Cryptocurrency: War On Cash - Moving Fast Against You

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https://www.theorganicprepper.com/cashless-society/

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Here's How A Cashless Society Would Affect Day-To-Day Life

Have you ever thought about the ramifications of a cashless society?
I’m talking about the real, first-person effects, not some ephemeral
conspiracy theory or possible biblical prophecy. This is bad news for
a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the ways it would affect
day-to-day life.

Here’s my definition of a cashless society, so we’re all singing from
the same songbook:

    Cash would no longer be legal tender, therefore you could not make
purchases with it, pay bills with it, or spend it in any way.  You
would not be able to deposit cash into your bank account so you
wouldn’t be able to accept cash for an exchange of goods or services.

    Therefore, cash would be nothing more than a worthless piece of
paper. (I know, I know. Debt-based currency is a totally different
article though.)

We’re heading this way.

Jose recently wrote that Venezuela is rapidly becoming cashless and
here in the United States a concerning early sign is that there is a
“change shortage” which is causing many stores to give you your change
on a store loyalty card or invite you to donate that change to some
cause.
Gifts

Think of all the times that cash is an appropriate gift. I’ve always
given money, like stuffing a child’s birthday card with a $20 bill or
giving a new graduate some cash to put toward college expenses.  When
I got married, we received quite a bit of money from various loved
ones. My dad always gave my daughters some spending money of their own
each time we visited and they were surprised and delighted every
single time.

However, in a cashless society, there are two problems with this.

First of all, the recipient would not be able to use the cash. He or
she would not be able to spend or deposit it.

Secondly, if a monetary gift is given, it would have to be done with a
check or electronic transfer. This means that the government (and the
Tax Man) would know precisely how much money any person is given. That
might not be a big deal for the 7-year-old who got $20 from grandpa,
but what about the graduate who raked in a couple thousand in gifts
from family members to celebrate his or her accomplishments? At what
point will the government have their hands out for “their fair share?”
Side Gigs

A lot of folks are really struggling right now with the COVID
shutdowns. Jobs have been lost, hours have been cut, and financial
problems abound. One of the ways that these people are making ends
meet is with side gigs. Folks are cutting grass, cleaning houses,
driving for Uber, delivering food, babysitting – they’re coming up
with all sorts of ways to make some extra money. A huge percentage of
these people are being paid in cash.

But if suddenly you can no longer spend your cash, you’d need to be
paid electronically. How many people who don’t already have a business
have a merchant account for taking credit or debit cards? There are
options like Paypal and Venmo, which take a percentage fee, but
they’re going to have to figure out something.

And then, as above, every single bit of this side gig money is
traceable and trackable. This could quickly turn your 20 bucks from
lawn mowing into $15 after taxes.
Selling Secondhand Goods

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sold something to pay a bill.  Me too!
I’ve sold jewelry, furniture, exercise equipment – all sorts of stuff
to meet an obligation when in a pinch.  Not only that, but I have a
yard sale every single year to downsize the things that I found I
don’t really use, which often brings in a few hundred dollars.

How will this work in a cashless society? Well, if you are selling
just one larger item, you’d probably end up using some kind of payment
app like Venmo or Paypal. On the other hand, a yard sale would be
nearly impossible to conduct electronically. Who is really going to be
able to sit there and do Paypal transactions all day, especially when
folks are buying things that cost 25 cents?

And there we are, down another way of making some quick money.
Tips

Lots of folks who work in food service and the beauty industry, just
to name two niches, depend on tips to make a living. Generally, tips
are collected from tables or paid out at the end of the shift if they
were put on a debit card. But…once there is no cash, these tips will
have to end up going on a regular paycheck. One hundred percent of
this money will be subject to payroll withholdings.

This will mean that a lot of people see a sharp decrease in their
earnings, plus they’ll have to wait for their checks to get the money.
It puts a lot of power into the hands of the management and it would
not be difficult at all for someone to manipulate the amounts the
workers have earned.
Children

I’ve written many times about the importance of allowing children to
handle their own money. It teaches them responsibility and life skills
that will serve them well in the future. (Learn more about talking to
your kids about money in this article.) My daughters have had access
to money since they were in kindergarten, and possibly before.

Now, how are you going to give a five-year-old access to money if it’s
all electronic? Are they going to end up with their own bank accounts
and debit cards? That hardly seems realistic. There is also the option
of gift cards, but that means the money can only be spent at certain
places, taking away the vital learning curve of saving your money to
put it toward a Big Goal. Forget lemonade stands, gifts from Grandpa,
or putting change in a piggy bank – these will all be things of the
past.
The unbanked or underbanked

Eight million households in the United States are “underbanked” or
“unbanked.” This means that they don’t have any kind of bank account
due to fees, bad credit, or other obstacles. These people rely on
check-cashing businesses that already take a hefty fee to give them
the pay they’ve earned. What will they do when this is no longer an
option?

Most of the people who are unbanked or underbanked are living under
the poverty line already. This would mean that they can no longer pick
up side-gigs to make ends meet, they can’t do odd jobs, and getting
them any kind of assistance will be more difficult.

Slate reports how the coin shortage is affecting these Americans:

    To the average American, this shortage may only cause minor
headaches—a harder time paying at a parking meter or exact change
required at a coffee shop. But some 8 million American households, or
6 percent of Americans, are “unbanked,” meaning that because of fees
and other financial hurdles, they have no checking, savings, or money
market account. Many rely instead on services such as money orders,
pawn shop loans, or payday loans. According to Venky Shankar, a
marketing professor at the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M
University, Americans who make $25,000 a year or less use cash for
around 45 percent of their purchases. So those Americans might
struggle to pay for essential services without change on hand. They
also might find it more stressful to round up or donate their change,
should stores ask for it. “For an unbanked or underbanked person, it
could leave them in a horrible situation if they don’t have access to
the cards,” saidAngela Lyons, a professor of economics at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (source)

And this is just a coin shortage. Imagine how difficult it would be if
our society became completely cashless.
There is an alarming amount of power in access.

So, we can see this isn’t an ideal situation for any of us.

But even these things are relatively minor in comparison to the
potential for abuse against citizens in a cashless society. If every
single dime you bring in is tracked and recorded, you will have no
financial privacy, and you’ll also be at far more risk. Many of us
keep some cash savings around the house for emergencies. Even if there
is a bank holiday, we’ll be okay because we have the money sitting
around to take care of any incidentals while we are unable to access
our banked money.

But what happens when things are cashless? All that money we’ve
stashed away over the years would have to go into the coffers and we’d
lose a certain amount of control.

It’s all well and good when times are okay, but what happens when
there’s a Cyprus-style event and the government decides a bail-in is
in order? If you don’t recall, back in 2013, billions of dollars were
seized from depositors to protect the small country’s banking system.
This was done to make good on an $11.6 billion dollar debt owed to
creditors outside the country.

If you think that sounds far-fetched – like something that could
“never happen here,” it’s incredibly important to note that we already
have language that allows for bail-ins here in the United States.
After the bailouts for the economic crisis of 2008, Congress passed
the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act of January 2010,
which prohibits government bailouts but allows bail-ins. So, yes, the
money in your account could indeed be used to save a floundering bank.

Not only that, but think about the outrageous phenomenon of civil
asset forfeiture. If you aren’t familiar with it, that means that an
entity can seize your property or money even when you have not been
convicted of a crime. Civil asset forfeiture provides billions of
dollars to the US Government and local police departments every single
year. Imagine how much easier that would be if your wealth was all in
one place.

And let me take it just one step further before I take off the tinfoil
– think about how many websites, YouTube channels, and social media
accounts have been purged and demonetized over the past few years. Is
it that much of a stretch of the imagination that this could be taken
a step further?

That perhaps unpopular opinions could be fined and money immediately
be withdrawn from the accounts of those who dissent with the status
quo?

Maybe I’m just another paranoid conspiracy theorist. But are you
actually paranoid when “they” are really out to control you?
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https://humanevents.com/2020/08/22/media-deems-cashless-society-a-conspiracy-theory-after-admonishing-cash-use/

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Before there was a coin shortage, cash was under attack in the media,
and ridiculously hailed as a COVID-19 hazard.

Now, it seems that news outlets have pivoted to making sure the public
thinks of a looming cashless society as a “conspiracy theory.”

At the height of anxiety over the coronavirus, CNN berated the
American people for using cash. “Do NOT take a bunch of cash out of
the bank,” rang one headline; “Dirty money: The case against using
cash during the coronavirus outbreak,” read another. CBS News
similarly ran an anti-cash story at the time, as did other mainstream
networks.

More recent stories, however, have pivoted to feign concern about the
growing suspicion of an impending digital coup against paper and
coined money. (It’s always fascinating to see how the media
manipulates emotions, giving us something to be outraged about one
day, and trying to calm us down the next day by trying to convince us
we’re outraged about the wrong thing.)

“It’s a concern of some that all money would become traceable, which
could be the case, but also could be avoided if systems were designed
to provide privacy,” USA Today reported. That’s a big if. In fact,
that’s the entire issue at stake, because, as I’ll explain, high
profile promoters of cashlessness have an interest in gathering
private information en masse.

The Associated Press similarly pounced on Facebook posts that
reportedly suggested a “conspiracy” was afoot. “Posts circulating
widely on Facebook are suggesting that the shortage of coins in the
U.S. is a hoax because it doesn’t make sense for the currency to have
‘disappeared,’” the AP reported. (The literal interpretation of the
word “disappeared” was the crux of this supposed fact check. It’s
possible the journalists writing articles like those are genuinely
concerned about the spread of misinformation, but the condescension is
palpable and just feels paternalistic.)

Of course, Americans should be concerned about moves away from cash,
and there is nothing wrong about questioning who would benefit and who
would lose in a cashless society. If that makes you a conspiracy
theorist in the eyes of the average journalist, so be it.

For one thing, big banks and financial institutions would reap obvious
benefits, beyond saving on the costs of transacting in coins and paper
as well as transporting them. A cashless world would also give these
institutions a new resource to exploit: they would have that much more
data to collect in bulk on their customers. It was just last year that
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said, “We want a cashless society.”

For another, there’s the intensity through which cashlessness is being
defended. There is no downside to a cashless society for its fiercest
proponents. They aren’t worried about finding a side hustle or working
for tips. They aren’t kids trying to mow a lawn or who are otherwise
priced out or regulated out of the market by minimum wage and child
labor laws. The big players thrive in heavily top-down regulatory
regimes. The smaller ones, who might moderately improve their standing
(like freelancers or startup entrepreneurs), are often reliant on the
freedom that cash provides.

Unfortunately, some leftist progressives are enthusiastically
spearheading efforts to “help” people in lower economic strata enroll
in the post-cash digital system. These initiatives entail subsidizing
free checking accounts or other special access to the financial
system. (At last, inclusiveness and equality will be guaranteed once
that fascist cash is out of the way. The campaign slogan will go
something like that).

Instead of policing social media posts for falsehoods (or, more
accurately, words that imply falsehoods), journalists could provide
more value for their readers by showing what’s valid about their
reader’s concerns. There’s a cultural context, an economic context,
and a political one too, that inform how a person may or may not feel
about the coming cashless society. Each of these narratives, in fact,
is more interesting than a “gotcha” fact-check—but they may not come
with the sense of relief (or clout) one feels at discrediting a
challenge to the prevailing narrative.

TO ELITES, IT’S CONSPIRATORIAL IF ANYONE BUT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IT

There are more downsides to a cashless society.

In the era of Cancel Culture, other more nightmarish consequences are
all too easy to fathom. The difference between being banned from
social platforms and financial platforms is a matter of degree, and
the latter is already happening.

Nevertheless, the advocates continue to drum up support for fintech
adoption. For instance, many anti-cash advocates also tend to favor
negative interest rates and much freer reign for central banks. Such
policies are easier to enact without physical forms of legal tender.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed his aversion to
negative interest rates “for now” back in May, but President Donald
Trump and other monetary theorists support the idea. Negative interest
rates mean an end to traditional savings because, what’s not spent
from your bank account, will decrease in value according to the newest
negative rate. Thus, consumerism becomes all-encompassing and of far
greater importance for economic activity. The permanent stimulus of an
always-consuming market would become a compulsory force, rather than a
relief amid a downturn.

So, the threat of a cashless society is real. It’s not just concocted
out of fringe viral Facebook posts, but actually, a topic of ongoing
and current discussion among the financial elite. Of course, how
urgent the threat is in today’s fast-paced and unpredictable
environment, people will have to decide for themselves. But just
because people grew concerned about something that wasn’t
media-generated doesn’t make it a conspiracy theory.

FROM COMMON USE TO MUSEUM ARTIFACTS—UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

The coin shortage, which is very real, does have a reasonable
explanation though, given the lockdown and social distancing orders
over the past six months. Smaller businesses are losing out to the
likes of Amazon and other online retailers, so coins are being used
much less. E-commerce is thriving under COVID-19.

“I think most merchants, especially small merchants and
small-transaction merchants, would still prefer to take cash,” said K.
Craig Wildfang in an interview with Axios. He is with the law firm
Robins Kaplan, which is suing on behalf of retailers against card
swipe fees.

Considering that over 90% of companies fail within two years of a
disaster according to the US Small Business Administration (anything
from political coups to hurricanes and, of course, pandemics), it is
all but guaranteed that there will be fewer businesses around to fight
for cash as an option, as long as COVID-19 lockdowns and related
emergency orders carry on. Even larger chains, like CVS, Kroger,
Walmart, are refusing to give physical change, instead choosing to
donate the extra cents to charity or otherwise digitize the value for
the customer for their next shopping trip.

More and more, physical coins are becoming legacy artifacts. As
Clifford Thies at the American Institute for Economic Research
explains, pennies cost more than their worth to produce. The time lost
in counting them in transactions and transporting them also add to the
total cost of using pennies. Thies estimates the use of pennies to
cost up to $500 million per year, which may be more costly than simply
rounding off prices to the nearest nickel, or dollar.

Thanks to monetary inflation, those same dynamics have an effect on
nickels, dimes, and quarters, which are all produced with much cheaper
metals than their original form required.

Meanwhile, note the record high prices of gold and silver. The US
dollar is being (digitally) printed into oblivion, along with
trillions upon trillions of dollars being summoned by the Congress to
fund multiple COVID-19 relief bills. Cash may be the last bastion of
value, as it retains some scarcity in relation to digitized dollars.
And it’s important for people’s livelihood and freedom that it be
defended vigilantly.

Don’t let the media shame you into complacence regarding a cashless
society. It’s only crazy not to question such a system that clearly
some have no qualms about forcing on us all.
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