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I worry that it won't be long before governments criminalize cash. They want to track everything (for a multitude of reasons ranging from taxes to criminal acti
by WillyF 16y ago
I worry that it won't be long before governments criminalize cash. They want to track everything (for a multitude of reasons ranging from taxes to criminal activity), and cash inhibits this.
- splat 16y agoI remember hearing about a movement in Japan to eliminate cash a while back. (Here's one story from about a year ago: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6531299.ece http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/art...) Has anything happened with this or was the proposal dead on arrival?
- nostromo 16y agoEven if cash stays with us for another 100 years -- inflation will make it more and more inefficient over time. Eg.: around 1970 when $100 became the largest bill, it was actually worth about $500 in today's value. So, it lost 4/5 of it's real value. If you look another 40 years out, $100 will become the new $20, the government will probably not have introduced any new bills, and the amount of transactions you can actually transact in cash will be even smaller.
- sethg 16y agoI can’t remember the last time I bought something worth more than $100 by paying cash. If every bill with a denomination over $20 went away, or if inflation reduced the largest circulating bill to a value of twenty 2010-dollars, I wouldn’t notice. Not to say that the government should eliminate the higher-denomination bills—just using myself as a data point to suggest there’s not much consumer demand for them.
- xiaoma 16y agoI've bought my last four computers in cash, not in the US, though.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]