling costs.
I use it sometimes but it just isn't as easy or straightforward as using a credit card.
With no cash just consider that all cashless services like bank accounts, credit cards and PayPal are easily frozen. Until recently you only had to cross government to be frozen out, but now the cashless corporations are acting on there own to freeze people. With no access to payment methods you would be forced to commit crimes to just survive.
.
When i visit America, its like traveling 20 years back in time, because you need to have cash.
Finally, Uncle Sam will be getting in on all that unreported allowance action.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I will give this guy the benefit of doubt and just label him naive.
There are so many reasons for having cash, from simple convenience to privacy. I like the fact that I can literally throw money on the counter/table if I am in a hurry (has happened a few times in my life).
Also, it will be the end of most beggars, I believe, as I cannot see them accepting card payments soon (Thank you kind Ma'am, would you like a receipt?). Similarly for sellers of The Big Issue (a UK magazine sold by homeless people). A lot of other charity will be stopped dead in its tracks when people cannot just grab some money and give it in a quick transaction. What about the big tanks in the airports where people can leave money for charities, can anybody imagine those replaced with card readers? Me neither.
As other have said, we are walking into the ultimate surveillance society where no transaction goes unregistered, which obviously is the card companies', the tax man's, the police's, the intelligence communities' and the government's wet dream.
Just say NO!
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years. Stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It is not a credit card, in that it is attached to your bank account. Getting out cash is now quite rare. It isn't strictly cashless; we still have cash, but the overwhelming majority of point of sale transactions are performed by EFTPOS. There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction, but not the silly percentage based approach used by the credit card people. So entrenched is EFTPOS that we have rejected the 'paywave' system which sought to undermine it and reintroduce abhorrent transaction fees just for the 'convenience' of not entering your pin number.
As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.
That's the good part of police states. Petty crime virtually disappears. The bad part is that the definition of "crime" expands so far as to encompass anyone who does something the rulers don't like. We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public. It's a new, terrifying level of control and since corporations control it instead of government, it's doing a nice job of boiling the frog.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
True but they will also see themselves enslaved to their governments, imprisoned for not working hard enough, and basically a pathetic life which will only include watching videos, masturbating, singing, dancing, and getting high. A worthless life for a worthless future.
You can even buy a coffee from the machine with your phone - and the machine does not take coins. I paid pretty much everything there by card.
These are the same morons using Facebook and Instagram, and see nothing wrong with (and happily), handing over all of their personal data to be harvested and used against them too.
So they can all go suck a bag of dicks, as far as I'm concerned.
I live in Norway. I haven't touched cash in about 4 years - and that was on a trip to America. Hand on my heart I havent been in a single situation where cash was required. We still keep 500 kroner (60 dollars?) in a drawer for home emergencies - but we've never had to use it. MY 2 year old daughter will never see cash. Even in her birthday cards - she has a bank account and when the time comes for her to spend money she'll have a mobile phone.
Will they live long enough, like msmash, to suck dick for dope, or cock for coke?
The Questions we Ponder,,
USA Today are idiots.
Because in the future due the fall of western society the economy will return to barter.
I frequently give some spare change to the homeless or the sub-saharans that are selling tissues at the traffic circles. They likely don't even have a presence in the digital world and probably can't get one...
Cash is essential for gambling, prostitution, drugs, and any activity requiring casual anonymity. Let's say Sweden decided to ban the physical Swedish Krona, only allowing electronic representations of it. The locals would just stock up on euros or dollars to complete their anonymous transactions. Even precious and semi-precious metals could be used.
Since getting rid of cash would have a severely negative effect on the poor (street beggars who can't collect coins, people who can't access electronic banking), I doubt most countries would have the political will to go through with it anyway.
The end of cash has been announced for decades, basically every time some cashless payment system becomes popular. Credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, you name it.
Won't happen. Cash is still the easiest, most convenient payment for both small everyday transactions and private-to-private exchanges. It already has disappeared from most large purchases - people buying a house or a car on cash have become so rare that they're newsworthy. But in all other areas, change is much more slow than all the news articles claim.
Change will continue to happen, but cash won't disappear anytime soon.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cash is something I see old people use at the grocery sometimes. I know not one single person under the age of 35 years who uses it.
The convenience of paying with your phone is simply too great.
I don't understand why people think I want to stop by a bank/ATM every once in a while. With cashless, I go there twice a year and feel both trips are a waste of time.
15 years ago, I had to stop by the Elec office to pay my monthly bill. I though it was asasine then that I had to not only pay for my time but also the teller to... what basically amounted to paper shuffling and database entries.
Cashless saves me a TON of time and money; and not just at the check out counter. I got better things to do with my time... like doze off in my backyard.
And we pay middlemen for everything and everywhere. That cashier, elec company teller, toll booth collector, parking attendant, water meter readers, lawn services sales guy, L1 customer support, etc. These are all labor units that are no different than any middleman.
PS: And I fully support Philadelphia's accept cash initiative. Because some members of our society can't go cashless for whatever reasons. And I believe it is the responsibility of any incorporated authority to provide for all of its resident's needs. This is on top of the legalities that cash is the tender for debt in the US. Don't like those points; go set up shop in an unincorporated area.
And here I am planning to hit the bank so I have cash on hand for getting lunches. This really strikes me as someone living in their own affluent cultural bubble and confusing 'millennials' with 'their immediate peer group'.
I like cash. I like privacy. Don't force all to use CCs.
If some millenials -and others- are happy to share their buy patterns with the Visas and Mastercards of the world, it's your business. Just don't force us into your stupid quest to rid the world of cash.
Sounds like crap to me. And no more yard sales too.
Fee's for transactions already killing credit and cashless ideals. We have several retailers charging for credit use, and prefer cash. I think you will see a resurgence of cash as fee's increase.
Not only governments, but other political actors. In the US we've already had people removed from having bank accounts and credit cards for extra-legal reasons, such as the guy from infowars and spencer. In China there have been millions of people stopped from using public transportation such as planes and trains. As soon as someone campaigns against you, even if you have committed no crime, you will be in trouble financially.
The trolls have already won.
sure, i like how easy it is to pay with my card, it's my prefered way of paying for stuff.
i don't want to pay with my phone, anything involving money has no place on my phone.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
It is an old law; it says dollars MUST be accepted for all debts. The only work around is to NOT allow the debt in the 1st place in advance; kind of a word game but the courts if they have any common sense will rule that cash can not be forbidden.
You can keep the requirement for cash... but you'll get profiled as being a shady person with something to hide. You'll have troubles as the teenager struggles to do basic math and operate a cash register.
We DO need to KILL nickles and pennies. probably just move everything into 1/10 . don't think biz doesn't round $ like crazy already. POINT: lincoln killed the 1/2 penny which today is worth over 10 cents! But then we don't need to ban... we can make stuff a pain in the ass and people will act like they are in pain to have to handle literally worthless coins...
I use cash for most of my purchases. I only use a credit card if I am busing something online.
Cars are a auto loan and cash down. Appliances are cash, TV - cash.
You don't want cashless... what if someone steals your identity ? Spends your life savings ? And gets away with it ? What then ?
I have cash saved in a CD/Passbook that is not linked to any checking accounts. My 401k requires 3 forms of authentication to access it.
What about privacy too. Wow...
I say cash is King. Merchants should encourage cash purchases by giving a discount for using cash. Why ? The merchant does not have to pay a transaction fee to Mastercard, VISA, American Express, or Discover.
Being broke and unemployed sucks, but it is a cashless lifestyle.
Let's see your debit card work then.
F&cking idiots.
Do people understand they are paying a 1-5% premium for this tiny convenience?
It's pointless to have cash when you can't have a job (all outsourced or automated) and are deep in debt. Millennials are going to suffer the most from the next economic crises, which will completely obliterate any hope of social mobility and make absolutely clear to everyone that no, we're never going to be well-off again. We're never going to be well-fed again. Poverty is about to become the norm, with complete destitution a looming threat for most of the population. The initial denial will be followed by a short period of turmoil which will be put down swiftly, easily and mercilessly by a militarized and mostly privatized law enforcement system. Resignation and meek acceptance will then set in, as the endgame of humanity - the end of 99% of the population versus the rule of the One Percenters - becomes reality.
Obviously he doesn't do drugs. What the fuck is with this abstinent generation? I'm in my mid-30s and I swear I have more success finding people older than me to smoke weed with these days. So much "oh, no, I'm good" bullshit from 20-somethings now. For fucking weed. Ten years ago they'd be doing blow if they had the chance.
We need a new drug revolution.
I am positive that all these stories are bought and paid for by publicists working for credit card companies and similar big financial firms.
Imagine the woody any such company gets when it contemplates getting a few percent cut of EVERY transaction BY LAW. Right now every real dollar bill spent anywhere in the company ROBS the credit card companies of their ~2% transaction cut. They want that money. It's a lot.
Americans and foreigners visiting the US should all be required to pay a 2% sales tax to some rich companies whenever they buy anything. That's just right and proper. This is what this is about, pure and simple. All discussion of security or convenience or even the absurd claims of cost reduction are smoke to obscure the real reason for this.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
That's because he is rich or at least relatively so and clueless about how lots of people actually live. Poor people don't get this option. Credit cards don't work well in remote areas without network connections. Good luck doing a Venmo in the middle of Alaska. Something like 15% of Americans don't have bank accounts or credit cards or debit cards and many cannot get them under reasonable terms even if they wanted to. Cash isn't going away any time soon and this guy is an idiot if he really believes it will.
Because after the rent on their TriBeCa studio and their student loans, millennials don’t have any money.
Fuck Millennials.
This already exists in many parts of the world. In China, you can pay for everything using WeChat by scanning a QR code. Even a little one person newsstand has a printed out QR code. It's so ubiquitous that there's a lot of places in New York City that accept using the WeChat wallet as a method of payment. Though it only works if you have a Chinese bank account.
The middleman causing higher prices for cashless transactions does not apply. An everyday example:
We are both in the gas station and we both buy $10 at the pump. You pay cash I use my credit card,
but it only costs me $9.70 because I get a 3% rebate.
The merchant is paying 5% to the credit card company for processing the sale, but is getting benefits that compensate; for example faster transaction processing, no bounced check fees, no cash embezzlement, no worries about hold ups, an increased customer count because he accepts credit cards, higher sales per customer transaction, and more satisfied customers.
Not all benefits apply to all merchants, but enough do to make the 5% fee palatble.
Meanwhile I will be saving 3% on my purchases.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham
didn't know that coins were the beginning and end of cash money.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Should be raped and killed
But cash isn't going away in this century.
Haters going to hate, but crypto works.
..don't panic
There's so many advantages to cashless, but then again there are a lot of pitfalls. It may take longer than expected without government intervention. For those of us on the poorer spectrum, cash is king. Many can't even get bank accounts. I happen to have one, but still use cash daily. Even worse, I still have to use checks about once a week!
I mean it. Illegal immigration keeps the cash economy a-hummin' along nicely in the US -- I thank illegal immigrants for helping preserve my freedom of choice (to pay cash) and privacy. And no, I'm not a coward, so I'm not bothered by the supposed negative implications of the above.
...the poor and the homeless will disappear. Don't worry about where they went, and please try not to stare at that big windowless building with the billowing smokestacks and the padlocked windowless vans that come and go frequently.
Just ignore the minor issues of the poor, who have little or no access to non-cash options, or any crank concerned about personal privacy or the inconvenient fact cash is still legal tender. Our only priority should be making businesses happy. Cash needs to remain an option because transactions cannot be tracked by government, business, or third parties. Data from cash transactions cannot be used or sold to track you and your life. Cash works when the power is out, or the Internet connection is down - depending on where you live, or travel, can be an issue. Some small businesses and service providers are cash only. As long as cash is legal tender, acceptance of cash is simply part of the cost for anyone operating a physical business, like rent, power, employee wages, inventory, etc. FYI: I use debit, PayPal, credit cards, etc. when I shop online, and usually in the real world. But, certain transactions are in cash. Tips are always left in cash - some merchants skim tip money from electronic transactions. Some purchases are better done without an electronic record - gifts for my wife for example. And, believe it or not, a few merchants still offer a cash discount.
The cashless world has an income barrier.
There are lots of people who don't have credit cards or bank accounts at all. They take their pay check to the nearest check cashing service as soon as they receive it. Some of them now allow you to do bill pay right there from your pay check. If they need to buy something online, they go to a retail store and buy an Amazon or iTunes or Visa gift card with cash, then use that to make purchases.
As we've seen, payment processors and banks and credit card companies abuse their power to enforce their politics preferences by deplatforming others.
At best we'll reach a "cashless" society in the same way we've reached a "paperless" office.
Cash will diminish, sure. But end?
What about kids? Are they going to start getting debit cards? Or will they just not be allowed to buy anything in this brave new world?
Lot's of people don't have bank accounts. What about them?
You don't replace one technology with another unless it's better in every way.
If the new is only better in most ways, then it's only going to mostly replace the old.
Until there's something impossible, like, you know, a thunderstorm.
Hi this is your Friendly local Government.
We see You Bought A LOT Of Dildos.
Your Place Of Employment has been notified. Pervert.
...you to pay as many of those tasty transaction fees as possible
FTFY.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why are companies still trying to make this a thing?
The vending machine at works charge me an extra dime on the dollar if I use a credit card, even if I run it debit. The bar down the street insists on a $10 minimum on credit card due to banking fees. The gas station around the corner charges a higher rate for credit purchases of gasoline. These banking fees results in million if not billions in profits for banks every day. I'm over here trying to get my budget right -- I can't have the bank nicking and diming me at every corner.
As the first post proves, when cash goes out of being used, hipsters will use cash.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Too many "I"s in this thread and slashdot is not the place to do an accurate economic survey.
Not too sound too Bernie, but cash is around until everyone is on the grid and able to work within it. I don't see poor people going away within the next 80 years and as long as they are around so will actual cash.
I mentioned alcohol abuse... but only drug use. Not abuse. Conflating one to the other is a mistake.
I'm saying a happy, balanced life is not necessarily the normal state of man. Mostly balanced, okay.
"I personally have no respect for people who don't have the courage to lose complete control of their lives for a few years." - Marc Maron
Anyone who claims that they have nothing to hide is participating in the surrender of our fourth amendment rights. The law often asks the question, "What would a reasonable person do?". Today, a "reasonable person" would:
-Publicly list all of their family members online.
-Publicly list all of their contacts online.
-Publicly list their occupation online.
-Publicly list their phone number online.
-Publicly list their street address online.
-Publicly list their shopping preferences online.
-Publicly post pictures of themselves online.
-Publicly post their controversial activities online.
-Publicly post their controversial opinions online.
-Publicly post their political opinions online.
-Publicly post their DNA online.
This makes these people:
-Less employable, as employers look up this information (even when it is illegal).
-Prone to discrimination
-Prone to identity theft and other crimes
-Prone to manipulation (even to the point of overthrowing democracies)
-Prone to cyber-bullying
-Prone to depression
-Prone to being arrested (falsely or otherwise)
-Less safe in their homes, possessions, and privacy
One thing that I really like about Slashdot is the ability to post anonymously. Many here hate it, but at least it respects a person's identity while allowing their opinion to be heard.
USA today tech columnists are delusional millennials or pandering adults, themselves, methinks. Nothing in life on this earth is just 'inevitable'. Lazy writing. Very lazy.
Affairs happen all the time. And the majority go undiscovered and fade into the past without terminating the relationship.
Given that nothing seems to stem the tide of infidelity, it seems to me that the cashless society would cause a rise in the divorces.
is a very important check on unfettered government power, and it thrives on cash.
Nothing good can come of this, and people pushing it (for their own self-interested motives) should be shunned.
...there's a power outage, or internet goes down, or banks start fleecing business owners with inflated fees, etc..
Also, as long as people still have the option to use cash relatively conveniently, we won't be so susceptible to hyper-exploitative practices by banks & credit card companies that'd make the big telecoms monopolies blush. You know they're just waiting for the opportunity, don't you?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Have payment processing be performed at the point of sale. The money can be anonymously and cryptographically secured for each individual currency unit in your "wallet" wherever that may be, and re-encrypted after transfer so that it is no longer "your" money. That's how cash is handled in any number of sci fi works.
I live in southern Mexico, in the second-poorest state in the union. All my transactions every day - bus fare, restaurants, groceries, utility bills, rent, etc, are paid in cash and cash only. Outside the utility bills (which are paid in cash at a kiosk) there is NO NON-CASH option for any of those things. Everyone in the real world still uses cash, all the time, every day.
your damn phone will pop up with "How was your visit to Madam Lucy's House of Personal Pleasure Products".
I hate when that heppens.
This columnist/blog writer is such an obvious twit, either beyond stupid or in league with the money masters --- what a load of tripe!
Millennial: Hi, I'm 20 and like know everything. Cash is dumb. Socialism is the bomb. I'm like so right REEEEEEEE
China: Yesssss you totally are bro! Universal income!! Free stuff!! F-REEEEE dumb
Old Wise Man: *buys more guns* *mumbles* dumb kids can't read history again
Once a fully cashless society takes hold, the banks will absolutely control what we can buy and what we can't. Your interest rates will also vary depending on what products you buy (think of credit risk) - The banks may frown on some products more than others. The morning after pill, smut magazines, tobacco products, booze, firearms, non-organic food, anything that's not vegan... Use your imagination.
This is a bit off-topic. But until it's all cashless ...
I use my card for purchases that will improve my social credit rating, and cash for everything else. For example, I pay cash for alcohol and use a card when I but fresh healthy food. Sure, it takes a little longer to split the transaction if I'm buying both at the same time, but I think it's worth it.
If you can afford to, then keep $200 in cash on you at all times. That's enough to get a cheap room and to buy transportation in an emergency, or if your credit card processing system goes down. I also keep a couple rolls of quarters and a bunch of $1 bills in my emergency bag in my car because they are the most common vending machine denominations.
You never know ...
Not if I can help it! ....
(Oops, that could be misinterpreted...)
Virtual Game Currency. Sure, you get paid in increments of X, but everything costs X+1 or X-1 and item has cost such that NOT X mod (X-1 OR X+1) == 0 (I think got got that right, feel free to fix it). So you always have to get 2X just to get the one item costing X+1 or feel like you need to get 2X or more to make use of all even if its X-1. Each actor (games/devs in this case) could set up a locked in currency you can't export after your bought in to it.
Nobody is gonna get the means to dictate when , how, and how much i will spend of my hard earned cash.
So fuck off.
in the form of various rewards programs and cashback. I also get the option to dispute most transactions (thanks to US Law, YMMV in your country though). I'm also not liable for unauthorized charges.
As for the businesses taking my credit cards, they get to sell me more crap (my kid has a copy of my card with her name on it for use in college and yeah, she's spent more on it then I'd probably budget her if I gave her cash, she's got a 4.0 despite getting sick as a dog last year, I can't complain). And it effectively lets a company issue credit without the need to do collections.
I think it mostly works for folks in good financial shape. Where it becomes nasty is if you're not in good financial shape. Then the sharks circle with 30%+ APRs and they sell your debt to each other and use our legal system to garnish wages. But all that's fixable with some more regulation and some pro-working class legislation like what Bernie Sander's is proposing.
Speaking of Bernie, I think Credit Cards are a good example of something that works well in the context of Democratic Socialism and Mixed Market Capitalism. e.g. something that we can leave the bulk of it up to private industry while regulating it enough to prevent abuses.
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So when everyone else has perished, the Millennial world will be a cashless world
and would have loved cashless. Every store I worked at had been robbed at least once while I worked there. I avoided it by sheer dumb luck. The owner of one chain used to keep their lobby's open 24/7 until somebody got pistol whipped. They didn't close them until the cops got fed up and said they'd press negligence charges on the owner the next time somebody got hurt.
What I'm saying is cash isn't free to a business. There are costs involved. The businesses dropping cash aren't doing it to be hip or because they drunk kool-aid. They're doing it because the costs are now higher than the alternatives.
And if it bother's you that much just do Postal Banking with government issued cards. Have the gov't issue gift card like devices if being traced bugs you. But I've said this before, being tracked should be low on your list of worries in a world like ours. If you're American you've got Health Care, jobs, climate change and the 8 wars we're fighting. Tracking is a symptom of oppression, not the cause. Focus on the systemic issues that oppress you.
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India did a major shake up to it's paper currency because they couldn't get folks to pay their taxes. It was bad enough that it was retarding the country's growth and modernization efforts.
You can still have spending privacy for small transactions (think under $10k) with various cash cards. What'll go away is hiding large amounts of money from the tax man in cash. As somebody who gets paid his salary electronically and pays every dime of taxes I say "Good".
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the current system is kind of fucked up. If you're wealthy you've got basically zero chance of getting arrested for a little hash & shrooms. Being white helps too.
Every wonder why we haven't legalized drugs? It's because drugs being illegal isn't a problem for a significant portion of the population. Hell, Nixon's people admitted that it was a political move, literally state sponsored terrorism against minorities they didn't like ("minorities" here being literal, e.g. not just race/creed/color but also political minorities).
There's a big push for drug reform thanks to the "opioid crisis". We even passed some real criminal justice reform. What changed? Middle Class, rural white men and women were getting caught up in the drug war for a change. Since they're a valuable voting block to the right wing (and the left wing already wanted to stop treating drug users like criminals) some progress happened.
I wouldn't mind seeing all of it brought out into the light. Legal taxed and regulated for the weak stuff (pot & shrooms) and treat the hard stuff (Meth, Heroine) like a disease. That's not going to happen so long as 70% of the population can use witn impunity...
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it has to be counted, moved by secured trucks to banks. You have "shrinkage" in retail & restaurant (e.g. stealing from the till or not ringing up orders, every wonder why you see your order on a screen at a fast food restaurant? it's not so they get it right...).
When I worked at a fast food joint we were allowed to be off by a certain amount on each till. It was just expected. It was a couple bucks on a $100 till IIRC, so around 2% right there. We weren't always, but I'm guessing that alone was a 1% loss.
And that's before we talk about armed robbery. I pointed this out elsewhere on the thread but cashless would be a boom to fast food and convenience store employees who often get robbed. And companies typically have to carry insurance to cover that risk. Plus there's the lost money from the robbery.
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just stop means testing welfare programs. Implement UBI. Problem solved.
Or if you have to means test stop doing it on moral grounds. You know most of the South is doing drug test laws for welfare recipients, right? No cash involved.
One last thing, nobody knows what book you bought except Amazon. All the Credit Card companies know is that you bought something from Amazon.
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completely untraceable unless you're buying dozens of them at a time. Even then they're still untraceable, but they'll stake out the area if you keep doing it in the same place. But long before they did that they'd just stake out your regular haunts and catch you there.
Credit Cards are not the Number of the Beast. They're not a perfectly traceable item. Nor do they need to be. Cops have much, much better ways to get their way.
You're right about one thing, cashless would make cops jobs easier. It would end stick ups. There'd be no point knocking over a convenience store or fast food joint if there was no cash there.
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I have lived in one a long time.
On this subject ATM card and no cash in my pocket is why I don't shop any more malls or Main Street.
This is a good idea. I have a google account where I'm subscribed to Tana Mongeau Buzzfeed and Logan Paul. Once in a while I'll binge on Donald Duck when I'm leaving to go out. I do my real watching over TOR only, and won't like anything unless it allows liking over TOR. ( eg: bitchute.com ). It's time to start building social credit and taking that shit seriously.
All of these stories are coming at us from an industry that has an agenda. Every swipe you make someone is profiting. Banks get a cut of the fees changed to merchants every time a consumer swipes, taps, or waves.
I take issue with the misleading portrayal of the statistics. Cash is still king in spite of a more digital society. That is more telling about how people feel about it than anything else. I would say that anybody who hasn't used cash to make a purchase get out of the house a bit. I travel a lot and can say that while certain areas do offer electronic payment options that didn't use to its far from ubiquitous. Everything from restaurants, babysitter, gardeners, handymen, barbers, taxi drivers, landlords, bills, and more frequently do not provide an option to pay with a credit card or other digital solution. In fact I had to take out thousands of euros on a 1 week trip to the EU explicitly because so many places wouldn't take plastic. I had originally taken out 500 euros for the trip too. For those that are wondering why so much it has to do with EU socialists driving up the cost of everything. People over there don't realize how poor they actually are and I'm not even talking eastern Europe here.
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years.
We have EFTPOS in the United States as well. It's just very rare to see a merchant that accepts EFTPOS but not credit cards.
There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction
Which itself is prohibitive for the 0.50 to 3.00 USD transactions at yard sales. Is there also a monthly fee for a merchant to accept EFTPOS?
U.S. banks and credit unions are part of EFTPOS networks called Interlink and Maestro. "Visa Debit" cards are on Interlink, and "Debit MasterCard" cards are on Maestro.
USA Today Tech Columnist: Millennials Will Live To See a Cashless World where businesses and the government tell you when and what you can spend your money on.
Remember some card providers if you read their fine print already can "refuse payments to specific merchants" Want to donate you a charity your bank disagrees with? Denied. Government doesn't want you using a new ISP that didn't grease the right palms? Denied. Want to pay that fine? Sorry mysteriously our card processing machine is down. Go to jail. We don't think a liquor store in the hood is appropriate. Denied.
You forget that it is trivial to query your bank transactions (It is literally 6 keystrokes and an account number on the MF) and equally trivial to query a merchant's general ledger to match a card transaction to a purchase.
They know exactly when you bought something and what you bought. Don't think for a minute that insurance companies haven't tried this, I know, I helped write the search for tobacco products. Boiled down to "Search all merchants that sell tobacco related products where a transaction from the banking ledger date and time matches and items sold include tobacco product."
Buying an anonymous\sanitized ledger from a company isn't terribly hard. All I need is the transaction date and the amount. The odds of the exact same amount at the exact same time, at the exact same location is effectively zero.
In a cashless society you are giving them absolute control on what you can and cannot buy and be punished for buying the wrong thing depending on the whims of whomever is in charge at the time.
You. Are. Fucked.
The pocket computer than approximately everyone carries
Just because someone carries a pocket computer doesn't mean he also subscribes to Internet access for use on that pocket computer while away from home. Currently I subscribe to cable data and do not subscribe to cellular data because switching from cable data to cellular data would cause my home use to routinely exceed the 10 GB per month mobile hotspot data cap that all major cellular ISPs impose.
Big Brother would like to thank everybody for pushing for a cashless soceity. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER to keep track of you and is more reliable than tracking your cellphones.
Remember: Big Brother is watching YOU!
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
In America, those drugs you mentioned are illegal. ANY amount is drug abuse. That isn't my opinion or your opinion. It's the guy's with the guns opinion and it's the law. I'm happy a few states are changing laws, but for now, it is what it is.
Yeah, whatever. We tried that communal capitlaism bullshit in the 1800s and it created the Robber Barons and The Company Store. And charity has never, not once in all of history, met the needs of the poor. Jesus just don't give a fuck that much.
Maybe not cash, but if I see a soccer mom with a fist full of coupons, I just walk away from my basket and go the fuck home.
And as far as the "cash line", I think they mean the lines that aren't self-checkout. I hate self-check lines too.