Why Are We Still Using Cash ?

[msj]

Do kids seriously run lemonade stands that earn enough dough to warrant visa's and debit cards? 

Really?

Pretty sure kids will be kids and people will spend their coins on lemonade if only for the sympathy. 

[Bonam]

I don't think I've ever seen a kid running a lemonade stand in my life. Are we actually sure this is still a thing that needs a payment solution? 

[msj]

I suppose people are also lamenting the fewer job opportunities for kids now a days since it ain't easy to get a paper route in this digital age. 

 

[Wilber]

12 hours ago, Bonam said:

I don't think I've ever seen a kid running a lemonade stand in my life. Are we actually sure this is still a thing that needs a payment solution? 

We see them around here during the summer. A couple of kids two blocks down the road have had them. Why are you so much in favour of having to make every purchase in your life through a bank? Bank or barter, no other options. No thanks.

[Bonam]

8 hours ago, Wilber said:

We see them around here during the summer. A couple of kids two blocks down the road have had them. Why are you so much in favour of having to make every purchase in your life through a bank? Bank or barter, no other options. No thanks.

I actually have nothing against cash. I expect that it will continue to exist for at least the next couple decades, which is as far forward as anything can be foreseen. 

[Wilber]

Well, I hope it is around as long as I am.

[dre]

On 10/31/2016 at 4:46 PM, msj said:

Why wouldn't a kid have a bank account? 

I had one around 6 or 7 as a means to learn about saving money etc etc. 

--------------------

There is still going to be cash around.

We probably will even still have $50 and $100 bills since inflation should make these the equivalent of tens/twenties within the next five to eight years. 

Thousands of Canadian towns don't even HAVE banks.

And as inflation takes it course, we should start printing bigger bills again. Bring back the thousand.

[dre]

On 11/1/2016 at 5:30 PM, Bonam said:

I actually have nothing against cash. I expect that it will continue to exist for at least the next couple decades, which is as far forward as anything can be foreseen. 

Physical exchangeable currency will ALWAYS exist. There's a lot of demand for it, and people will always want to do private transactions that the government doesn't monitor. If the government was dumb enough to end its use it would just be replaced by another alternative by a private company. Any company could sell tokens that it guarantees to redeem. And anyone could use those tokens for a transaction.

[Wilber]

It's not just government. Every time you make an electronic purchase or use a loyalty card, that information can be used by a variety of people.

[Bonam]

2 hours ago, dre said:

Physical exchangeable currency will ALWAYS exist. There's a lot of demand for it, and people will always want to do private transactions that the government doesn't monitor. If the government was dumb enough to end its use it would just be replaced by another alternative by a private company. Any company could sell tokens that it guarantees to redeem. And anyone could use those tokens for a transaction.

"ALWAYS" is a long time. A lot can change as technology changes. I.e. if people spend most of their time in a virtual reality (see the thread on that), or if people implement a system that doesn't run on money (see the thread on that), etc. Also, staying closer to the current paradigm rather than far-fetched stuff, there are "non-physical" currencies that the government also "doesn't monitor" (or monitors no more than it monitors cash, anyway). Bitcoin, for example. Or, humankind or human civilization could cease to exist and that would also entail the end of physically exchangeable currency (at least in this corner of the galaxy). 

Anyway, I think you are likely right, for the foreseeable future, there will be physically exchangeable currency. But the foreseeable future is only a few decades, hence why I used that timespan in my previous post. 

[msj]

Just a reminder to those who continue to make the (false) claim: no one is saying to eliminate all currency so to make such claims is partaking in strawman arguments.  

[?Impact]

On 10/30/2016 at 3:28 PM, TimG said:

Your example of 20K for petty cash for a business seems absurdly high to me.

 To put that in perspective, assuming 200 work days/year, that works out to $100/day. I'm not sure how big dre's business is, but $100/day is not a lot for petty cash. Yes, credit cards might offer a some advantages for better tracking although many businesses do not get corporate credit cards for their employees. If they have a lot of employees doing small transactions, then a lot of corporate cards might hit their credit rating and limit.

[dre]

On 11/7/2016 at 4:26 PM, ?Impact said:

 To put that in perspective, assuming 200 work days/year, that works out to $100/day. I'm not sure how big dre's business is, but $100/day is not a lot for petty cash. Yes, credit cards might offer a some advantages for better tracking although many businesses do not get corporate credit cards for their employees. If they have a lot of employees doing small transactions, then a lot of corporate cards might hit their credit rating and limit.

My business is small... 8+ workers in the summer, 4 or so workers in the winter.  Its an excavation company (skid steers, excavators, dumptrucks, etc), and construction services company.  I guess I could have a credit card for each worker... I DO have a company card that I use for 90% of my purchases. But I use cash when employees need a few bucks before pay day. I sometimes buy clean fill and soil from local farmers, sometimes diesel. The guy where I dump thousands of tons of yard waste only takes cash. I don't cheat on my taxes... even when I pay cash I get receipts. Actually I DO do the occasion small cash job... sometimes youll do a quick 2 hour job, and the guy will just hand you a few hundred bucks when you're finished. Its pretty rare though.

[cannuck]

My problem with going cashless is that it takes to the extreme the ability of banksters to charge whatever they want to your account, each transaction, or for access to the system.  Just a socialism fails due to the greed of those granted privilege, capitalism has deteriorated greatly because we have granted virtually unlimited privilege for financial institutions to have an unregulated orgy of greed - with we peons as the ultimate victims.

Also: what I find doubly alarming is that consumers/taxpayers do not seem to realize that increasing the money supply in ANY form is increasing the debt to the taxpayers to make good on the value of whatever the chosen marker might be.   We let the Casino Capitalist side of finance redistribute TRILLION$$ into their world of synthetic instruments through this privilege of unregulated (and often unknown) financial activity.

[eyeball]

3 hours ago, cannuck said:

Just a socialism fails due to the greed of those granted privilege, capitalism has deteriorated greatly because we have granted virtually unlimited privilege for financial institutions to have an unregulated orgy of greed - with we peons as the ultimate victims.

It's their virtually unlimited secrecy that's failing us.

Quote

We let the Casino Capitalist side of finance redistribute TRILLION$$ into their world of synthetic instruments through this privilege of unregulated (and often unknown) financial activity.

That's what I mean right there. The only way to stamp this out is to monitor the regulators, and above all else their political masters, to such a degree that even Orwell himself would blush.

Of course that won't happen so...eventually they'll all fall victim to the peons and we can hit the reset button. There will be blood, as always.

[Argus]

On 10/10/2016 at 9:43 PM, ?Impact said:

Check out ApplePay. Place your watch next to the terminal, and you are done.

What's a 'watch'? 

[JamesHackerMP]

Is it really in the interests of the government to no longer have notes and coins? What about in the interest of banks and other financial institutions?

[Boges]

I saw a guy Busking outside a Grocery Store with an iPad equipped with a Square Card Reader. Nice Try Buddy. LOL . 

[JamesHackerMP]

Just now, Boges said:

I saw a guy Busking outside a Grocery Store with an iPad equipped with a Square Card Reader. Nice Try Buddy. LOL . 

Now THAT is clever!

[Boges]

17 hours ago, JamesHackerMP said:

Is it really in the interests of the government to no longer have notes and coins? What about in the interest of banks and other financial institutions?

There'd be zero reason for cash if banks didn't charge a buck fifty for E-mail transfers. 

There are still cash only businesses. 

[JamesHackerMP]

1 hour ago, Boges said:

There'd be zero reason for cash if banks didn't charge a buck fifty for E-mail transfers. 

There are still cash only businesses. 

I don't entirely understand; can you elaborate on that? (sorry)

[Boges]

47 minutes ago, JamesHackerMP said:

I don't entirely understand; can you elaborate on that? (sorry)

Well a lot of people do person to person money transfers using E-mail Transfer. It's very easy. You just send an e-mail through your Online Banking App with a question and the amount you want to send. The person on the other end answers the question and gets the money deposited in their Online banking app. Banks charge $1.50 for this though so it only makes sense if you're transferring large sums of money. I use it when I sign up for a Volleyball League. 

If it was free, people could just transfer money to the person paying for something in a group (The number one reason I use cash). 

 

[ZenOps]

Canada is a big place.  It was only about a decade or so ago that 10% of Canada had cellular coverage.  Switching from analog to digital was a huge boost to the economy.  Yes, you can easily go a few hundred kilometers between banks pretty much everywhere except the denser cities.

Banks simply do not open in areas that can be serviced with the far more efficient cash system in remote areas that may or may not have digital means of authenticating credit or debit cards (farmers, etc)  Places that have an actual copper line going to them?  Extremely rare.

http://canadianspectrumpolicyresearch.org/canada/inventory/canadian-network-coverage-national-carriers/

Want to buy a hot bowl of soup at a mountain chateau in the Rockies?  It will be cash only for quite a few decades to come.  The tech advance of drone deliveries, now that's something to celebrate.  It might actually mean a tin of campbells soup might not be $15 at said mountain resort, lol.  It always makes me laugh to see truck commercials where they go up a rocky hill and call it a mountain, nonono - its horse delivery on a path that is three feet wide or a backpacker to deliver things in remote areas.

There are plenty of farmers and contractors in remote areas begging that they start printing more $1,000 bills.

Edited July 12, 2017 by ZenOps

[Prairieboy43]

I will keep gold coins around somewhere (always tradeable), I reckon I will need them soon. Government monitoring every transaction possible, that GST is important. 

[JamesHackerMP]

I collect money, so it would be a shame to me if they stopped making paper and coin money.

What's weird is how our government never withdrew the $1 note from circulation like you guys did.  As a result, no one wants to use the "presidential" and "sacajawea" dollars.  Billions of dollars of them are sitting in vaults costing the government storage on them.  The mints stopped producing them for general circulation after a while, only for sale as mint and proof sets.  Americans tend to dislike change.  We only have 1c, 5c, 10c, 25c coins.  Everything else, $1 to $100, is paper.  The UK and the Euro have eight different circulating denominations, from .01 to 2.00.