Cash, gold, or plastic

[underpants]

As I watched RON PAUL the other night on Colbert talking about making gold an alternative and competitor to cash I was thinking- Who uses cash anymore?


I rarely carry cash anymore and everyone does the swipe as far as I have seen. People using checks at this point frankly annoy me. Yes I am of the middle class and deal around people of the like kind. I know that abut 30% of the adult population have never had a bank account so they deal in cash.

I may not know the full story on why RON PAUL and people on the left (please do offer information so I understand it more) are completely against the Fed. I also have clearly succumbed to the consumerism of me time.

Isn't plastic ( yes PLASTIC - it is the future) the new currency? Hell I hate carrying coins let alone gold coins. The people at the register luckily can read the computer to tell them how to make change but "one bag" defies the understand of the bagger.

Plastic is a currency in modern America.

[AnneD]

1. Beg too differ.....

I use cash and get great discounts when I do.I use checks when I need a recorded transaction and my debit card if I haven't made it to the bank. If you buy property at a tax sale-they will not take any thing else but cash or bank checks and those sales can run from from 1k-up. I saw 150k paid in cash once.

Debt is the currency of slaves.

[AndyTiedye]

7. I Tend to Pay Small Businesses in Cash and Let the Big Ones Eat Plastic

Small businesses really get ripped off by the credit card companies,
while the big guys skate with something like a 0.5% service charge.
Few large business give cash discounts. The travel industry for the
most part (hotels and car rentals especially) won't do business with you
unless you have a credit card. What few will deal with a
non-credit-card-carrying customer want a HUGE cash deposit.

There seems to be a common assumption that if you don't have a
credit card, then your credit is so bad you CAN'T get one.

Paying cash for an airline ticket is pretty well-known to be one
of the ways of getting "special" treatment by security.

I don't really consider it "debt" because I pay it off each month.
If I used a debit card instead of a credit card, I'd incur a bunch of service charges.

[Catherina]

23. +1 n/t

[anamandujano]

2. This was here when I clicked. Gotta love the ad bots.

[Name removed]

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[JanMichael]

3. Rice Beans and Ammo. nt.

[Lions_fan]

4. I didn't plan on replying to this topic

But i had to tell you while i was reading this topic every ad on the page was urging me to buy gold and gold coins :silly:

[anamandujano]

6. I saw that too but mine is back now. Yeah!

Forgot to add that check writers drive me bonkers too.

[RB TexLa]

5. It is amazing that people listen to that nutcase. There is no reason to still produce cash and this

idiot thinks we should be using gold. His anti-Federal Reserve rants are just at loony.

[jakeXT]

8. We will have to get back to some kind of gold backing like it existed from WWII to 1971

World Bank chief calls for new gold standard

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) –- The president of the World Bank said in a newspaper editorial Monday that the Group of 20 leading economies should consider adopting a global reserve currency based on gold as part of structural reforms to the world’s foreign-exchange regime.

...

Zoellick said a return to some sort of currency link to gold would be “practical and feasible, not radical.”

“This new system is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves towards internationalization and then an open capital account,” he said.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/world-bank-chief-calls-for-new-gold-standard-2010-11-07


A return to the Bretton Woods international gold standard is inevitable
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/6458-A-return-to-the-Bretton-Woods-international-gold-standard-is-inevitable-Eric-Janszen

[hobbit709]

33. Our money hasn't really been backed by gold since 1933

[Name removed]

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[4lbs]

11. I also beg to differ.

At one of the stores I manage part-time, we get dozens of customers per day that pay with cash. In fact I would say that the majority pay in cash, around 70%.

When people are buying a pair of pants or a shirt for $15, it's easier for them to simply whip out a 20 dollar bill instead of using a debit card or credit card.

There are people that come in and buy a single t-shirt for $5.99 and pay with a 10 dollar bill.

[Name removed]

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[WinkyDink]

16. My mother is considerably "banked," and has never owned any CC.

This topic is absurd.

[Fumesucker]

13. Another Carrington event would make plastic worthless worldwide..

Our civilization is more fragile than most of us realize or want to acknowledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Solar Superstorm,<1> or the Carrington Event,<2> was the most powerful solar storm in recorded history. It occurred during solar cycle 10.

On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.<3>
Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed in some cases even shocking telegraph operators.<4> Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.

[NRaleighLiberal]

14. We use plastic to get air miles. But we sell tomato plants in the spring

and it is mostly cash exchange - so we have the opportunity to use more cash (our box of 20s, as we call it)...it feels quite odd, since plastic has become quite the habit. Though it's never felt quite right to use plastic for small purchases.

[Electric Monk]

15. A dollar's worth of paranoia:

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/dollar_paranoia.html

(snip)

...money isn't a tool of THEM -- it's an aggressive alien life form that is using us to help it breed.

(snip)

...the sub-species of Dollar which lives as an abstraction will experience a population explosion of untold proportions if the credit industry ever succeeds in completely unshackling it from the need for physical representation; the abstract dollar will have as great an evolutionary advantage over the paper dollar as the paper dollar did over the gold dollar. Dollars can multiply utterly unhindered in the abstract, without anyone needing to figure out where to put several billion tons of paper. And all the while, they will be sheltered by captains of industry and thrifty housewives alike; will grow fat on greed, commercialism and envy; will be transported to new environs by the spread of Western Culture -- until, eventually, they gain illimitable memetic dominion over the human mind.

Assuming, rather optimistically, that this hasn't happened already.

[cbdo2007]

17. Hmmm, since most stores probably can't tell real gold from fake, I think I'd

buy a whole bunch of pyrite right now while the market is so good for it and try to get as much in the stores as you can for it. good luck!

[Statistical]

18. I use credit card for everything including the soda machine.

I see no sense in using paper cash for commerce anymore than I use postal mail to communicate.

[Capitalocracy]

19. I always use cash, assuming the transaction is in person. Gold? Ridiculous.

Gold isn't currency. Currency should not be tied to gold in any way. The best it can do is create false scarcity, and the most likely result would be even more concentration of wealth and more power in the hands of financial institutions that can directly influence the price of commodities like gold.

[saras]

20. No credit, no desire for it

"I also have clearly succumbed to the consumerism of me time."
Yep - honestly, I don't know what you buy that it's so easy to use plastic, and that you use it so often for. Are you one of those people who comes out of Wal-Mart every week with a whole car full of disposable consumer goods?

I buy food - locally where possible - with cash.
I buy clothes - nearly all used except socks and undies - with cash.
I buy stuff from our building materials recycling center with cash.
Our town has a robust free economy - I fix things and trade things.
I've bought one piece of furniture in my life.
I've never bought a car, though I've owned five or six of them by now.
I bought one computer, back in 1989 or so. Since then, people who buy new ones give away the old ones, usually only a couple of years old. And after I clean them up, they're usually faster than the new ones loaded down with crapware that they bought to replace them.
I buy power tools at garage sales or auctions, and I fix tools. I buy drill bits and such, with cash.

I use my debit card to get cash out of cash machines. I believe the card works as a 'credit' card when I buy stuff online, but that's only about once a year. Otherwise, I try to only use plastic where I deliberately want the company to have to pay extra for my transaction. It's a sort of mild punishment for bad companies.

But I certainly harbor no illusions that 'everybody' lives like me. It always seems to me that this attitude comes with narrowminded extremism, like the sixties radicals, or the eighties neoNazis, or the current wingnuts, that thought 'everybody' was ready for violent revolution.

You should get out more.

[AnneD]

34. They don't take ..

credit cards at auctions. And you can't barter with them. Yes I have a debit card that I use in lieu of a credit card if I need but honestly, my net worth went up the minute I got credit cards out of my life. If you have a credit card in your wallet, mega bank is picking your pocket.

[H2O Man]

21. Cash here.

I've never had a credit card. Never will.

[krispos42]

22. Total amount of gold mined in the history of mankind is 165,000 metric tons

That's 165,000,000 kilograms, or 5,304,873,189 troy ounces.

At $1,359 per troy ounce, that's $7,209,322,663,851. 7.21 trillion dollars. The global economy is over 50 trillion dollars annually.


Seems to me that the price of gold would have to increase by an order of magnitude in order to effectively cover everything.


A troy ounce weighs 480 grains exactly. Currently, a grain of gold (a tiny speck) is worth $2.83 Can you imagine trying to make a one-dollar coin out of a tenth of a grain of gold???

I imagine we'd have to make some kind of plastic disk with a barely visible speck imbedded in it or something.

[madinmaryland]

24. Un-reccing for posting Ron Paul talking points.

And what the fuck is wrong with people using checks. With the electronics today, retailers can basically verify the check will clear.

You come across as a wealthy puke with this thread. Get over yourself.

[Quantess]

25. I mostly use cash.

I find that I spend a lot less if I physically hand over the money. Plus, if I don't have enough cash with me to buy something, obviously I can't buy it, (at least not at the moment).

I don't carry a bank card or a credit card, either. Just a few dollars that I think will last me through the day.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

26. I like cash.

I use debit cards sometimes but like to use cash when I can.

[boppers]

27. I don't like being tracked that easily.

Checks and cards leave identity signatures that cash does not.

[JCMach1]

28. In fact, I am shorting gold as we speak...

Time to make some money off of the bubble...

[Warren DeMontague]

29. I pay my debts the old fashioned way

in seashells, beads, or livestock.

[AnneD]

35. Got pelts?????

:evilgrin:

[The Wizard]

30. Cash

knows no enemies.

[MadHound]

31. That works for you, that's nice

Others of us don't want to have every single purchase added to the database profile being kept on each and every one of us.

Therefore we use cash.

Not to mention that there are still places where plastic isn't welcome.

[hobbit709]

32. 90% of what I do is cash., I don't want the government or corps to know what I'm buying

I use my debit card when I get gas once a month. I write one check a month but I'll only have to do that twice more-goddamn mortgage company won't let me pay online unless I use automatic withdrawal and NO ONE gets that kind of access to my bank account.