What will it mean for the US to become a cashless society?

The world, for that matter.

You know its coming. It might already exist somewhere else on earth, which would be as embarrassing to me as fascinating, but it seems inevitable, doesn't it? I mean, eventually, we'll all have direct deposit of our wages or other income, and we'll use a card, maybe the card, maybe one of a few, and it will all be virtual. Every transaction. Physical money will cease to be valid. That is inevitable, isn't it?

I wonder what kinds of changes that will bring about. Big Brother's greatest tool? A tracking of every citizen's purchases, movements eventually? A more smoothly run society? A little of both? A UPC branding tattoo on each of us eventually? Not a thing in the world to worry about?

What would be overall effect, the natural progression, and the eventual outcome?

No need to carry cash.

:rofl:

considering the state of the economy and the dollar's decline....

You get chosen to stop existing, and you're done.

Edison Carter had his credit rating zeroed, which meant he couldn't buy anything, his landlord locked him out, etc.

If you have no method of trade thanks to a cashless transaction system, you starve to death, outdoors.

You can't barter items you can't get to because they've been seized. You can't mooch off of your family because your family will just have its credit zeroed.

Rinse, repeat.

The aid to business is not worth the potential abuse.

:shrug:

besides- no dealer in their right mind is going to accept a form of payment that leaves an obvious trail.

a cashless society would create a lot of problems for a lot of people- for instance, people who work in the service industry(which seems to be the future of much of the american workforce) and count on cash tips as a big part of their income(much of which is ultimately shielded from being taxed) would be particularly hard hit.

you'll starve. It's going to be a mad max world in about 5 yrs.

no records, no tracking, small bills only please. Yes, I have a debit card, but I use it only for specific purposes.

nothing backs our currency now except the ability of the Federal government to tax labor income at 100%

Tracking can be done by several different methods, cell phones, credit cards, on star, take your pick.

Too fascist. I just can't do it. I guess I'll have to barter for goods on Craig's List, or grow my own food, or scavange for berries and and educate myself on what species of mushrooms growing in my neighborhood are edible. A cashless society has always intrigued me, but I'm not talking about electronic funds or Hal Lindsey's Revelations scenario of the end times where we are implanted with RFID's and swear an oath to yet another anti-Christ in order to be able to be allowed to function in society. The money circulated by the Feds is an illusion easily shattered, since it is not worth the paper it's printed on. I'm talking about the good, old-fashioned trading and bartering for goods and services amongst people within their own communities. Maybe the post-apocalyptic revolution I've been preparing for since I was a child will never come, having already become a long gone relic of cold-war paranoia, but I'm still convinced that someday soon, we will need to know how to survive by learning to fly under some despotic government's radar.

Cannot get a job, cannot travel, arrested if stopped by a cop, etc.

but think of how much your collections will be worth...relics of a bygone era.

to track me.

when Hubby had to work on the same floor as the company lawyers, he could not believe how much Paperwork they had... stack of files on the floors, so that he had to thread a trail through them... (wonder how many are now in jail?)

oh, shall I mention that was at WorldCom...

Except for individuals or small groups, here and there, which we will always have, it's pretty much a done deal, right now.
Mostly, people won't/didn't feel a thing.

"Cash" is merely promissory notes, pieces of material that guarantee some level of acceptance by anyone you are likely to interact with. What is "cash?"
There is little of durable content that can qualify as a medium of exchange with actual, intrinsic value. Most material of intrinsic value is consumable or deteriorates rather rapidly.
Paper money is nothing more than checks, drawn on the banking system. Coins the same.
Even gold or silver has little intrinsic value, only being valuable to the extent that someone wants it.
Dollars and coins merely signify a certain number of "units" that you have available to transfer, just like credit cards.
Welcome to the cashless society.

Cash provides a little anonymity.

This morning there was pure joy in my child's life to find the five dollar bill that the tooth fairy left under her pillow. I don't know how that would have happened in a cashless society.

I say that as a cashless family. My husband had to sneak out in the dead of the night to get cash from an ATM and then go buy some silly thing to break the twenty. But it was worth his loss of sleep for the tooth fairy to make that visit.

That's about it.

or a reasonable facimile thereof. And as long as there is cash, there will be organized crime.

Organized crime depends on untrackable wealth. Items will always have value. If your piece of plastic can buy a car or buy a big diamond, then the diamond can buy the car.

We will never have a cashless society.

Just hated to carry it around, change especially. CC, CC and more CC.
Though very rarely when I am to visit my favorite cash only food join, I am reluctantly getting a $20 from an ATM

i only carry cash if someone's paid me back for something.

No one owns anything and everything is shared? I'm not talking about Soviet style or Mao style communism, but monastery style communism.

:kick: