Another little step towards a cashless society.

[grenfell]

Ok not directly prepping related but it does tie in with the emergency savings thread and numerous other threads where we talk about keeping a stash of cash just in case.
It's my firm belief that TPTB would get rid of cash if they could. Not possible overnight but the concept is steadily creeping up on us , direct debits , contact less payments , ping it and stuff like that. Scrapyards haven't paid out cash for some time now and on the bbc news this morning I heard of a shop chain becoming one of the first to not accept cash . They did mention a cake shop in London that also doesn't take cash. It's not something of immediate concern and I can't see the end of cash for a while but more a small step towards the population accepting cashless transactions as the norm .
Anyhoo a link,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-dri ... estaurant/

[Deep Thinker]

All about control and monitoring.Preppers will always find other things of value to barter with and stay off the grid as much as possible.But is a worry.

[preparedsurrey]

London buses have been cashless for about a year

[jansman]

It is reckoned by the Royal Mint that half of all bank notes and coins in circulation in the UK , are stashed 'under the bed', as it were. It would follow that TPTB really would like cashless systems, so they get their cut. In reality, businesses don't trust staff with real money.

[Ahastyatom]

London buses have been cashless for about a year

I was in London over the weekend and was suppressed that a return ticket on the tube was over twice the price when paying with cash compared to contactless payment. Penalising those who pay with cash is one way to speed up the whole cashless society process.

[jansman]

Back in 2000 I did jury service. On day 1 the Clerk of the Court sorts all your wages/ expenses etc. I had phoned a month earlier, as instructed, and said I wanted my wages in cash. I have always been paid cash ( it's a meat industry thing) and still am. When They took my details on that first day I was told cash was a big no- no, even though I had given notice. They said TPTB did not trust them! Also I was asked, " don't you have a bank account?"

So I had to wait almost a month for my wages to be paid into my bank. Luckily I had funds to cover me, but one guy there was a Day Labourer on the building, and it knackered him right up.

It is interesting what Ahastyatom says about paying double because you have cash. My gas and electricity WANT me on direct debit, and make it cheaper if I do. But I will be damned if I do!
I think we are seeing a combination of government money laundering regulation and businesses not wishing to fall foul of them, along with businesses wanting to cut costs by not handling cash.

I really cannot see cash becoming extinct. I don't think that the local car booters are going contactless any time soon , there's no profit in selling something for a quid with a 48p transaction charge from the card machine provider!

[grenfell]

London buses have been cashless for about a year

I was in London over the weekend and was suppressed that a return ticket on the tube was over twice the price when paying with cash compared to contactless payment. Penalising those who pay with cash is one way to speed up the whole cashless society process.

Thanks both , I did not know that but then I haven't been to the capital for more than a decade. I've noticed what jansman says too about DD been cheaper and will confess to being in something of a quandary bout it. On one hand i prefer not to use direct debit but then I'm also against the idea of paying more for the same thing or service. As it doesn't look likely that we will actually lose cash anytime soon there does , therefore , seem to be a logic to paying less. I suppose a large part depends upon how one is paid in the first place. I was in the building trade from the early eighties but was never paid in cash. The first few months was by cheque as the bank transfer systems were being set up. One old boy did demand his wages in cash , a right entitled by the 1899 trucking act if I recall correctly , an act that I also believe has since been repealed. The company were of course thus required to pay cash but it was funny how his wages had so many "mistakes" . He eventually acceded to being paid directly into an account. It's only in the last four years or so since becoming self employed that a portion of my earnings are now in cash.
To go back to the salad bar , they interviewed customers to see how they felt about the cashless methods. Ok so the answers were predictable as anyone using such an establishment must be ok with the process , bit like asking blokes in a brothel if prostituion is a good thing , and only one reply was on the negative side , a female customer who had a concern about card cloning.

[yorkshirewolf]

Even if cash does become obsolete, there will be many, many ways around it, and the people out there who want to transact business without trace - whether to avoid tax or because they're buying/selling illegal items, will find a way around it.

There will always be barter systems and other forms of currency than what TPTB want you to have.

An ex-colleague who has a boat and does a lot of sailing around Europe was in Greece a few months ago and told me most of the people now are using a barter economy, for everything from essentials like food and drinks, up to drugs and prostitution, they are so worried about the new tax laws and all the regulation that Syriza have been forced to accept that most who are paid into the bank are withdrawing it as soon as it hits the account and using it to buy barter-able goods. Sad situation, and kind of opposite of what the government wants, but you can only squeeze a people so hard.

Still, back to the UK, considering the black/illegal economy is worth Billions per year, and regardless of TPTB there will always be crime and profit to be made from it, so there will always be ways of conducting business without it being traceable.

I think the more TPTB try to tighten their grip, the more people will try to hide it and come up with evermore inventive ways to hide what they're upto.

[grenfell]

Sorry to bring up an old thread . Did anyone else catch the radio 4 programme you and yours a couple of days ago? It had a piece about Sweden . Evidentially it was the first country in the world to introduce banknotes and is set to become the first to completely do away with them and coins as well. From what it was saying it seems cash is now used in less than 2% of all transactions and is predicted to disappear by the early 2020's . They spoke to people who hadn't even handled let alone used banknotes for three years or more , much is paid via phones and it was saying how even beggars use phones to collect money. A lot of businesses won't accept cash which is something that made me think. Mention is made of keeping a stash of cash for those times when there are problems but if nowhere were to accept them one may as well have a million in Yen or Pasoes for all the use it would be. And while I have bartered and will barter I'm far from convinced it will work as a system .
A Swedish politician ( I think?) was spoken to and she did say that certain changes to the law would also be needed. A banknote is a claim on the central bank whereas money transfer is a claim against a private institution and there is always the possibility of such an institution failing . Ok so the central bank could fail but private banks would fail far earlier and it's that possibility that she said would need guarding against although she didn't go into detail.
Seemed a very likely scenario to how things will play out to me a gradual erosion of cash use and a greater acceptance of electronic transactions until people decide that they can do without it. There is a movement in Sweden that is still championing cash use but it does seem an uphill process.
Going off topic but as this is finance I thought I'd get my money's worth and it does touch on other subjects discussed on the forum. On another episode of you and yours there was an article about kitchens and a designer chap was interviewed . Seems more and more places are being built without one , principally in large cities. The designer himself hadn't owned , used or lived in a place with an oven for the best part of a decade. All his food is ordered in and being in London the choice is far more varied than the usual burgers and pizza and his financial arguments did hold some water. As he said many spend a good amount on a new kitchen , many thousands in most cases , which once you add in electric or gas costs plus all the pots and pans adds up to quite a lot before the first bite is taken. As I say I can understand his arguments and wouldn't dismiss them out of hand but I'm still just a bit uneasy about it.

[Arzosah]

Interesting!

As far as the Swedes stopping using cash - I'd be interested to know how many cyber attacks they suffer, or how many power cuts they have (ie is it less than us per head or something?), because surely those can interfere with a cashless situation?

As far as a kitchen is concerned ... I've had friends overseas who ate out every meal every day, yes, but like you, I think, I see problems with it:
- what if you lose your job?
- what if those diners and restaurants you go to run out of food?

There are so many "what ifs" its a bit pointless writing them down Total outsourcing of something so fundamental would make me uneasy too, if you do that, you're giving away a lot of your power to other people and to organisations you don't know. Financially, I'm not sure it works out either - if you see a kitchen as a fashion accessory or lifestyle statement then sure, a meal will cost you x 100 times the raw materials (or 1000 or whatever) - for most of us, I *think* that something pleasant and fairly durable is fine, which brings the cost per meal down. It's the same kind of argument thats in favour of the Just In Time delivery system. It works until it doesn't