Posted on 04/23/2014 3:32:14 PM PDT by SkyPilot
We're finally on the brink of the cashless society that futurists and other have been forecasting for years. The average consumer owns at least two credit cards and early adopters have begun ditching plastic for virtual wallets. Even businesses that used to rely heavily on cash — think taxis, food trucks or even craft fairs — can now go cashless, thanks to new technology like Square.
Yet, the more we abandon paper bills for plastic, smartphone payments and even cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the perils of the new, cashless economy are becoming more apparent. Recent security breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus and other retailers illustrate the vulnerability of electronic payments to hacking attacks.
There were 2,164 reported security incidents exposing 822 million records last year, nearly doubling the previous highest year, 2011, according to Risk Based Security, a data security firm. The pace seems to be continuing this year.
Chip-and-pin cards, in use in Europe for years, would remove some of the threat. Computer chips embedded on the cards verify unique personal identification numbers consumers punch into terminals.
The new credit and debit card chips should replace all magnetic card strips by 2015 or 2016 at the very latest.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Currently, over 2/3rds of transactions are cashless now.
Privacy will be completely gone when cash is removed. The governments will say they will eliminate tax avoidance, the drug trade, and also that cash carries a lot of bacteria and spreads disease (it's true).
Once this step is in place, there will literally be no barrier to requiring the chip or possibly QR code be on your very person.
It’s not too farfetched to link the checkout video camera to the cash transaction details and have face regognition software Id you to log the info for all of posterity. Bills are serialized and could easily be scanned during the transaction to be able to follow the “cash flow”.
Currently, we have US currency that exists only as coded entries, they don’t even bother to print it and warehouse it -that’s expensive.
Once we go cashless on scale, forget it...nobody will know what actually exists.
About a decade ago Mexico passed a law such that ALL land belonged to the government. We’re headed there, they will collateralize every thing, hypothosize and rehopthosize everything out from under our feet. All to pay for an ever failing welfare state. Feudalism.
Think it might some day be possible for government computers to look at all your transactions for a year-money earned and money spent on what things—then automatically generate a tax return with tax owed or tax due, for your to sign?
I like the cashless lifestyle. I am saving 26 trips to the bank every year. And I never get caught short of money when I wish to buy something expensive.
No, because spending has only a very small effect on your tax owed to IRS. Your earnings are the primary cause of tax due.
Or if you’re an EIT recipient, top up your govt credit card account for 3000 bucks....
Governments don’t like cash - not at all.
Not easy to tax, not easy to trace, not easy to keep from flowing across borders, not easy to monitor for illegal activity.
Governments would LOVE a cashless society. Your every transaction would be subject to control.
Electronic money is never really yours, the government is just allowing you to spend it. When they need it, they will take it.
If they get rid of the dollar, we start trading in pesos.
Cash has too many advantages. It isn’t just illegal activity - it is the ability to buy a politically incorrect book without having it in your Amazon history, buy gifts without a spouse knowing where and how much, giving to charity without ending up on their email list.
Once it’s all electronic they can then deny or retard your spending on certain things to gain your compliance. It might be determined by your locality, by region, by demographic or by your policital profile (based on your association or if you fit the profile of a dissident...or are suspiciously close -why chance it).
I didn’t think of that. all of your wealth and holdings will be nothing but a few megabytes on a server. That means they can fully (and I mean fully) control everyone completely.
Yup.
Enjoy cashless while you can. I lived in Europe when they converted to the Euro. The ATM machines were changed overnight. Literally. All old cash had to be turned in, and at a deadline date it was declared worthless. They can do the same to US cash. and they will.
This change will eventually be worldwide. There will be no safe havens for fiat paper.
With all these security issues with credit cards, we are stopping using them for convenience and just doing all cash.
Just the opposite of the trend.
Gov’t knows every dime I earn. My taxes are based 98% on what I earn. If I was paid in cash, that could help me avoid taxes. But every dime I earn is reported to IRS. The gov’t can’t hurt me anymore with cashless spending than they already are.
Using credit cards for last 25 years have earned us thousands in credits to buy cars and fly airlines. All of that would be non-existent with cash spending. Any problem we had with fraud was always taken care of my the credit card companies.
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