Yep, money is for plebs. Accountants and shell corporations are for the rich.
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Ha! Small businesses pay their taxes because revenue agencies ruin them if they don’t. The businesses absconding with their earnings to offshore tax havens aren’t dealing in cash. And what do governments do to try and get them to pay taxes? Give them tax cuts! All business transparent my ass!
But hey, let’s ruin the lives of working-class small business owners and their families. That’ll show those trillionaire tax-dodgers!
For the love of sanity, people, please think these things through before you support these idiotic laws.
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I suppose it makes the barter system more attractive.
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The banks will become even richer as they gouge out a piece of every transaction. Capitalism at its best!
Gold, precious metals and gems will become even more popular in the cashless society.
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And the Australian $100 bill is not something you normally see in the retail world. There are lots of them out there, but…
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This will do almost nothing to prevent money laundering. You may catch some bush-league tax evaders, the kind who do it one-time-only or don’t even try to cover their tracks.
I can’t make my cash clean with a $7,500 item? What about 150 $50 ones? You really think that large amounts of cash are regularly cleaned in single transactions? Money? Sure. But money is not the same thing as cash.
This is one of those laws that sounds like it makes sense but won’t perform its publicly stated purpose in the slightest.
This isn’t giving a little liberty in exchange for security. This is taking away liberty and privacy and exchanging it for Sweet FA.
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Sadly I suspect it will take a large scale cyberattack for countries like Australia that push the cashless society to see the error of their ways.
(Meanwhile Sweden has decided that being cash free is too risky for exactly that reason)
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I expect the next step will be negative interest rates on “free” checking accounts. Use it or lose it consumers!
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each of the last three cars i’ve bought (purchased new) was paid for in cash. we bank in a relatively small community and so, to keep too many people from knowing all my business, we keep our income split among 5 different banks and credit unions. when we make large purchases we make strategic withdrawals from each of them and pay cash.
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Still, how often do you run into 100s. Hardly anyone takes them. According to the federal reserve 80% of the cash is in 100s about $1trillion dollars worth, and 2/3 are outside the US.
At one point they thought about getting rid of the $100 bill (like they did the other high denominations 500, 1000 and 10,000) because that would definitely screw over a lot of people. At the same time in the Planet Money episode they mentioned being in Myanmar and the translator showed the reporter his life savings - all in US $100s pressed into a book.
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That was a good documentary.
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What crimes specifically do you think flourish due to cash? Drugs? Prostitution? I think people should be able to do with their bodies as they please.
Otherwise. there’s too much risk (police state) for the reward (restricting freedom).
(Keep in mind most terrorist plots can be funded with 5-10k.)
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I watched the Scarface clip, but could you recall the name of the documentary?
https://www.wiyre.com/craigslist-cashiers-check-scam-how-to-spot-and-avoid/
https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/consumer-advisories/2007/consumer-advisory-2007-1.html
Most things I buy from or sell to individuals are done via cash. It is the safest bet, and causes less apprehension.
When you exchange an item for cash, the deal is done at that point. Checks have to clear, or can be stopped. Credit card transactions can be disputed, often well after the fact. I suppose someone who works with cashier’s checks all the time can easily tell when one is fake or has been tampered with. A reasonable observant person can likely tell if cash is counterfeit, without much special knowledge.
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Look at the upside of cashless. The government gets to monitor every transaction. So do the big data companies. So do the more skilled hackers. And the bankers get a few percent on everything.
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Good news for the banks then as everybody will have to have an account and pay for the privilege of doing so. Luckily I live in Japan where there are no personal checks and credit cards are still looked upon with suspicion.
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I disagree. The US is designed to offer freedom to. Freedom from is different, and expensive.
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it’s successful so much of the time it’s interesting to see the cases where it fails.
outlaw drugs and alcohol: blackmarkets and crime flurish. legalize, age restrict, and sin tax it and those markets can shrink.
go too far beyond what people are willing to accept and it doesn’t work. but for curbing edge cases laws can work wonders.
society is a big cybernetic system. feedback and influence happens at all levels. including governments and law.
[edit: interesting example is this bbs. the rules and guidelines are akin to laws. arbitrary, imposed from above. and yet they help conversation here greatly. without moderation, this place would be over run in days. ]
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