Will cash become obsolete ?

What else is disappearing?

My wife's granny saw a Zeppelin, mine grew up with cobbles and dirt roads - no tarmac. They both knew ragamuffins. My mum remembers horse drawn carts, trams, skies full of propeller driven aircraft and Lord Haw Haw. I remember a working Steam Roller, Buttons A & B, Telegrams, Trolley-buses, Slide Rules, Typewriters, Punch-cards, DA Haircuts, Black and White TV, Factory Chimneys and LSD. Others will have more examples!

On the way out: wildlife and the Great Barrier Reef, Internal Combustion Cars, Cash, Pensions as I knew them, Jobs for life, slow Data Networks, Sodium Vapour street lamps, broadcast TV, cheap oil and a high meat diet. And any job that can be done by artificial intelligence...

Dave

Printing money was invented about the time of Isaac Newton (read Newton and the Counterfeiters) as a way of financing the British army. I rather suspect that as this was pre 1707 it would be the English army, but I'm open to correction.

No strictly true, its generally lower, especially on larger debit card transactions....

" Banks usually charge large retailers between 10p and 20p for every debit card transaction, and 0.6% for credit cards. "

Neil

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Shock : Horror ... Perhaps it’s a myth

Don’t shoot the messenger though, Duncan

MichaelG.

Now you can begin to appreciate where poor old Geronimo was coming from when he said, "When you've consumed everything else, eat your money".

All our resources are free, air,water,land,etc, someone just decided that wasn't good enough.

And we believed it .

Then the powerful took the land and divided it up amongst themselves and their mates and made the rest into serfs to work the land for them!

Then the water supplies were taken and sold to other nations so they could sell it back to us at a profit.

Edited By V8Eng on 07/04/2020 15:17:39

Way back in the late 602/early 70s they brought in a law that if you extracted water from a river you had to pay, even if you put it straight back. Chap I knew in the Lake District had a water turbine, so along comes the man from the water board. After a bit of argument my man was persuaded he had to pay, so 'how much do you use in a day?' says the official. 'Oh about 50 gallons' said my man, and the official wrote it down and went away happy. Considering the inlet pipe was about 8" diameter, I suspect that was something of a underestimate.

As I understand it you still need permission to divert water through a wheel/turbine despite it going stright back - even if there wouldnt be a sum to pay (doubtless some admin costs though).
Every now and again i consider a wheel on the 'river' in my valley. Winter time it rages but summer it's narrow and lazy. However the cost of cabling 3-400 yds plus the generator/wheel etc makes it pretty marginal. there;s not much fall and undershot wheels aren't too efficient.

pgk

The weir for Sandford Lock near Oxford is now converted to a screw powered generator, with the rain we have experienced since November it must have had very good output for a few months. The fall across Sandford is about 7ft which I think is the most on the Thames. The weir was infamous for drowning students prior to the installation of the generator.

Mike

A National Trust preserved water wheel near me about 30 years ago while repairing the launder added a turbine intending to power the museum from it. Before they added the actual generator the greedy water men scotched that idea. Recent refurbishment took out the turbine part which is now an exhibit by the car park. It could have saved hundreds of gallons of oil usage by now.
Our village looked at a community generator scheme ten years ago and the environmental impact study alone would cost £50k, probably £100k now.

back on topic.

I need cash for a few things but it is getting difficult to come by in regular activity except notes from the wall machine. Both my ME clubs want a few quid cash for the monthly meeting plus the occasional tool or material exchange with a friend, Men's Shed too though regulars can pay by direct debit monthly (that has given me the problem of paying them back for the current missed meetings). Three village/charity cafe's I frequent only take cash as does the cricket club teas. One Church now takes card for the collection.

As a membership secretary I have noticed payments go from cash many years ago, to cheque as people started to pay other stuff by card so stopped having more than a few quid on them, back to cash as the machine gives notes and they no longer carry their cheque book. It becomes a problem when the annual sub is not a round figure and I need to give them change. The newer club though is 50% bank transfer.

The money laundering regulations are pretty invasive into normal citizens business, most major transactions seem subject to scrutiny. Talking to my local publican I was surprised to learn that banks charge for the bags of change that a pub needs. A visit to the pub usually converts my paper money into a pocket full of change, makes me talk rubbish etc. I think the German system of running a tab on your beermat has a lot going for it. My sons rarely use cash but what do you do when the system goes down? I was in a restaurant in France and was informed at bill paying time the card system was down and they could only take cash, we were on our last overnight stop so cash was in short supply, we just about scraped the bill and tip together. I suppose a drive to the nearest cash point would have been the other option.

Mike

There'd be a pointless data load to keep electronic records of all transactions down to the trivial, and a threat to privacy if you could be traced to every bun you bought in a market. It's also technologically vulnerable to need cardreaders and network connections to process even the tiniest payment. I think eliminating cash might be liked by governments because it makes (eg.) VAT evasion harder, but there'd be at least as much pressure from informal businesses to retain the simplicity of cash.

Online banking makes it very simple to transfer money to anyone with a bank account, my mother is not online but if I purchase something on her behalf then she writes a cheque and a quick photo from my phone banking app and its on its way to my bank. Our regular pub quiz has moved online with google meet and our team communicate with each other over a zoom meeting. The quiz master collects subs using the Ko-fi facility on the internet. Imagine this lockdown with no internet.

Mike

You missed out the quotation marks...

Neil

Government and banks aren't the major drivers, it's what the young folk do that changes the world. They hardly use cash at all. Not for them wasting time counting notes and fumbling with coins - contactless, bang, gone. And in business, the yoof positively dislike cash because it makes life complicated. Cash in at a bank? You must be joking granddad!

Someone complained on the forum that 'Boomers' is now a term of abuse. Kids today have gone soft; in my young day our elders were all 'Old f*rts', even though they were genuine war heroes. Time gets us all in the end. Horrified to find that hotmail accounts are now considered thoroughly old-fashioned...

Dave

If we became a cashless society wouldn't it put an end to autojumbles, car boot sales and jumble sales etc. etc. etc.???

To go cashless suggests banks might be needed.

This financial crash we're going through might well bring some banks and other financial institutions to their knees, whilst taking a proportion of depositors money in the process.

It'll be interesting to see what reaction that provokes from people that are currently sitting comfortably but suddenly find themselves out of pocket by such bail-ins or by massive tax hikes.

TopTip:

Take that loose change to the supermarket with you and pour it into the self-checkout till - there's no need to count it or sort out foreign coins as the till does this for you. Put notes in after coins and leave it to the till's logic as what mix of coins/notes it returns in change. You might get a few coins back on some occasions, but it's a good way to rid yourself of shrapnel.

Martin.

Our local supermarket made all of its self-checkouts card only a few months ago. Has proven to be handy during the current crisis, though...