Do you think doing away with cash is a good or bad idea ?

[olddots]

It appears that some people think a cashless society would be a good idea .

[bluedigger]

1. Bad.

Cash is King.

[Go Vols]

64. Yes it is

Only time I don't use cash is when buying online.

[randome]

2. I rarely carry cash with me anymore. I rarely use stamps.

All much more convenient.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. It isn't going to happen any time soon

So the point is rather moot in my opinion.

[LiberalEsto]

4. What am I going to use for garage sales?

[snooper2]

54. coupons?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Bad idea.

I like using cash, and a number of local merchants I frequent like it too.

I do use my debit card in the grocery store, or at Costco. I just don't get people who charge their groceries.

[Luminous Animal]

21. The miles.

If only my landlord would take a credit card for my rent, then I'd really be racking up the miles.

[Agschmid]

33. Mine does, it was life changing!

Pay via credit, no service fee, pay off my card relish in the rewards!

[Luminous Animal]

52. So so envious!

[Generic Brad]

41. Cash back

I use my credit card as if it were a debit card. I never charge more than I have on hand, then once a week I initiate an electronic bill pay from my checking account so I never have to pay credit card interest. My card pays me back 2% on all grocery purchases and restaurant purchases and 3% back on hotels. I use a different card for gas because that one has 3% cash back.

It is pretty nice to get those front loaded gift card with my cash back.

Personally, I feel there is room for all forms of payment. I still mix it up between cash, checks, credit cards and debit cards, but I have begun to rely increasingly on my credit cards. I am also excited about the development of the phone app payment options since that looks like it will eventually be the cheapest payment option for both consumers and merchants.

[onehandle]

6. I can't say it's a good idea, but it works for me, I rarely use cash.

I mostly use one credit card, that pays me back several hundred dollars a year.

[Archaic]

7. Back when I was young and impressionable...

I saw an episode of Max Headroom.

In that episode, the main character was blackballed by powerful people. The powerful didn't flag him as a murderer, they flagged him for credit fraud.

In that future society, there was no cash, only electronic payment. He was immediately blocked from his apartment as he had no money to pay. He couldn't buy food, a hotel room, anything. He went from important person on TV to homeless in the click of a button.

Watching that surveillance state, the corporate world taken to the extreme really opened my eyes at a young age.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

15. Yep. Cash = privacy.

It's a way to get off the grid, as it were. At least one thing - the stuff you buy - is hidden from the prying of Google and all the rest.

[Archaic]

18. It's not that much more private.

But nobody can just decide YOUR money is no longer any good. If currency is centralized, it can be hacked, it can be transferred, it can be denied.

[Agschmid]

35. I like the privacy reason as well, even though...

Every transactions recorded now... Usually on video.

[xtraxritical]

59. There are millions of people who do not qualify for bank accounts and debit cards.

What about them? The concept of no cash is nonsense.

[Tien1985]

8. I don't think it'll happen.

I just can't see it happening--too many people love their cash. I've always used a debit card, I have no wish to switch to cash, but I wouldn't try to prevent others from using it.

[bhikkhu]

9. I rarely use or carry cash, but I don't see why it would be done away with

Its convenient, and you can keep it however you like. If all we have are bank cards, then you have no money, ever, without a bank.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. then what are people supposed to buy drugs with?

Seriously, though... um, what was I saying?

[rurallib]

11. I seldom use a credit card, have no debit card

so it would suck for me.
I really don't want someone to be able to go back on my purchases 10 years later. or tomorrow.

[RebelOne]

12. My bank debit card is the only thing I ever use.

I write maybe one check a month. And a book of stamps will last me for a couple of years because all my bills are paid online. Actually, I don't think I would even notice if we switched to a cashless society.

[randome]

16. It's reached the point where I'm annoyed when someone pays in cash in front of me.

Counting out all those quarters and nickels!

But when possible, I use the self-checkout lane.

[Luminous Animal]

60. Where are you rushing off to that is so important that 5 minutes would diminish

your life.

Personally, when I see that someone in front of me is trying to pay with nickels and quarters, I pitch in. Not for expedience but for humanity.

[Ghost Dog]

96. .

[ieoeja]

82. I usually have the opposite experience. Most times it takes the card longer than cash. nt

[liberal N proud]

13. I currently have $15 on me

But cash is important, what would kids extort parents for?

[GoCubsGo]

14. Awful idea.

It's generally a lot more difficult to steal cash than it is electronic funds.

[AnneD]

75. One word....

Cyprus....

And if you don't think the government or creditor could steal your money...you haven't been paying attention. Don't think it won't eventually happen here-we are not that special.

[GoCubsGo]

77. Yup. See also: Identity thiefs. n/t

[AnneD]

84. You might have legal recourse...

against identity thieves but the government does it with impunity.

[GoCubsGo]

85. Sure, if you can catch the identity thief.

Otherwise, you are pretty much SOL.

But, it isn't the government that's really doing the stealing. It's the bankers. The government is just helping them do it, by either making it easy for them via weak or non-existent laws, or by looking the other way and not prosecuting them. That's what is going on in Cyprus. The bankers caused the problems, and the depositors are being forced to pay for it.

[AnneD]

92. Yes, I have to catch the identity theft.....

But I know how to locate the government and the banksters and yet they get away with it. All the more reason to eschew banks. Why do we need banks if we cannot trust them. The same can be said of governments. We are surly at a tipping point.

[sendero]

17. When you are ready to live your life..

.... at the total whim of the state and the corporations (not really much difference there I admit), then opt for a cashless society and surrender the last vestige of control you have over your own life.

How anyone could even ask such a question is beyond me.

[skypilot]

28. I don't mind the question but...

...some of the answers are quite startling. All I will say is that it sounds as though the road to hell will be paved with "convenience".

[lumberjack_jeff]

90. +100

In fact the unavailability of any denomination greater than $100 is because of that desire for control.

[Initech]

19. Bad. Very bad.

A cashless society would only put more money in the hands of those who don't deserve it.

[Luminous Animal]

20. Bad. How am I going to buy things at a sidewalk sale?

Plus, I like cash. Reduces the marketers chances of tracking me.

[Faryn Balyncd]

22. Depends if you want to control others, or if you want a free society.

[Gormy Cuss]

23. It'd be a bonanza to data miners.

I hate being in the minority as one of the few Americans who thinks we need strong privacy laws.

[rrneck]

24. Bad.

We're headed for and economy of "reward air miles" already.

[Bosonic]

25. Depends where you are...

[dkf]

73. This... +1000

[Warpy]

26. Rotten idea.

For one thing, there is nothing like seeing a finite amount of cash in your pocket dwindle to curb impulse spending in favor of healthier spending habits. Watching numbers in an account go down is just not the same to a lot of people, it's too abstract.

For another, there are some purchases that some of us would like to keep anonymous because we never know when the laws will change in our disfavor, whether it's provocative dissent in literature or porn. Cash does that.

And some of us are plain ornery and don't want to let go of real money in favor of a numbers game. The latter is a lot easier to rig and no thanks.

[LWolf]

27. Bad.

I may not use cash all the time, but I want the option.

[Hoyt]

29. How will we bribe or tip folks?

[Historic NY]

30. I use my debit card a lot...but Yogi says cash is just as good, as money...

[Zorra]

31. Really, really, really bad idea. nt

[graywarrior]

32. Bad

[white_wolf]

34. Pay with cash if you want...

but for the love of God please do not pay with checks at the grocery store. Seriously,it just holds up the line.

[demosincebirth]

38. ...or paying with change.

[Riftaxe]

46. takes about same amount of time to write a check as to

enter a pin code. Now if they choose to reconcile the account at the same time, that is a bit much...

[defacto7]

69. Checks?

What's that?

[white_wolf]

74. A relic of a past century that people need to abandon.

Seriously, when I worked as a cashier at a grocery store I dreaded customers who payed with checks. There were times it would take some people up to 15 minutes to fill one out.

[demosincebirth]

36. Start with the 1 cent piece. nt

[BainsBane]

37. I'm with you there

They could abolish the penny and spare me some weight in my purse.

[Art_from_Ark]

78. And I found a penny in change recently that was worth 10 bucks

A 1995 Doubled Die Lincoln cent. If it had been in better condition, it would be worth even more than that.

And some other recent pennies are worth even more than that. Like the 1992 and 1993 AM varieties.

So I love to get pennies in change.

[BainsBane]

93. Cool

I could have a dozen of them and wouldn't know it.

[Art_from_Ark]

94. The 1995 Double Dies are fairly easy to recognize

The word LIBERTY is doubled, making it look blurred.

http://www.lincolncentresource.com/doubledies/1995ddo.html

The 1972 Double Die is even more valuable.

But the most valuable double die of all is the 1955 Double Die, which can fetch several hundred dollars in average condition (admittedly, your chances of finding one of those are very slim).

[Notafraidtoo]

39. I think its the future

1.No tax evasion cause every transaction will be recorded big or small.

2.Easy to control government spending due to being almost certain about revenue.

3.Very difficult to run a underground criminal economy cause every transaction is recorded in a central database.

4.Theft will be difficult cause every transaction is on the grid with names attached or account numbers cant hide your credit theft with cash.

5.Almost 0 corruption in any welfare system all transactions are known.

6.It will be the closest thing to economic certainty we can hope for allowing us to accurately measure everything and make people very comfortable with investing.

Now this is extremely radical for today and i think it will be at min 15-20 years before its even considered i would not be for it today with todays tech but its going to be so efficient that its only a matter of time.


It will be a very pro growth anti corruption way of improving our world cash limits us as a society of coarse that is if those forming this system has our best interest in mind and is policed correctly but they will have no choice cause if you mess with our money we don't work we don't produce if it is not done correctly the whole of society will collapse.

[Demeter]

53. You have got to be kidding

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase traditionally attributed to the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347–8), which is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?" Also sometimes rendered as "Who watches the watchmen?", the phrase has other idiomatic translations and adaptations such as "Who will watch the watch-guards?""

--wikipedia

Who will audit the accounts? The same people who insisted we invade Iraq?

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely...

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, KCVO, DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, 8th Bt from 1837 to 1869 and usually referred to simply as Lord Acton, was an English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. He was the only son of Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet and a grandson of the Neapolitan admiral Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is famous for his remark, often misquoted: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."--widipedia

And as a Catholic and an historian, he knew well whereof he spoke.

[olddots]

68. I am very glad I don't have 15---20 years

I could fill pages of misspelled and grammatically incorrect arguments to your vision but thank you because neither of us are right or wrong in our vision .
I am concerned about convenience verses a system that is thousands of years old and seems to have worked pretty well although it
has faults . Moving money and selling debt are a big money maker for what we call the 1% .


This is a subject that keeps me up at night ------Why is everything so screwed up ?

[MadHound]

40. It is a bad idea on both the personal level, and the larger macro level.

On the personal level, it is a bad idea because all of us will be datamined to hell if we went cashless. It would also be a knock out blow to the homeless and poor.

On the macro level, it would tear apart our economy. Ten percent of our economy is made up of a black market economy, drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling, under the table work, etc. etc. All of that is run on cash, because cash is, for the most part, untraceable. Take away cash, and you're taking away ten percent of our economy, which would then proceed to crash. Sure, people would find ways to work a black market in a cashless society, but the initial blow would be devastating.

Not to mention that we're simply not going to go cashless, because the people in power in this country work that black market just as much as the rest of us, probably more. Things like Iran-Contra wouldn't fly, or Howard Hughes flying huge wads of cash to Nixon, or those billions that have mysteriously disappeared into Iraq and Afghanistan. People in power need cash, need the anonymity that it provides, thus, it won't be going away.

[Demeter]

55. Ordinary people could turn to barter, or their own currency

But the corrupt would have to revert to gold, or other portable valuables....extortion and the like

[RB TexLa]

42. It's 2013, we should have gotten rid of it a long time ago.

[Jamaal510]

43. Bad because

not every business accepts credit/debit cards, and because it could turn into a nightmare if a person were to lose their card. We should start with getting rid of pennies first, and see where that goes.

[Riftaxe]

44. Terrible idea

I am betting more then a few people in Cyprus at this moment are regretting the "electronic" currency they have stored in their banks instead of keeping cash on hand....especially if they want to splurge on food or medicine.

[cynatnite]

45. Having cash on hand makes me feel a bit more secure. n/t

[duffyduff]

47. Bad. Period. n/t

[kestrel91316]

48. TERRIBLE idea. Corporate profits are attached to

plastic and checks. But cash doesn't come with fees.

Eff the corporations. And the snoopy control freaks who want to know every single penny a person spends and on what.

[Art_from_Ark]

79. +1000

[PufPuf23]

49. I would no longer exist. nt.

[TheKentuckian]

50. High on the horrible side.

[Demeter]

51. Everywhere, forever? What if the power goes out, or the bank computers are hacked?

Those who live by technology are going to die of it.

Cash is an older, low tech form of accounting, debit and credit cards are high tech.

Family tribes, barter and slavery are the oldest forms of labor exchange. Nobody talks of doing away with them.

The only technologies we should do away with are

nuclear (except medicine, and only if it's superior to anything else)

and

military (if you can't look into the eyes of the person you are killing, it's obscene. And why are you killing anyone in the first place?)

It's time we recognized evolutionary dead ends as such, and stopped going down them. Meanwhile, our dependency on unreliable technologies must be recognized as such, and avoided for less complex, more reliable forms of technological advantage.

[Luminous Animal]

56. After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, all the big grocery stores closed their

doors because they couldn't process plastic. Sure, they had power for their lights (generators) but they had no connection to authorization centers and no connection to scan the cost of items because the broader power was down. The mom and pops that took cash (or knew the neighbors well enough to extend a tab) were raking it in.

[lpbk2713]

61. Some places require a minimum purchase for debit card use.

The grocer I shop at requires $7 minimum purchase for instance. If I only wanted to stop in real quick for one item, say a dozen eggs, I'd have to get a few other things even if I was in a hurry if I couldn't use cash. But I suppose a cashless world could be refined and tweaked to preclude this sort of thing.

[truegrit44]

62. + 1000 BAD!

Cash is king at my house and as long as money still has a value I feel so much safer with it. I do use a debit card but keep very little in banks only enough to pay for my monthly bills.

I think somewhere in the far distant future tho there will be no cash, I know I won't be around to see it so that is good enough for me.

[BadgerKid]

63. Bad idea.

People's use of plastic inflates the cost of goods since the issuing companies generally charge a transaction fee. Merchants who offer a cash discount understand this.

[Yo_Mama]

65. Bad

Cash has its deficits, but it is one way for poorer people to avoid being stung to death by bank fees. Forcing everyone to go electronic would raise costs for poor people.

[FrodosPet]

66. "Some People" think many stupid things

Apparently, "some people" haven't been through a major power outage like the blackout of 2003.

[Go Vols]

67. My local watering hole

only takes cash or checks.

I do plastic as little as possible.

[olddots]

70. Convenience can become very inconvenient

that's about the only wisdom I've come up with .

[liberal_at_heart]

71. bad idea. Psychologically it hurts more to give your cash away than to swipe a card.

Therefore, you are more likely to budget and spend more wisely.

[defacto7]

72. I don't want no damn money!

I don't want credit or plastic either. I want gold! I want silver! If we have a currency, I want it to represent actual value not numbers in a database that mean nada. We are now a world that owns absolutely nothing. I want the real thing! Land, food, water, gold, silver.... what do we have? plastic and paper that represents nothing except what a few oligarchs decide you should have.

Fact is, I don't have any of it so... pffft

[HappyMe]

76. Bad idea.

I usually use cash. I rarely buy anything online.

Somebody up thread said that cash = privacy. I agree completely.

[Little Star]

80. BAD!

[Cleita]

81. There would always be a need to have to be something to barter with wether you call it cash

or not. Cash is nothing more than a note stating that the Treasury holds that value in assets or so I was told in economics 101. Maybe now that we have gone off the gold standard it isn't even backed by any kind of wealth. However, whether it's lumps of precious metal, shells or even stones, we need something that indicates value in order to trade and do business. Today, no doubt our plastic cards, that give us electronic access to our wealth, will eventually become the new cash of the future.

I don't think we need to necessarily do all our trade in dollars. I believe people can form a cooperative type of economy that within their circle of participants they can exchange a form of note that indicates worth and use it to trade for a type of service. I have belonged in something like this in the past, where I performed a professional service, accounting, in exchange for services from a lawyer, or mechanic, or whatever I needed at the time. No dollars exchanged hands although I did pay taxes on them by claiming I received goods and services of a certain value on my tax returns. Many of my fellow cooperative members did not.

[AngryAmish]

83. Cyprus.

[bemildred]

86. Anonymous money of some sort is necessary.

We need cash until we have something else anonymous like encrypted eMoney.

[hobbit709]

87. how are politicians going to hide their payoffs?

Last edited Wed Mar 27, 2013, 02:06 PM - Edit history (1)

[Common Sense Party]

88. Bad. Why would I trust the banks and financial institutions with ALL my assets?

Liquid assets need to be just that. Liquid. And private.

[lumberjack_jeff]

89. Beyond horrible. n/t

[TeamPooka]

91. bad bad bad

[Blue Owl]

95. Good Idea...

...if your name is "Big Brother" and you have Orwellian fantasies...