Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Businesses are increasingly preventing customers from using cash as NO CASH ACCEPTED signs line Main Street. No federal law requires businesses to accept cash, but some states and cities have implemented laws mandating businesses to do so. COVID accelerated the push toward a cashless society, as physical cash was seen as unhygienic. Then the US mint faced a physical currency shortage as Americans hoarded their cash. Cashless businesses are now widely accepted and normalized in our society.
Around 6 million Americans who do not have a bank account, and therefore are blocked from participating in our cashless society. This particularly impacts the poorest in our nation, as a recent survey found that 40% of unbanked individuals do not have enough liquidity to meet the minimum balance required by banks. The FDIC found that one-third of respondents simply do not trust the banks and prefer cash for privacy purposes.
Then there are those who use prepaid cards or tools like CashApp that fall in “underbanked” bracket. The latest estimate found that 19 million households fall under this category. Combined, one in five Americans are either unbanked or underbanked, and according to the government, these individuals are merely attempting to avoid taxation.
Another lesser known fact is that banks often charge stores for physical currency. Additionally, the costs of providing and handling physical currency, such as the need for security, transportation, and storage make it more costly for businesses to use cash. The crime wave across blue cities is a contributing factor as well, as it is not uncommon to see signs stating that a business does not have cash on hand to deter thieves.
There is no federal law that requires banks to charge for change, but federal law generally allows banks to charge non-interest charges and fees. Interchange fees are transaction fees that the merchant’s bank must pay whenever a customer uses a credit/debit card to make a purchase, which is why you will often see a surcharge of around 3% at certain businesses to cover this expense. So businesses are faced with fees for all transactions whether they go the cash or card route.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank ruling permitted businesses to set a credit card minimum of $10, as the interchange fees nulled the profits on small purchases. Debit cards are treated as cash, whereby there is no set minimum by law.
They will soon force the unbanked and underbanked into the banking system, which is one of the reasons why the Biden Administration continually talks about erasing junk fees so that the 40% who claim they cannot meet the minimum balance are not excluded from government oversight. The push for a cashless society is a global phenomenon tied to the DPI and other initiatives that aim to centralize our individual data.
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“This note is Legal Tender for All Debts, Public and Private”. It doesn’t say “Some”, it says “All”.
So if I were a starving street urchin and went into a 7-11 and ate two hotdogs, I could not be charged with theft if I had no alternative for payment except for my FRN’s.
Right?
Only if you’re black, trans, or a recent border invader.
You could have alternative methods of payment and STILL choose to use cash. I do it all the time.
“Just use your card, sir!”
“No. Fuck you. Good day! And I’m taking this shit because I paid for it!”
I REALLY don’t think people are paying due attention to this sentiment! Get with the program you fuckers! Insist on what is yours!
The paper money clearly states”For ALL debts public and private”…..
You don’t want my money…..I don’t need your product or service!
Blatant discrimination.
Its interesting……society(tptb?) has made money a singular path to evaluating labor and gaining wealth……it has NO intrinsic value of its own and now paper money will be essentially OUTLAWED!!…….GFY!…..
They can equally say; ‘you don’t want to pay this way, we don’t want your business!’
Unless you are a huge big-ticket customer, I find it unlikely that you’re indispensable to them.
I recall a whole bunch of ” small purchasers” putting “Bed Bath and Beyond” and Anheuser-Busch down. So much for your theory.
“Anheuser Busch”… that would be the Bud Light fiasco. worse than “Coke” VS. “Coke Classic” in 1985…..
In true American Style; we stomped “Bud Light” and ” Bed Bath and Beyond” into the mud and walked then walked them dry.
Vote with your feet and wallet.
Darn straight.
I vote with muh dik and muh gun. Dat good enuf?
In my area of Central MA, people protested and some local attorneys sued and won. So now businesses have to take cash. Some still try the BS but most do not.
Wow – even nutso lib Mass is fighting this crap. Awsum . . .
In London it’s becoming more and more common. Football stadia are cashless. It’s much easier to use a card to pay for underground travel. I went to a pizza shop last week and they don’t take cash. First small store I’ve come across like that.
I did not know they had football in London, except for a few pre-season games.
“Within the English-speaking world, soccer is usually called “football” in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, whereas people usually call it “soccer” in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland ”
It is just like ‘Biden’ we call him our president in the US but the rest of the world calls him an imbecile.
I call it kick ball and refer to Joey as either The Pedophile in Chief or the resident. Pedophile is the only word that starts with P that I will ever call this grifter.
Welcome to the “Soccer Sucks” Brigade! lol! A pseudo-sport for fags.
Yeah, TUI went cashless on their flight (I buy nothing because of it) but they still beg for donation in CASH during flights – of course I wouldn’t honor going with the agenda.
Hopefully they’ll go out of business within a week … let them then take a good look at their foot … and see how they shot themselves in it …
Depends on the type of business. Big corporations are all about digital currency. My little part time small biz (small engine repair) is “CASH ONLY”. Credit cards cost too much and there is less of a paper trail. I had one customer arguing with me saying I had to accept cards by law. I kindly told her she was wrong then pointed her to an ATM at the local store. Another older fella didn’t have cash and obviously wanted to use a credit card to charge for my service. I bartered with him for some old equipment he had laying around.
As with most things in life, it’s a simple matter of leverage. Apply it properly and you usually end up with what you want.
Self checkouts used to accept cash. I tried both Aldi and Michael’s, their self checkout only takes cards. If you want to pay cash you have to stand in that long line and have the human cashier check you out, which I prefer anyway. I tell them that I am in their line to help them keep their jobs.
Same here, I rather take the queue, screw them.
If you dont take cash……….you dont get my business !
“Hmm, this store only takes cards, not cash”
Walks around to back of building where the switchgear is….looking for the store’s main breaker……ah,there it is…switch it off.
“Now you don’t take cards mother fuckers!”
_____
Don’t actually do this.
This is for entertainment only!
An axe to the main trunk line would take a lot longer to fix than just flipping a breaker. Just sayin…
Naybe,
but I would never actually promote such disorderly conduct seriously.
Seriously people.
Don’t fuck with circuit breakers.
Especially if you do not have experience.
You can get yourself into serious trouble.
Ol’ one arm, @GE Industrial, we’ll just leave it there…. 🙂
No,no. By all means…play with them! Just remember your insulation and eye protection. Shit WILL get hot and fly around quite a bit that first second or so!
Better yet, from 300 yards out, silenced. Destroyed……….
The dollar is dying and Trump says no to a CBDC. what will we end up with? I’m guessing the central banks tell Trump what’s what. The dollar isn’t even good as toilet paper. digital money is the future(a bad authoritarian one) It is better for controlling people, which is the goal. Plus we need a new scam backed by nothing. We will get a grace period to turn in useless paper sooner than you think.
And if you accept Government/Fed-controlled ‘digital money’, they can scam you whenever they want by introducing limitless amounts of the stuff at the click of a mouse.
And they can just as easily turn off that spigot … which is the real purpose of it …
Just like the gov/ political Komissar/ or local Monitors- you know the weaselly snitches reporting you to the Authorities and the local Gov/ Police turning off your electric car- or smart home.
“You criticized the gov’t- pay fine to get your fridge/ car turned back on.”
OR…….
You are Locked Out. Report to Re-Education Camp….or Freeze to Death outside.
Remember all the covid leftists; No vax- you should have your home and job and money taken away….and they…..Were…..Wrong.
They can SHOVE their AI “beast’ system right up the ‘chute….
If a store has a no cash policy, they won’t have my business.
My policy is to pay cash whenever I can. Makes it easy for me to keep track of my money.
So which policy will win in the end? I don’t need your product but you need my business.
Another set of businesses that won’t do well are those where you need to download their app in order to enter. Not happening.
Same here. The Heck with them. “Vote” with your feet and your wallet.
They’ll need to force reductions in the card charges for low value transactions then. Plenty of people will spend < $5 in a shop, buying say a drink can, a sandwich, a paper, a biro or two.
The big issue about cash is privacy. Why should the Government know every transaction you do? And should it be a loss-of-license offence for banks to sell your transaction data once they have all of it on file??
I don't go shopping to benefit the banks, the corporations, nor the Government. I do so to benefit myself and the trader I transact with. No-one else.
I am seeing more Mom and Pop restaurants charging a fee for using a credit/debit card.
And I don’t mind paying it if it keeps them in biz. Cards are expensive to take.
Dee, the answer is to carry cash and help the restaurant while denying the banksters of revenue.
Because THEY get charged…..this is all about pure naked GREED!every swipe you are charged for,depending on number of swipes you could be paying 50% of that 20 bucks in fees!. Nobody does anything for free!
It is usually the same (or similar) % that the cc company is charging them, but it also encourages customers to use cash, which they and I prefer.
Good.
Mom and Pop businesses have been getting “soaked” for decades with credit/ debit transaction charges.- and it hurts them.
Use cash. Screw “The New World Order” ( Communism by any other name- to paraphrase Shakesphere )
Many add a two or three dollar fee to use Credit/debit.
Gonna guess the fee VISA charges per transaction is less.
“NO CASH ACCEPTED signs line Main Street”
where is this at?
Maybe biz had been robbed?
So … are checks the equal of cash in this fustercluck … i.e., will folks refuse to take a check?
A friend of mine bought a new car recently … just wrote a check for it … it was a ‘cash’ deal …
I did that when I bought my last car. The finance manager tried to talk me into financing it because they get a kickback for every deal that is financed.
Owing the A.I.-enabled taxman zero money, but owing a check – for zero money – anyway:
I’m NOT allowed a bank account, NOR ANY “professional” license now, for the horrendous CRIME of having a child (a red haired girl) out of wedlock in 1979, laws ARE STILL IN EFFECT!!!! WON’T pay a 2nd/3rd time….
My ONE AND ONLY! And the MSM beotches about whites having a 1.2-1 birthrate (yeah, there’s a *(^(%(&*%(*^& reason)
EXCEPT if you’re a “minority”…..