Is Australia Becoming A Cashless Society? (abc.net.au) 366
Australia's Reserve Bank will roll out an instantaneous money-transferring technology later this year, "which will push Australia even further towards being a cashless society," according to ABC. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
In 2014, 12 financial institutions signed up to build the "New Payment Platform," partly as a way of bringing Australia up to speed with other countries that are ahead in the race to becoming completely cashless. Sweden is on track to become the world's first completely cashless economy, and just last November India got rid of its highest denomination bills, effectively eliminating 90 per cent of its paper money... The "New Payment Platform" will mean money can be transferred almost instantaneously, even when the payer and payee are members of different banks.
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy," says an economics professor at the University of New South Wales, who predicts Australia could be cash-free by 2020. The Australian Payments Association reports that over 75% of the country's face-to-face payments are already tap-and-go, and ATM withdrawals have sunk to a 15-year low.
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy," says an economics professor at the University of New South Wales, who predicts Australia could be cash-free by 2020. The Australian Payments Association reports that over 75% of the country's face-to-face payments are already tap-and-go, and ATM withdrawals have sunk to a 15-year low.
so sayeth the big bad wolf... (Score:2, Insightful)
The better to track you with, my dear!
Yeah, nah. (Score:2)
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The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight. Fortunately the local IGA supermarket will allow known customers to run a tab for as long as it takes to recover the EFTPOS systems.
I don't do EFTPOS or credit card, it's cash, cheque, or direct deposit. The banks charge too much on EFTPOS and credit card transactions. Some of the merchants around here are already adding 30 or 50 cents to EFTPOS/CC purchases.
If you
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In America, there have been some experiments with alternative currencies. The most famous is the Ithaca Hour [wikipedia.org] which is nominally worth $10, which at the time it was first introduced was considered a fair wage for an hour of work in Ithaca, New York. One of the early justifications for the IH was that they could be donated to panhandlers with the assurance that it wouldn't be used to buy drugs. This turned out to be incorrect, since drug dealers and prostitutes were among the most enthusiastic early adopte
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The breakdowns that I've encountered, while rare, are generally moderately severe, i.e. not just out for a few minutes, but hours, or overnight.
The breakdowns I've encountered are not by any means rare, though severe issues such as being unavailable for hours at a time are. More times a day than I can be bothered counting, the transaction takes long enough to process that my customers get worried, say there should be enough money in the account, ask if it always takes this long, etc. At least once or twice a day it fails to get through to the bank at all - on a good day. On a bad day, we might get a couple of dozen times where it won't get through
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In a capitalist system, no cash means being a slave to those who give you permission to access anything. So what exactly do you do moron, when the bank says no, where the fuck do you go, no lawyers, no transfers from anyone else, phone account shut, you can walk to nowhere. Either capitalism has to go or cash has to fucking stay and that is an or fucking else, I am no ones fucking slave, I will not ask for permission to fucking live.
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Lived in the US for 5 years, I dont recall any outages for electronic payment systems, not for cards at least. I keep a bit of cash on me just incase.
I have to wonder about issues like power outages, what's the backup plan? Power outages have become less common around here but when they do occur it tends to be in times when the weather is poor and failure to get necessities like food and fuel could be life threatening. In a cashless society there is no backup plan, no cash to back up to.
I carry cash and use it for a large portion of my purchases, basically anything under $200 or so. I pay cash at the filling station, at the grocery store, at restauran
Re:Yeah, nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
On what planet do you live? How is going inside, waiting in line, paying for gas, pumping it, and going back inside and waiting again for your change faster than just swiping your card at the pump (or holding your phone up to the NFC reader), pumping your gas, and hanging the nozzle back up when you're done? For the others, you're trusting that the people involved can do basic arithmetic quickly enough and accurately enough to get your change right in a timely manner. On the occasions that I do pay cash, if I hand over $4.10 instead of $4.00 for a $3.85 purchase, maybe half the time I get a blank stare in return. Hand them plastic and you don't burden their feeble minds with having to make sense of that.
There are plenty of good reasons to hang onto cash, but transaction speed isn't one of them.
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This is about Australia - we don't have to pay up front for petrol. The longest part of fuel payments - cash or otherwise - is waiting in the queue, but cash is slightly faster IME.
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Re:Yeah, nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, nah. (Score:4, Informative)
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The transaction is fast, but I find paywave transactions take 2 -3 days to finally reconcile in my account. "Current balance" and "available funds" being two different amounts is a pain - a minor pain, but one I can avoid by not using paywave.
Some shopkeepers/assistants are skipping the question and just wave my card at the machine - then look puzzled and even horrified when I tell them I didn't want to use paywave. I don't make them reverse it out, but I make a note to in future, tell them before I hand th
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So how fast will economic collapse be when the electronic funds transfer system is purposefully shut down by a hostile force. What exactly would happen after the first day, the second day the third day and how long would recover take. Power goes down the entire economy shuts down. Two weeks and people would be starving to death, hospital would should down, patients would start dying, and it would take years to recover. Why cashless because finnacial corporations would have total economic power over the popu
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Re: Yeah, nah. (Score:2)
The only EFTPOS failures I've experienced in the last ten years have been caused by damaged magstripes or removing the card too quickly when I was first using contactless. Both were very easy to solve.
As for the privacy concerns, for small purchases it hardly matters. Medium purchases could already be visible to some extent by irregular withdrawals, and large purchases already require traceable payment forms anyway. A concerned and determined person could conceivably hide most (but not all) transactions fro
Ways to go yet (Score:2)
Not to mention not every vendor has it, or network reception isn't always there for the reader to connect. So yeah, maybe one day but we won't be the first.
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I can't see a $4.00 takeaway coffee returning much profit after the bank takes its share.
"Tap-and-go", but only if your purchase exceeds $15, otherwise, what?
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I almost never use cash. Tap N go / paywave everything. And now I have the facility on my phone I use cash even less.
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Then don't buy from there. They get the hint eventually.
But thinking about it, I've haven't seen any places with the tap and go hardware acutally doing a surcharge or a minimum. There might be some sort of agreement in the background with regards to that.
Plenty of places stick 50 cents on "normal" eftpos transactions if the amount is less than $10 though.
Who's "we"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always interesting how the Media guys consider themselves as part of the government. "It's our money! How dare the people keep it!"
>"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is lost in tax revenue due to the sort of cash economy,"
"Lost in tax revenue". That is, it's the government's money, and the citizens are just thieves who are stealing it.
Let's correct that, shall we?
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is saved by the people..."
Re:Who's "we"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just about taxes. It's about control. If we can just turn your money off we own you. You're a serf then, not even a peasant. First get the guns, then the money. Now you're less than nothing. Whoever controls the government owns all those serfs.
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It's not just about taxes. It's about control. If we can just turn your money off we own you. You're a serf then, not even a peasant. First get the guns, then the money. Now you're less than nothing. Whoever controls the government owns all those serfs.
This, except it's less about govt control and more about ensuring corporate profits.
Taxes are just an excuse. Its all about ensuring the Big 4 banks get their cut out of everything you buy. Yep, when you pay by card a percentage of that goes to the card and credit providers.
This article is just another brainfart from a useless and inept conservative government who knows it's going to be out in the next election no matter what. If they really cared about lost tax revenue they'd look at the big end of town. $
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It's not just about taxes. It's about control. If we can just turn your money off we own you. You're a serf then, not even a peasant. First get the guns, then the money. Now you're less than nothing. Whoever controls the government owns all those serfs.
And how is that different from where you live?
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So, we live in a society and all...
Anyway, the author doesn't say "we."
Re:Who's "we"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Lost in tax revenue". That is, it's the government's money, and the citizens are just thieves who are stealing it.
Let's correct that, shall we?
"It's estimated that somewhere between about $3.5 and $5 billion in Australia every year is saved by the people..."
This'd be fine if it was being "saved by the people", but the reality is it's often being "saved" by unscrupulous business owners who are deliberately working in cash to avoid paying their rightful share of tax.
You can be all libertarian about what a great success this for the citizens or how people have a duty to minimise their taxes or whatever - but in many cases what this means is people legitimately are not paying their fair share and other businesses that do are put at a disadvantage.
As an Australian I would say that people generally are not as opposed to "taxes" as the average American; we see the benefits of them all the time in our healthcare system and so on. Maybe I'm biased - I'm a small business owner - but I certainly want other businesses correctly paying their taxes and not dealing in cash for the sole reason of being able to avoid correct reporting. If they don't, it puts more strain on me as a citizen and more strain on me as a business owner.
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Odd way of looking at it. Citizens voted for sales tax, and when people dodge it that is denying other citizens the revenue and services that they voted for.
Far from being a noble way to screw the thieving government out of a few bucks, you are actually just delaying your neighbour's heart bypass by a week or two.
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I managed to escape the robber on the street today, he robbed you instead, guess I "beat you up" according to your logic.
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Where I live, I assume that most of my taxes go to services that I don't use (I live in a religious corrupted country).
A point here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cashless means everything costs more, including paying your child an allowance for mowing the lawn because it's taxed.
In Soviet Russia the Electromagnet pulses YOU! (Score:5, Insightful)
All this cashless society has the main problem that during any serious cataclysm that kills the communication infrastructure the trade just stops. Not only the global nuclear cataclysm and EMP but any kind of local cataclysm like Katrina or war in Syria. And if the trade stops the hungry people could rob since they could not buy.
Moreover, I feel that the more Western is the society the higher the unrest. Some Somalians could organize a government-less society based on traditional law, in the First World it's just impossible. We Russians survived the wild capitalism of 1990-s because in any crisis there was impossible to foreclose or cut off the electricity and heat. Next such crisis could produce hordes of homeless.
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I think the proponents of this system should take a close look at north Queensland over the next week. Tropical cyclone Debbie is about to hit the coast near Bowen in the next day or so.
Let's see how that EFTPOS infrastructure holds up when people need to buy essentials such as bottled water, canned food, generator fuel, etc (and beer, of course). It won't matter if the problem lies with the water-logged EFTPOS terminal, the local exchange, or the flood-damaged fibre cable down the street, "tap-and-go" just
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All this cashless society has the main problem that during any serious cataclysm that kills the communication infrastructure the trade just stops.
Also, on a more immediate note, I don't particularly want to pay 30c+1.9% fee every time I pay back my friend for buying my movie ticket or lunch.
(or a monthly fee to have zero-cost transfers to a pre-approved list of friends)
Backhoe - public enemy number one! (Score:2)
I expect a major storm hitting Manilla would fuck up the payment processing of a large number of US based banks and a few others. Consider the hard drive shortage when Bangkok got flooded only for communication.
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If any EMP goes off payment systems will be the least of your worries. There will be a huge shortage of food due to refrigeration and farming machinery failures. Most trucks and other delivery systems will fail. People won't be buying stuff, they will be getting it air-dropped by the military in crates.
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A few years ago, we had a microburst that messed up our power for a few days. I stopped at a store on the way to staying at my GF's (who still had power) to grab some extra snacks. The store was open, but they had a big sign on the front, "CASH ONLY". IIRC, the bank was one of the many places that was closed, so I would have been SOL if I hadn't had cash in my wallet.
ATM decline (Score:4, Informative)
The supermarket duopoly offer POS cash withdrawals with no fee.
Contrast that with an ATM where you have to hunt for your bank's machine or face an extortionate $2 charge to withdraw from a rival bank's machine. Hence an increasing number of people just get $100 or so out in cash when they buy their groceries.
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Comparatively cheap? I did notice it was something ridiculous like 5 euro when I withdrew money from a Spanish ATM on vacation recently.
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I was, then I moved to Europe where legally the banks can't charge for using a rivals machine even if that rival is in a different country.
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The supermarket duopoly offer POS cash withdrawals with no fee.
Contrast that with an ATM where you have to hunt for your bank's machine or face an extortionate $2 charge to withdraw from a rival bank's machine. Hence an increasing number of people just get $100 or so out in cash when they buy their groceries.
Supermarkets only offer that because the government mandated it.
Here in the UK, I can go to any banks ATM and withdraw money free of charge because the government said they had to let me. The govt has also put a limit on the amount banks can charge merchants for accepting cards. The price the British are paying for this is that we don't get useless rewards cards that give us imaginary points. Oh, and most things are cheaper here. I'm earning a good A$10,000 less than I was in Australia but still saving t
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Contrast that with an ATM where you have to hunt for your bank's machine or face an extortionate $2 charge to withdraw from a rival bank's machine.
My credit union belongs to an ATM co-op, you insensitive clod! I can deposit or withdraw money all over the place without any fees. Lately all the ATMs take cash without an envelope and count it for you while you wait, so I have no qualms about doing so, either. Maybe your bank is just shit.
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bring India in as an example. They royally screwed over their poorer citizens when they 'retired' their old cash and didn't have enough new bank notes ready to replace it.
It would be interesting to see a graph of household debt vs adoption of cashless payment methods. An anecdotal point: Germany has pretty low household debt and relies primarily on cash for personal transactions. The idea being; if you don't have the money in your pocket, you don't buy it. Cashless transactions are a good way to either get people to run up debt in the form of a line of credit or overdraft fees. I smell more income for banks here.
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Cashless transactions are a good way to either get people to run up debt in the form of a line of credit or overdraft fees
Not every cashless transactions are on credit, and I don't see any debit card accounts in Europe that allow overdraw.
The argument itself is stupid. If you don't have cash you don't buy it, well what if you needed it? If you didn't need it and bought it just because you have cash then maybe psychiatric care is more suitable for you than keeping your wallet empty.
The arse backwards everything needs to be cash in Germany is stupid. I hate carrying around wads of cash and coin to get through the day. It's impor
Yeah (Score:3)
They are concerned about lost tax revenue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the article I see the push for this cashless system is to assure that the government gets their cut of the deal. I have an idea, do away with sales taxes and get your revenue by means less likely to get subverted. How many ways do people need to be taxed? Should not one form of taxes be enough? I assume Australia is much like any other Anglosphere nation where there is a sales tax, income tax, property tax, "sin" tax (on alcohol, tobacco, and such), homeowner tax, Homer tax, bear tax, poll tax, pole tax, polecat tax, poll cat tax, cat on a pole tax, and a tax tax.
Where is it written that a government *MUST* tax sales? I'm not saying governments do not or should not have the ability to impose any taxes, only that the number of taxes imposed by most governments is excessive. I know why governments impose taxes like this, it hides just how much money they are collecting by spreading it around so that it is difficult to see just how much the government is taking. I believe that a government that is honest with its citizens would make the taxes simple.
They are fighting a battle they cannot win. If they impose restrictions on the movement of cash then people will revert to barter.
This also gets into the "mark of the beast" territory from Christian tradition. You can call it just a superstition if you like but psychologists, sociologists, and economists have made connections between Christian tradition and a healthy society. I'm not saying following every Christian belief will bring an ideal society, only that we've seen Christian societies excel where others did not. I say it may be helpful to see the Bible as a historical document, full of parables, advice, and warnings for building a healthy society.
I know people will feel the urge to mod me down for getting all religious. This is not about religion though, but religion does play a part in this. There will be people that oppose this on religious grounds. There will be people that oppose this because they see the hazards this has on society. These are not mutually exclusive groups. Removing the ability for people to conduct business with cash is dangerous, and some people roughly 2000 years ago warned us of this. I believe that we should think real hard about what a cashless society means. It won't take divine intervention to destroy society, we'll do that on our own.
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Not if being cashless is easy and convenient.
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Going cashless with never be easy and convenient, at least compared to cash.
My debit card may be near universal but it's not ever more convenient than cash. If they make it more convenient than it is, like removing the need for ID, a PIN, or signature, then theft becomes a problem. The easy thing about cash is that I can walk to the corner store while half awake, get a coffee, toss the cashier a bill, gather my change, and I don't have to try to remember a PIN or even my name in my decaffeinated state.
Som
Re:They are concerned about lost tax revenue? (Score:5, Informative)
Sales tax and a number of other taxes were phased out when the GST (goods and service tax) was introduced. It didn't simplify the system as much as it should have but it went partway there. Yes, we have income tax, but I don't find it burdensome - even the first AUD$18,200 is tax-free.There's no property tax, but someone is proposing to phase out contract stamp duty in favour of a property tax. Yes, there are "sin' taxes. Don't know what a homeowner tax is, but we do pay council rates for roads & parks, sewerage, rubbish collection, etc. No poll tax.
Wasteful spending aside, taxes are the way a government collects revenue to spend on public utilities and services - major infrastructure like interstate highways, health care (Australia has universal free health care), defense, and so on. All that is common knowledge.
The GST was proposed to even out the tax burden - have a broad-based goods and service tax (with some exemptions), instead of a narrow tax here, and another one there, and more over there. It spreads the tax burden more evenly over the population. The super-rich can avoid income tax with creative accounting, but they can't avoid 10% GST on their fine wines and home cinemas. That's the theory, anyway.
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You in NSW? I'm pretty sure Qld doesn't have such a tax, but I've never owned two properties at once, so I wouldn't have encountered it, anyway.
I think historically Qld & W.A. have/had the lowest/least state taxes, mainly due high income from resource royalties - they could afford to abolish such taxes due to mining royalty income.
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Doubt the religious argument will get much traction here in Aus. Also gotta admit I'm not seeing the link but ok.
As for the tax system a sales tax is by far the most attractive tax mechanism. The majority of taxes in Australia are collected at the federal level, those being income tax and GST (sales tax). The states to impose a number of other taxes, but these generally revolve around property taxes and a payroll tax.
Sales taxes are good because they spread the tax burden across the widest population and
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As for the tax system a sales tax is by far the most attractive tax mechanism.
Why? Sales tax is inherently regressive. The less money you have, the higher percentage of your income you lose on sales tax (being that you spend more of your income on things that are taxed as sales instead of, say, investing it).
Why would a socialist country even want a sales tax?
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Where is it written that a government *MUST* tax sales?
The way I see it is that if your taxe system is simple, plenty of people find workarounds and don't (legally) pay taxes. Then you close that loophole and tax what they were doing. Rinse, repeat and you end up with a 5 thousand page tax system only experts working for Apple understand and they are the only ones not (legally) paying taxes at this point. In other words I see this complexity of the tax system as necessary evil and advocates of 'flat tax' or other 'simple' systems as idiots.
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Because relying on import duties caused pissed off shipowners to send the Fourth Crusade to hit Constantinople and relying on a single commodity has really fucked over Venezuela. The simple, all eggs in one basket ways have been tried so if a society wants to fund infrastructure their governing body has to grab cash wherever they can find it while pissing off the minority of the people.
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You are a religious nut. For every successful christian country I can name you several failed ones.
Basically the only religion that has a 100% corellation to success is shintoism, and that only because of a sample size of 1.
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As a jew I don't know christianity very well, can you please explain to me where and how does christianity talk against a cashless society? (This is not a critical reply, I just want to learn).
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Reading the article I see the push for this cashless system is to assure that the government gets their cut of the deal.
That seems to be a common thought. But having some (tiny) experience in government payment platforms, my opinion is it is merely the govt (or think of it as people just like you) using technology to improve efficiency.That's all.
Cash won't be going anywhere soon, schools, charities, and all sorts of small industry rely on it. The govt (people just like you) know this too.
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Sales tax is more usually expressed as Value Added Tax or Goods and Services Tax in countries like Australia however they are normally categorised as consumption taxes. These are "policy" taxes with a view to taxing consumption at the end point of the chain of production (ie GST is a deductible input in the production of goods and services and so it is only the end consumer that actually "pays" the tax). It is not a question of MUST, but a question of the policy goals of the way in which the community is ta
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Where is it written that a government *MUST* tax sales?
*must*? No where.
However different forms of taxes have different economic impacts. A sales tax is an efficient tax in how it affects GPD through prodding the supply and demand curves.
The only wrong answer is to have a single form of tax. It is inefficient in the grand scheme, and reduces the number of handles a government has to maintain control over its economy, and more handles are good for governments and for citizens as it provides a wider variety of effective options to implement policy in an agreeable
Internet isn't up to the task (Score:2)
News article? (Score:2)
Why is a news article in the form of a question? And why are statistics provided? Is it some sort of exam? If I didn't even know those statistics, how am I the expert to answer that question? Assuming they even put a comments section.
I'll be blunt. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't fucking know.
Yes. (Score:2)
Cashless as in broke. Yes.
Apple Pay loathing by Aussie banks make sense now (Score:2)
If Australia is quickly becoming the first cashless society then the leading technology in enabling this will be extremely powerful.
Australian banks, and more recently retailers [slashdot.org], fighting to take control back from Apple of their wireless payment system can now be seen in a different light.
Sweden is not "on track" to becoming cashless! (Score:2)
Sweden is being derailed into becoming a cashless society.
It is a change pushed by banks and related tech companies, so that they can make a little bit more money. Nobody else wants it.
Leading politicians on a national level are not very interested in the issue - spending more time and energy on squabbling between themselves, pointing finger at each other's small mistakes than willing to take on real responsibility themselves.
Yes, India eliminated its R1000 notes (Score:2)
Dear Funny Americans (Score:5, Informative)
and lastly, because if everyone pays their rightful share, each individual can pay less. This is not about "extra" taxation, or taxing "3, 4, 5" times, but simply applying the same rules everyone. It is amusing to me that you assume that everyone in the world has the same allergic reaction to paying taxes that you do, because you assume that everyone else in the world shares the same jaundiced view of government and the social contract that many of you do - not just those on the libertarian fringe either, it seems, but reg'lar folks who rather unbelievably to me and many in my country, elected a president that publicly brags about paying little or no taxes. In Australia a political campaign would be dead in the water after such an admission, - the "obligation to shareholders blah blah blah" argument being self-serving bullshit in the case of a privately-held company like Trump Organization anyhow - because although we're not the fair and equitable nation we once were there's a pretty strong feeling that our obligations must balance our privileges. Of which we have many. As it happens I don't think GST or other consumption taxes that this kind of payment system will help with tracking are the best kind of tax, but they're not entirely regressive either. For mine, a single, universal no-exemption financial transaction tax is the way to go.
Re:Dear Funny Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. federal government has a $4 TRILLION annual budget, more than 22% of GDP. State and local governments in the USA spend another 18% of GDP, so call it $7 TRILLION total in government spending. That's more than $20,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Don't you think that's more than enough wealth to fund a government?
I'm glad that you feel you're getting value for your money. Would you feel any differently if 25% of your federal taxes were being used to bomb and kill people in foreign countries and to maintain a worldwide network of over 700 permanent military bases? How would you like paying taxes to house the largest per-capita prison population in the world? What if your schools were expensive as hell, but still produced sub-par results? We fund some absolutely enormous welfare programs for seniors, the poor & the disabled, but these programs are unsustainable. Anyone under age 50 is now paying taxes based on government promises that will never be kept.
(I could go on)
And that's only the spending part. The U.S. federal government has also given us GATT, NAFTA, the WTO treaty, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, the FISA Revisions Act, the 2012 NDAA, established a ubiquitous and largely secret surveillance state and militarized our police forces. And even with the $1 trillion they spend on "defense" they can't "defend" our borders against an invasion by 20 million illegal immigrants.
And you wonder why a USA resident just might have a negative view of government and be opposed to any further taxation? Not only are we being screwed out of a huge portion of our wealth, many of us are paying for shit that we don't want and for future benefits that we will never receive.
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Black market (Score:2)
Cash is obviously very useful in the black market, and I suspect fighting against it is a primary motivation for going cashless.
The interesting question becomes : what will replace cash in the black market? Prepaid cards, cryptocurrencies, foreign cash, precious metals...?
...eliminating 90 per cent of its paper money (Score:2)
I thought that Australia got rid of their paper money when they moved to plastic polymer notes years ago.
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They can stop printing cash, that is fine, but that does not mean you have to be part of this experiment in oppression a and slavery, defy this crap, exchange in something tangible, use precious metals or just barter, tell the government to fuck off, or don't tell it but act that way.
That all sounds good, until you try to go to the supermarket and pay for your groceries with gold bars. Ditto for just about anything else you buy.
Re:tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
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What this kind of paranoid person doesn't understand is that they can already track you to an incredible degree
Who is "they"? The NSA probably has access to my credit card transactions. But my neighbor doesn't, nor does my mother-in-law, nor do the local police.
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There are all sorts who want information on your shopping history. The NSA is passe. We know the government has access to most digital shopping data. If you are an undocumented immigrant or buying anything tangentially illegal or without paying the appropriate tax they can look it up. Today's argument is generally more marketing or blackmail oriented.
I pay cash for just about everything. I often get discounts so the merchant doesn't have to pay the 3% charge. Win win.
What this kind of paranoid person doesn't understand is that they can already track you to an incredible degree
Who is "they"? The NSA probably has access to my credit card transactions. But my neighbor doesn't, nor does my mother-in-law, nor do the local police.
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Would love to see the citation there.
Re:tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
This is 99% about TAXES. No more cash between friends. Tax everything 3, 4 and 5 times.
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This is 99% about TAXES.
You're probably right - I was about to say it was about trying to shut down black markets (particularly chop-chop), but in the end, shutting down those markets is ultimately about taxation too.
Re:tracking (Score:5, Informative)
Re: tracking (Score:2)
You may think that the US is a low tax country, but you have to pay tax on private sales of used items in many states, something that you don't have to do in a high tax country like Sweden.
Re:tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
This is 99% about control. There are multiple players here. Local governments, the US major political players, credit card companies, banks, they all get to win. Control means you know much more about transactions, you get more say about what transactions you favor or not, you get a larger percentage on transactions, you get to use negative interests in the bank because people can no longer extract their money from the bank. There's a lot. It's about power and the threat of power. For one thing it means the US can threaten to stop all financial traffic for any target they pick, on the spot. There is a big difference between using little cash and taking away the possibility to use cash.
This article http://norberthaering.de/en/ho... [norberthaering.de] describes what happened in India. India is mostly cash based, or was until some people decided that was no longer the case. The result was a caricature of unchecked power.
Negative Interest Rates (Score:3, Interesting)
You are sort-of right, but you are looking at the wrong 'tax'. The real benefit of cashless, is that central banks can drive interest rates negative in a deflationary environment.
Since around the 1990s, automation and competition from low labour centers basically destroyed the utility value of the working class. We still give them jobs (which are basically funded by welfare), but most of these are just a sop to our consciences so that we can enjoy our lattes and craft beer without having to stare at slum dw
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This is 99% about TAXES. No more cash between friends. Tax everything 3, 4 and 5 times.
That is even dumber and more paranoid. Those transactions are already either taxed or tax-exempt, plus there are a rounding error in taxing.
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This is 99% about TAXES. No more cash between friends. Tax everything 3, 4 and 5 times.
Actually this is 0% about taxes.
If the incompetent LNP cared about taxes they'd be looking at the big end of town. A$3-5 billion is a few days worth of tax evasion for the mining and tech giants.
This is about a conservative government trying to keep the populace distracted whilst giving a boost to their mates in banking. Yep, every time you use your card the bank collects from the merchant. The merchants have to pay the banks to get the money you paid them.
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The problem is everyone in Australia is a friend.
No seriously, I think I built an entire house including all services without paying a dollar in tax, and that is coming to the scene new without any former contacts in the building industry.
The only taxes I paid were the 10% GST to the electrical utility provider to do the final inspection and install the pole-fuse and then carseal the meter.
Re: Power outages and system crashes? (Score:2)
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ATMs, when first introduced, were free. Now they often charge fees. Do you really think once a cashless society is reached that fees will not be applied to everything?
Re:tracking (Score:5, Informative)
... so ultimately all you're doing is arguing against having the convenience.
Isn't that enough to oppose this? How many reasons do I need to tell the government to get out of my personal business? Assuming the government can already track all my monetary transactions that does not mean I am somehow obligated to make it easier for them.
The reasons black markets exist is because the government has imposed some restrictions on trade. By shifting what would have been legal before into the black market now the government has the ability to fine, imprison, or otherwise make life more miserable for something we used to be able to do freely.
We should not have to turn to the black market to get what we want and need. Places where black markets thrive tend to be tyrannical hellholes where mothers have to sell their hair to wig makers to get enough cash to buy milk for their children.
Free markets are where bread sits in lines waiting for me. The alternative is me waiting in lines for bread.
Re:tracking (Score:5, Insightful)
>Free markets are where bread sits in lines waiting for me. The alternative is me waiting in lines for bread.
The real difference between those two scenarios is just that in your 'free market' a helluva lot of people can't get bread at all.
There is then more bread than people who CAN get it, and hence it sits and wait.
This is, obviously, great for you - being one of the few who can get bread - but it sucks for the people who can't.
Of course the OTHER thing it does it so perpetually increase the number of people who can't - so more and more bread goes to fewer and fewer people. We often refer to this effect by the shorthand name "rising inequality' - perhaps you've heard of it ?
But your BIGGEST mistake of all is thinking those are the only options. This is not an either-or question. Nothing that involves human beings is ever THAT simple. It's not a choice between "laizes faire capitalism" and "USSR style communism" -there are literally THOUSANDS of other ways we could organise the distribution of resources (which is all an economy is - a system to distribute resources). So while you feel the advantages of liazes-faire capitalism outweigh the problems (but only because none of the really BIG problems happen to you personally), a great many people do not and the argument that it's better than the downsides of Soviet Style communism is complete bullshit - because we don't need to choose EITHER.
Are you seriously so closed-minded that you are convinced, among the thousands of other possible ways we can organise this activity - not ONE of them may offer better pro/con ratios than the one you love ?
Because I am. None of them can... for every resource, service and product. But for every resource, service or product there is a way to organise it that would be better than EITHER laizes-faire capitalism OR soviet-style communism - in THIS location. In another town - another one will work better for the same product. And somewhere in the world, there is one product which, in one town, will work best with laizes-faire capitalism and somewhere out there is one product which, in one town, will work best with soviet-style communism. But for all the millions of other products in the millions of other towns the best answer will be NEITHER of those.
Indeed it's impossible to predict what the best answer will be. The only way to discover it is to experiment with all of them - in every town and for every product- and record the results. The only way to get an economy with minimum downsides and maximum benefits - is to have an economy that's created by the scientific method, experiment, test, improve - and consider all answers to be local to the specific parameters of the experiment. Just because in bummsville Idaho the best way to distribute apples turned out to be "plant an apple tree on every street corner and let everybody pick when they want" doesn't mean it's true for oranges in bummsville idaho and doesn't mean it's true for apples in New York.
Re:tracking (Score:4, Insightful)
In Australia not so much. People disappear all the time just because they don't want to be found. Sometimes (eg. battered wives with a homicidal spouse looking for them for extreme examples (which do happen)) it's not a bad thing.
I think you'll find it's not unheard of in the USA either despite efforts to track people getting onto busses etc.
There are still a lot of cash in hand jobs so it's possible to get by with no identification in a lot of places apparently.
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There are still a lot of cash in hand jobs....
Yup, doing hand jobs can get you plenty of cash, I hear...
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What this kind of paranoid person doesn't understand is that they can already track you to an incredible degree
Yes, because people like you were too apathetic to write a letter to politicians to say that you don't want them to do that.
and there's fuck all you can do about it, so ultimately all you're doing is arguing against having the convenience
So be a good boy and accede to their demands. Forget about defending the democracy you live in, LETS GO SHOPPING!!
Black markets exist anyway, so that's not really an argument either.
For what, your apathy? There are many democratic reasons you want cash to flow unhindered in a society that have nothing to do with criminal activities.
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What's more likely to affect my daughter this year ? The government knowing I bought her, her first trycicle or her dad getting killed by a mugger for his cash ?
The biggest advantage of going cashless is not convenience, it's SAFETY. Muggings have been dropping as cash use has declined because the reward for the risk is reduced. Cash is instantly spendable, cards run a real risk of being reported and cancelled before you can get the money out, cellphones you need to sell to get money.
Nothing is more immedia
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What's hilarious is that as more societies go cashless it will make the more stable cash societies worth more since they will fuel the cashless societies.
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You shouldn't need electricity or some kind of communications infrastructure in order to carry out trade.
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Given that you have to hold records for ~7 years (last I checked), and given the recent (2016/2017) focus shift from the ATO to specifically look at tradies, it's a really bad gamble to do that sort of thing. The tradie gains pretty much nothing from the transaction and then has to explain away a disparity in stock acquisition claimed against the quarterly GST. If the ATO decides to audit them they will be screwed. Unless you've got a hell of a setup you're not going to be able to convincingly (legally)
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This has always amused me - having a tradie offer 10% discount for cash, just because they don't have to pay the GST. They love it as they end up getting far more in their pocket as they're also not paying the 30-odd percent company tax or around the same on average for income tax on the earnings either. So, they get around 30% more in their pocket and you save 10%...
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Moving towards a classless society? I'm afraid not. Australia is moving towards a classic feudal society, with an enormous divide between land-owners & tenants.
As prices for a nondescript family home within cooee of anywhere with a job that pays more than 80k/year approach $1 million, the divide between those who already have property & those who don't is becoming impassable.
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Much of this debate is moot - it would take 1. broad community support, meaning bilateral support from both major parties, and they've got much more pressing things to worry about, and 2. a major shift in most monetary policy.
The thing is, cash is legal tender, good for settlement of debt. Refusing cash is legally suspect - if I offer you a card, and the card is declined, then I offer cash, you can refuse, but I've offered a legal means to pay the debt. What are you going to do when I walk out with my coffe