Even “food stamps” have been converted to cash cards (called EBT cards in California). It’s basically a debit card that the government keeps loading money onto. Apparently airlines accept them for food too & the airlines will not accept cash on board, only cards.
I think what he might be getting is something that seems to me is more common in larger cities. And that is the small, completely independent store. I don’t mean a 7-11 that’s owned by a local person - I mean a Late NIte Convenience store that is not affiliated with any sort of chain. Not 7-11 or an ampm or a Sugar Creek or a Turkey Hill or any other chain. A taco place with the menu and prices you would expect in Taco Bell - but it’s not Taco Bell. An ordinary food cart - not the gourmet upscale ones that go to festivals, but an ordinary hot dog or coffee cart. Those places often don’t accept cards at all , or they have a minimum purchase for credit cards.
Presumably, you also have decent credit and a steady income.
Mine checking account is also like that - but the same applies to me. It also continued to apply during my periods of unemployment during the Great Recession but if I had attempted to open a checking account at that point in time - with no steady income - there would have been minimum balances and fees.
The place where I work sets up an account for all new employees to ensure they all have a place for their direct deposit and a checking/debit account, which is great for those who would not otherwise qualify, but the fees are nasty, especially if you’re less than perfect.
The issue is that people who are poor, who lack good credit, or steady income are penalized by banks by minimum balance requirements and fee schedules the rest of us are not saddled with.
Debit cards, tap cards, Google/Apple/Android pay are all technological advances folks are free to use … but are not REQUIRED to use. You are still allowed to pay with checks, cashier’s checks, and cash. If, however, you were to entirely and truly remove cash from a society then you MUST ensure everyone has access to what replaces it or you will create a desperate underclass who will have to steal because they will become UNABLE to buy necessities.
That’s why a cashless society for the US is a problem - banks and other financial institutions are free to shut out large swathes of people, or impose fees on those least able to pay, under the guise of “poor risk” or “poor credit”.
Change that and maybe we can talk about this “wonderful” thing you’re proposing.
Un-huh…
Those cards have fees.
So the middle class and up enjoy free checking accounts with no minimum balances, autopay, electronic transfers…
… and the poor are paying fees every time they purchase one of those cards, or reload it, or sometimes whenever they use one. And if they don’t use it there might even be a monthly fee. Read the fine print on those things some time.
You do realize that the restaurant is being charged for every credit and debit card transaction, correct? That using plastic isn’t free? That somebody is paying for it?
When the US has the same level of security on such transactions as elsewhere (we don’t currently), private industry is not charging fees for every single time we use our own money, we have one consistent system across the entire country instead of competing networks, the poor aren’t pissed on for having the smartphones that make all this possible, and all people across the country have equal access to the system… OK.
How are our laws screwed up? It is really very simple. Let’s say I open a business selling widgets. You are under no obligation to buy widgets from me. I am under no obligation to sell widgets to you (unless I am denying you service because of a protected class).
Nothing prevents us from reaching an agreement that I sell you widgets in exchange for chickens, bushels of wheat, baseball tickets, or Euros. I will probably accept U.S. dollars because that is the easiest medium of exchange, but then again I can specify (and you are free to reject) that these U.S. dollars must be in the form of no $100 bills after 7pm, or no coins greater than a certain amount, or no checks, or electronic debit only.
I don’t understand how this is screwed up in any way. These are all voluntary transactions in a free market.
I don’t think the govt should be trying to eliminate cash to tamp down on illegal activity or tax evasion. OTOH I don’t think it should be mandating businesses to take cash either. To me there’s usually a fairly wide space of just letting things alone. I don’t think that’s any kind of extreme libertarianism: self proclaimed libertarians generally amuse or annoy me. But I’m also not in category of ‘let’s decide what more the govt should do to force economic actors to do more stuff they don’t want to, we know it has to be something, let’s just decide what’s next.’ 
People being paid in cash are often cheating on their taxes (and or their employers are, FICA tax employer portion). I don’t think it’s worth a big effort to chase down those people if it’s small 's each, because it's small 's (maybe it’s more worth it to chase down some employers not paying FICA). But it’s not appropriate to mandate that businesses specially accommodate the underground economy either. Same token a fair proportion of people paid low wages in cash are illegally in the country. Not to the overall benefit of society IMO to make a big effort to root them all out (though again maybe their employers should be gone after more), but not appropriate to mandate that businesses specially accommodate them either. Their human rights have to be protected as much as legal residents, but not having to pay 3 or 4 bucks to load a card is not a human right.
But mainly I think as other posts have pointed out on both recent threads, this is a largely imaginary issue as of now, people who can’t access non-cash forms of payment at reasonable cost not being able to shop with cash, at places they’d actually shop, for stuff they’d actually buy. And again in line with a reasonably high bar for further expanding the degree of govt interference in commerce, I’d say wait till it can be shown it’s a significant problem first, not just say ‘but things are moving so fast’. Ludditte virtue signalling by politicians at this point, yes, good comment. It’s indicative of a wrong attitude toward things as much as anything else.
Presumably, your “widgets” are not required to continue living.
That would change things.
If all food, drink, and housing becomes “non cash only” then it would be a problem for anyone unable to access the “non cash” system, because they would not be able get food, water, or housing.
Granted, there is a considerable distance between “cash only” and “no cash”.
The people wanting to ban “no cash” stores are concerned about a slippery slope that leaves the poor out in the cold, unable to exist in a lawful manner.
I see no evidence that because some small boutique stores have stopped accepting cash that this will mean that every store will stop and that people will be starving and dying of thirst in the streets.
If it ends up requiring a government solution, which I don’t think it will, the solution would be to help poor people get checking accounts instead of hampering societal progress.
As a business, though, reducing cash payments doesn’t gain you much. You still have to have a place to put cash, and make change. You still have to deal with employee theft. You still have to have someone make daily deposits at the bank, and so on.
Eliminating it entirely, though, saves you all those costs.
I’m fairly sure that businesses that stop taking cash have already found that relatively little of their custom is paid with cash. Which is why it makes sense to get rid of that payment in the first place.
Non-cash payments used to be more expensive to process.
I agree in general that if enough businesses stop accepting cash, that does cause a hardship for people who don’t have other means of payment. But much better than a law requiring businesses to accept cash is to make it easier for people to get other means. I really like the idea of the Post Office becoming a retail bank for otherwise unbanked people. You can give them money and get a postal money order. Why not give them money and get money in your PostVisa account or whatever.
The State of California already issues unemployment and disability payments via a Bank of America debit card. It wouldn’t be a tremendous stretch to just extend that card to allow any state resident who wants such an account to have it. I’m sure that the state is paying BoA some amount to manage things, and that seems like a fine use of public money to me. They had to pay someone to print and mail checks too.
I’m also not sure how big an issue it really is. As long as a sizable group of people uses cash, most businesses will keep taking it. And if you somehow find yourself at a place that doesn’t take cash, there’s usually a pretty easy solution. I’ve seen this on airlines. Someone wants to buy a sandwich and doesn’t have a card. And the solution is that someone in a nearby seat says, hey, give me the $10 and I’ll put it on my card. That’s not going to work in every case, but it’s going to work in a whole lot of them. If you have cash, there’s likely someone who’s willing to take the 1-2% credit card kickback and put it on their card.
I agree, but as I said earlier, many people do not want checking accounts. People who owe back child support, criminal fines, credit card judgments and the like can see these bank accounts garnished. Creditors cannot realistically find $500 in your sock drawer.
So even if we had government free checking at the Post Office, many people would decline to use it. At the end of the day, the underground economy will use some form of physical medium to survive. People are not going to buy an 8 ball of cocaine with Paypal and leave a record.
If you are a drug dealer, you will not deposit your gains into the government checking account because the IRS will see it.
You see this in prisons where cigarettes used to be currency, but now because of smoking bans, they trade soda, candy, and chips from the commissary.
I think every place should be forced to accept cash. Money is money.
Certainly not in the US, but there are some noises about doing away with cash on a national level in some European countries. At which point I hasten to add that the situation in Europe is quite different than the US. As just one example, if checking accounts and plastic cards/smartphones were required for such a system those governments would have far less problem implementing a national solution than would the US government.
While I don’t have the view that you do that eliminating cash is unreserved “progress”, you are correct that should it seem proper to abolish cash the solution to the problems arising from that would include enabling poor people to be part of the system by, among other things, ensuring they, too, have access to accounts.
We really are not that far part.
The US had a postal savings system between 1911-66 and many other countries had or have such a system. The one in Japan has $1.7 trillion in deposits. It seems a good idea, but post office branches in the US are not really located or set up for this kind of traffic.
Good Grief, people!
Of course it’s discriminatory. The practice discriminates against people who would want to pay with cash in favor or those who are willing to pay electronically. There is no way around this fact.
Is it illegal? No, there are no basic laws against discriminating, except for certain actions (service in public areas, real estate, hiring, maybe others) and even then only if the discrimination is against a protected class do the laws apply. It is perfectly legal for me to discriminate based on race and/or sex when choosing who I would like ask out on a date. It is not legal for me to discriminate on those factors when deciding on who I will rent an apartment to, although it is fine to discriminate based on, say, credit rating when deciding on a tenant.
If a business made a decision to only accept cash, that would obviously discriminate against people who no longer carry cash. Would you want to legislate that, too? Or, is that OK since it would only be discriminating against the “right kind” of people?
For those who would be in favor of a law requiring businesses to accept cash to prevent such discrimination, what would you want the protected class to be? Poor people? Good luck with that, particularly since, as has been demonstrated that poor people can and do transact business with electronic payments as well as just requiring payment for goods and services actively discriminates against poor people.
You want to make “people who don’t want to use credit cards” a protected class, again, good luck. If you make it so that anyone can declare themselves a protected class, you will quickly find it impossible for businesses to conduct business without somebody claiming “discrimination!”.
You don’t have to look very hard to see discrimination everywhere. By itself, discrimination is not inherently bad; it is only when it used to punish or limit the freedoms of these protected classes that laws are used to provide a remedy. Many businesses are clearly based on the practice using price to discriminate among customers willing to pay a higher price. Others routinely use the “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” so they do not have to provide service to people they are not likely to make a profit (or, as big a profit as they want). No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service is blatant discrimination.
That’s just absurd. Like I said nearly verbatim upthread, poor people may not have a lot of money individually, but there’s enough in aggregate to warrant entire separate product lines, stores, etc… in the present day. I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that commercial enterprises would move off of cash so thoroughly that it would leave people unable to buy stuff. If nothing else, we’d see some kind of alternative no-bank, low-fee card system spring up, if retailers in those areas didn’t simply continue accepting cash.
Wake me up when the Mint starts talking like they are going to quit printing bills and striking coins…
Then why hasn’t such a system “sprung up”?
There’s money sitting there, as you point out in aggregate it’s a lot of money, yet most of the non-cash services out there that the poor/not steadily employed/poor credit/etc. people can access often have predatory fees attached. Maybe that’s because the usurious level of fees and interest are more profitable than lower fees even if that means fewer customers and they can get away with it?
Because it’s not profitable right now- people can still pay in cash, and I’m guessing it’s by far the predominant way for people to transact business in those communities. Right now, anything else is a “special use” type product without the demand that cash transactions have, so it costs more. I suspect that the reverse will probably be true in upper-middle class banks in the near future as well- if you want a significant sum in cash, or you want to deposit a lot of cash, you might well get charged a fee, as that’s not something they will be equipped to do.
My point is that the notion that somehow the commercial world is going to decide to go cashless, and hang the poor out to dry with dusty stacks of paper money that they can’t spend, all the while forcing them into using some kind of usurious card scheme is ludicrous. It assumes that the entire commercial world wants to forego doing business with lower income consumers, and that nobody is going to either continue to accept cash, or that nobody will step up and service that market segment with a less inconvenient card system. Neither of which is reasonable to assume.
If nothing else, then something sort of like a credit union would probably be a good call. I’m envisioning a sort of nonprofit co-op system whereby they’d basically handle the administration of keeping money, issuing cards, and handling transactions. The big question would be how they’d cover administrative costs without charging fees or some kind of surcharge.
Or more likely, they’ll just continue to accept cash in those areas. Where it gets a little sticky would be when someone’s out of their usual area- we already see this with cash-only places now, and it would just be the reverse if Mr. Low-Income ended up in a tony suburb. He’d need to make sure he has a card so he can buy lunch.
I’m a cashier for a discount store. From what I’ve observed, people are paying with cash a lot more often. The banks hate it, because they make their money on credit card and other fees.
If cash is banned the store will need fewer cashiers. Please don’t do that.
There is a restaurant near me that had their night counter clerk shot and killed during a robbery. When they re-opened they were card and app only.
A nearby liquor store also went cashless after several robberies.