I'm rather astonished at seeing this from Rogoff. Certainly cash does facilitate crime, but it appears he's overlooking the costs of a society where anonymous or casual transactions are impossible, or basically saying that the economic value of privacy is $0.
Basically, he's mandating the adoption of electronic currency adaption for every business, no matter how large or how small. Want to open up a restaurant? Better accept credit cards and the 1-2% haircut they take off the top of every sale.
It's also every authoritarian's wet dream.
If everything can be tracked, everything will be tracked.
"Oh, we see you've been buying quite a bit of ice cream on your trips to the store. Your health insurance rates just went up. In addition, we'd like to chat with you about the 3 gun magazines you've just bought."
EDIT:
And restricting the denominations of notes doesn't seem to stop cash transactions. It just makes things into a gigantic pain in the ass. Look at Venezuela. The highest denominated note is worth ~10 cents, and most transactions are in cash.
It's already like this. They just want more. Because you really can't have enough control. You want 5,000 in cash? Well let us just report you to a government agency that will monitor you for the next little while to make sure you're not doing anything nefarious. Each time I visit A&W and then quit, they send me coupons to get me back. Same thing with the liquor shop and I drink a single Crabbies every month.
> You want 5,000 in cash? Well let us just report you to a government agency that will monitor you for the next little while to make sure you're not doing anything nefarious.
Bullshit. You can easily change/withdraw money in casinos to your heart's content, up to either 6k or 10k dollars PER transaction, if you remove more than that, paperwork gets involved
> Each time I visit A&W and then quit, they send me coupons to get me back. Same thing with the liquor shop and I drink a single Crabbies every month.
Yes, do you pay with cash or credit card, and do you use a rewards card? If you pay with credit card or use a rewards card, that's exactly what you're complaining about. I pay in cash for most minor transactions like that, without a rewards card, and nothing of the sort has happened to me. How would it? They have no information about me.
If you're voluntarily using a credit card or rewards programs to save a few bucks or build up airplane miles, yeah you kinda made the trade off.
A cashless society legislates the tradeoff for you.
This is great news for those holding gold reserves. If all the illicit transfers of funds have to shift to gold then people will have to buy gold in order to do that, thereby increasing demand and also price.
Unfortunately, a rapidly rising gold price would cause more investors to put their money in gold rather than other investments, like venture capital, so in the long run, the net effect of getting rid of large currency bills would be to hurt the economy itself. This is why FREEDOM is always the best policy. When governments try to "engineer" a specific outcome they always screw it up, because they grossly miscalculate the knock-on second order effects of their policies.
Governments will always screw up monetary policy of every kind. For example, the only thing that should set interest rates is the market. The federal reserve has conjured so much money into existence by artificially keeping interest rates low, that we now sit on a $20T of debt in his country. It's inter-generational theft plain and simple. We are spending money that doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the next generation of americans, and you are complicit in the theft if you voted democrat. Thank god you dems lost the election you blithering ass hats.
I'm more concerned about counterfeiting. The benefit of new, counterfeiting-resistant notes is severely limited if you keep accepting the old, now-easily-counterfeited notes for eternity.
>Beyond the more heinous crimes of human and drug trafficking and terrorism, ...
So prostitution and drugs. IOW, black market stuff. Things we are not supposed to be doing. Social problems that we attempt to resolve through law enforcement. Oh, and terrorism, even though that doesn't really make any sense.
> ... some earners hoard their money to avoid tax.
That doesn't really make any sense either. You need to use cash to do transactions to avoid sales tax and get paid for work in cash to avoid income taxes.
16 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 43.4 ms ] threadIt's also every authoritarian's wet dream.
If everything can be tracked, everything will be tracked.
"Oh, we see you've been buying quite a bit of ice cream on your trips to the store. Your health insurance rates just went up. In addition, we'd like to chat with you about the 3 gun magazines you've just bought."
EDIT:
And restricting the denominations of notes doesn't seem to stop cash transactions. It just makes things into a gigantic pain in the ass. Look at Venezuela. The highest denominated note is worth ~10 cents, and most transactions are in cash.
> You want 5,000 in cash? Well let us just report you to a government agency that will monitor you for the next little while to make sure you're not doing anything nefarious.
Bullshit. You can easily change/withdraw money in casinos to your heart's content, up to either 6k or 10k dollars PER transaction, if you remove more than that, paperwork gets involved
> Each time I visit A&W and then quit, they send me coupons to get me back. Same thing with the liquor shop and I drink a single Crabbies every month.
Yes, do you pay with cash or credit card, and do you use a rewards card? If you pay with credit card or use a rewards card, that's exactly what you're complaining about. I pay in cash for most minor transactions like that, without a rewards card, and nothing of the sort has happened to me. How would it? They have no information about me.
If you're voluntarily using a credit card or rewards programs to save a few bucks or build up airplane miles, yeah you kinda made the trade off.
A cashless society legislates the tradeoff for you.
People who want to ban cash don't care about crime. They care about control and management of things that are (by definition) not their business.
To these people, i say: ban bitcoin and gold, and then i might care what you have to say.
http://www.sovereignman.com/trends/an-interesting-perspectiv...
Unfortunately, a rapidly rising gold price would cause more investors to put their money in gold rather than other investments, like venture capital, so in the long run, the net effect of getting rid of large currency bills would be to hurt the economy itself. This is why FREEDOM is always the best policy. When governments try to "engineer" a specific outcome they always screw it up, because they grossly miscalculate the knock-on second order effects of their policies.
Governments will always screw up monetary policy of every kind. For example, the only thing that should set interest rates is the market. The federal reserve has conjured so much money into existence by artificially keeping interest rates low, that we now sit on a $20T of debt in his country. It's inter-generational theft plain and simple. We are spending money that doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the next generation of americans, and you are complicit in the theft if you voted democrat. Thank god you dems lost the election you blithering ass hats.
So prostitution and drugs. IOW, black market stuff. Things we are not supposed to be doing. Social problems that we attempt to resolve through law enforcement. Oh, and terrorism, even though that doesn't really make any sense.
> ... some earners hoard their money to avoid tax.
That doesn't really make any sense either. You need to use cash to do transactions to avoid sales tax and get paid for work in cash to avoid income taxes.