341–350 of 369 posts
The core concept to remember I think is that there are two ways to pay for things: * Ways that involve cash or cash equivalents * Ways where a purchase requires the permission of someone else Just think of the word authorization, which is a required element of essentially all non-cash transactions. It has the word authority embedded right in it. If you're OK with that concept, you are necessarily OK with the idea tha…
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But that still doesn't track with whom you spent that cash.
Unless your counterparty goes ahead and deposits it in their bank at the end of the day. If five of the twenty bills you withdrew at 9 am were deposited by Seven-Eleven at 7 pm, I can guess that you went shopping at Seven-Eleven... And more likely then not, I'll be right. A particular bill does not change hands very frequently between ending up at a bank. If anything, a bill that you withdrew not ending up back in ci…
Right. At one time the US Fed estimated that the average number of transactions for cash outside a bank was two. That's an old number, measured years ago to plan bill replacement. (One of the Federal Reserve's functions is paper bill replacement. Banks pull worn bills and send them to the Fed, which tallies them, shreds them, and replaces them with new bills from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Dollar bills last about 18-22 months.)
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I've actually wondered what the impact on buskers, clerks that make some money off a tip jar, etc. is of the shift toward plastic. I guess, in the US, a dollar bill is still a relatively small amount. But I know that I basically never have change on me these days unless it's quarters to put in a parking meter.
I imagine tip jar employees are doing all right. I used to drop a dollar and whatever coins I got back as change in there, now I push the 20% button on their iPad, which is almost always more.
Some of that is simplified by just having a jar of cash with limited options for opaque gaming.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/-100-bi...
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Using a tumbler is not against the law. For one thing, you can't launder bitcoins because bitcoins are a commodity, not considered money.
Many money laundering techniques use a commodity in the process, that doesn't make it not money laundering. Just because using a tumbler itself is not against the law, if you use it to hide the source of income, it is still money laundering. You can't get around financial laws by using property instead of currency. "A payment made using virtual currency is subject to information reporting to the same extent as any ot…
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"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -Edward Snowden
To be the devil's advocate here, what situation can you imagine that would warrant a person to legitimately hide information or keep secrets from their own government?
In my experience as a college student, it is exceedingly rare to use cash, especially cash in amounts greater than $5, for anything other than crime. While you can argue that one should be able to reasonably break laws and not get caught - anything else is a surveillance state and there is value to discretionary enforcement - I wouldn't characterize criticism of cash as just manipulative. For example, on my campus, t…
In many places that are not "First World", cash (especially foreign hard currency) is a way citizens have of protecting their assets from the greed of corrupt politicians.
While I agree that cash is extremely convenient and largely anonymous, it is still much more of a hassle to manage than credit or debit cards are. I lived in NYC for a bunch of years and the one thing that I absolutely do not miss is paying for >$100 dinners, entirely in cash, because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees.
> because the restaurant was "too cheap" to handle processing and transaction fees. I applaud businesses like this. The fact we slowly let a few giant private corporations enact a 1-3% fee against pratically the entire consumer economy would be ludicrous in any other situation. Plus the privacy concerns just are not worth the convenience. Whenever possible I use cash, simply so I slow the day coming where I can't fun…
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The introduction of the revelatory "mark of the beast". No one will be able to [legally] buy or sell without it. I suspect anyone that tries to barter or trade outside of the system will be considered and labeled a criminal for operating in black markets or tax evasion.
Multiple European countries already forbid cash payments over a few thousands euros. In my country the law is just being proposed: anything over 3000€ must be done using electronic systems (read: banks) or you risk getting a fine equivalent to 25% of the amount over the limit.