Preparedness for when

ejbg2001

This also ties in with what we have been discussing:

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/swedens-negative-interest-rates-experiment-203032674.html

thriftwizard

No only that pocket money for kids?? How many times did you parents or grandparents friends, relatives give you money to buy some sweets etc

Oh my goodness - there'd be gangs of jobless Tooth Fairies roaming the land! No, a cashless society is a Very Bad Idea...

moneyistooshorttomention

ejbg2001 wrote: »

This also ties in with what we have been discussing:

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/swedens-negative-interest-rates-experiment-203032674.html

Now this is where I start getting concerned. Sweden is the most advanced society on the Planet imo and first they start this electronic "chipping" of people (ie that firm we were reading about earlier on this thread "chipping" their employees) and now this.....

:think: - is wondering if I'm maybe better in a less "advanced" one after all (ie Britain).....:cool:

On the needing cash for things like carboot sales - indeed things like that/jumble sales/church fetes/etc are all part of our Way of Life and many of us like the odd potter around one or more of these. I'm quite partial to a decent church fete or a car boot sale (provided its LARGE ...) myself.

Frugalsod

thriftwizard wrote: »

Oh my goodness - there'd be gangs of jobless Tooth Fairies roaming the land! No, a cashless society is a Very Bad Idea...

Not just jobless tooth fairies but aggrieved children all thinking that they have been robbed of their teeth and without any recompense.

Not just that but charity collections by the till. How many have put the odd change into a charity box?

Also the claims that it will impact the black economy and help raise tax revenue is also false. The biggest losses of lost tax revenue are from the big businesses fiddling their taxes not the millions of us making cash transactions. Also how would fruit machines work? That would impact the pubs and seaside resorts.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Would we have to put a debit card in the Christmas pudding then???:rotfl:

jk0

I bet I can guess how tooth fairies and Christmas puds will work. No reason why you can't keep a few pound coins when they are withdrawn. (I think some people still use old sixpences, don't they?) Then any that you give away can be redeemed by Mum/Dad paying the money into child's bank account.

Regarding charities, no I don't put any money in charity boxes. I always do by bank anyway as I get tax relief. Funnily enough MSF just wrote to ask why I cancelled my direct debit. Should I bother explaining it to them?

Regarding car boot sales, I bet those paypal chip & pin machines will be employed.

BTW, I don't wish cash to be banned, in case you were wondering. Just I guess life won't be completely impossible.

FTA: Fruit machines? They'll use tokens same as in Vegas, won't they?

moneyistooshorttomention

Okays then....howzabout work collections? There would be a plus side to that admitted - ie those who have pregnancies/weddings/etc and currently get "more than the average" of collections taken for them (ie when those remain single and childless are lucky to have any collections taken for them ever).

So there is a silver lining to that cloud I guess...:rotfl:

Frugalsod

This was on Zero Hedge a couple of days ago, but still relevant. I will admit to doing #2 a lot.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-26/three-strategies-make-your-life-easier-times-get-harder

thriftwizard

Re the chip & pin machines, Paypal or otherwise - they only work if you have a signal! Which many places outside city limits don't, and the companies aren't about to put any investment into infrastructure that they don't think will benefit them.

nuatha

fuddle wrote: »

My issue is that I would like to learn as much as I can in order to make up my own mind but I feel in order to do that I need to know who is noting, what are the facts and are the facts actual facts or an interpretation, how much is opinion or who sponsors the website etc etc.

So many seemingly excellent posts on here I have to just take with a pinch of salt because they are written as fact but I don't have any further information to go investigate myself. It is frustrating.

Fact: The Bank of England base rate is at a historical low/
Fact: The Bank of England Money Committee have plans to raise the base rate
Fact: The Bank of England may need to further cut interest rates.

All are accurate, the last may appear to contradict the second (certainly some of the media portray it that way). As to what will actually happen and what the consequences will be is only a matter of opinion - some opinions might be worth paying more attention to than others, that depends as much on your point of view as anything else.

There were predictions of the end of the world being heralded by last night's lunar eclipse, there has been no sign of that happening that I'm aware of - though I suspect my research on the prediction was at least as thorough as the authors of the two books which started that particular meme (and my research took under an hour).

The big problem is separating fact from opinion and then separating fact from relevant truth, there are very few verifiable facts that are not subject to interpretation or biased presentation. And the act of selecting facts to support a thesis is in itself likely to include bias.

There may be sources you trust, they may not be anymore accurate or reliable than those you distrust, but at least they are a starting point for your own research.

Frugalsod wrote: »

The claims of a cashless society make us more controllable is more of a fear of the very paranoid.

The real risks of a cashless society are that it makes it impossible to avoid a bail in, unless you are rich and can move your money offshore into a foreign bank not about to be bailed in. For the poor cash allows you to avoid the costs of a bail in. The banks would be the prime beneficiaries as they can close even more branches as they will not need to worry about supplying notes and coins to local stores. They could also start to claim fees for every single transaction even buying a newspaper.

I disagree with your assessment of the real risks - what goes hand in hand with the move to cashless is every transaction being traceable and those records being permanently stored and available for manipulation. Given the history of profiling, it is only a matter of time before some authority decides that transaction data is a key to resolving some perceived threat to national security and you have a substantial number of innocents occupying state resources while the actual threat continues unobserved.

Incidentally going cashless isn't a threat to boot and jumble sales or roadside stalls, micropayment systems have been trialled and its perfectly feasible to handle card payments with a smartphone (if you choose to disenfranchise yourself by not using a smartphone that isn't the state's problem)