Change is inevitable except from vending machines. Fact is more people carry cash than what the credit card, debit card, bank card, and internet sales companies want carrying cash and thus keep telling the lie to make people think they shouldn’t be carrying cash. Same with how many people get all their information and entertainment and do all their buying by internet. It is still less than half the people in the US, but they want it to be more. So they keep saying what they want in hopes it will happen to their advantage. Yes, the more affluent maybe uses more cards than cash, and those who travel a lot or those who can afford to stockpile money someplace instead of meting it out in small and accountable amounts. The money mongers have a bandwagon and they want you to jump on…and bring your cash and use their cards…
I think the place we want to get to for transportation tickets is an RFID card. Many transit agencies use them, but you can expand use to cover multiple agencies. The highway analogue would be the EasyPass.
The Breeze card in Atlanta is MARTA’s creation but also works on suburban buses operated by CCT, GCT and GRTA as well as handling transfers between MARTA and the bus network. You have to “load” your Breeze Card with the products you want. Commuters can get monthly or mulitride discounted trips and occasional riders can buy single trips or cash value on the card. You can do it online or at a MARTA vending machine.
OV Chipkaart in NL handles local transit, regional trains and intercity trains. You can connect it to your Dutch bank account and then just load it with the trips you want at vending machines.
Theoretically, this could solve the multi-agency trip problem in the Northeast - with a little help from an integrated point of sale web site/vending machine. You want to go from Greenport LI to Radonor PA? No sweat. Put in the origin and destinations and time you want to go (ala DB Bahn), select your particular trip, and all the bits and pieces of trips you need get loaded to your card. LIRR, Amtrak (or NJT) and SEPTA all get paid their part without you having to deal with each agency independently.
Why not?
+1
But…how’s that going to work in a strip joint?
[:#] Oh boy! Did I just say that out loud? [8)]
Somehow I have doubts that $1, in either bill or coin form, is of very much use in a strip club. [*-)]
Make it hail?
I’d much rather carry 10 or 20 $1 PAPER bills in my wallet than 10 or 20 $1 METAL coins… I’d need both a belt AND suspenders to do that. I could not afford the indecent exposure citations!
They really need to make a piece of paper that can replace 10 or 20 $1 paper bills… [:-^]
Unless you are going to the same club as Murphy, I guess.
Well… I have some shopping to do…
So I go to the ATM to get $100 cash and it spits out 5 $20 bills.
I go to the hardware store and buy some weed killer, it costs $15.99.
I have 5 $20 bills in my pocket.
I cannot pay the bill with anything but one of the $20 bills,
so I pay with a $20 bill,
and I get 4 ones and a penny in change.
I go to the Gas Station and buy gas, it comes to $15.99.
I have 4 $20 bills,4 $1 bills and a penny in my pocket.
I cannot pay the bill with all them ones and pennies,
so I pay with a $20 bill,
and I get 4 ones and a penny in change.
I go to the grocery to get bread, buns and a package of hot-dogs, the total cost is $15.99.
I have 3 $20 bills, 8 $1 bills and 2 pennies in my pocket.
I cannot pay the bill with all them ones and pennies,
so I pay with a $20 bill,
and I get 4 ones and a penny in change.
I go to the Hobby shop and buy the latest issue of Trains magazine and a couple of other special issues, the bill is $15.99.
I have 2 $20 bills, 12 $1 bills and 3 pennies in my pocket.
I cannot pay the bill with all them ones and pennies,
so I pay with a $20 bill,
and I get 4 ones and penny in change.
I go to the burge
If your bill is $15.99, pay with $21, and you’d get a $5 bill and a penny back as change!
Plus you’ll confuse the heck out of the clerk.
Confuse the clerk my left foot! It causes the cashier to call the manager over and he THREATENED me with arrest for trying to bilk the cashier with some sort of swicheroo scam.
You can thank your local school system that thinks calculators are learning tools. Calculators are not needed, ever! And if you enter $21 in the cash register it will show you how much change to issue.
Cash cannot be turned down – it is “legal tender”.
Calculators? Do they even use them anymore?
But I never had a problem finding a way to dump my ones. To each his own, I guess.
Many Bars and Dive Joints in Western PA wont take Debit cards for poured drinks. Especially in small boroughs in coal and the half dead steel towns. They look at a city boy with a debit card like I am from outer space[alien]. The reason I believe is that the bars around here have been in existence before during and after prohibition and as such have always been under the table and kept 2 or more sets of books.Its frustrating for me who is used to going to a corner store and getting a cold one. Now that I am working in PA I have to go into a smelly dive beer that stinks of stale pee and puke just to get my daily 40 ounce and get charged 3 times the price for the privilege. Now they will point to a in house ATM with a huge fee.
Getting a beer or a 6 pack to go before I get on the train in PGH means that I have to go blocks out of my way from Penn Station. At Genoa Pizza- http://goo.gl/maps/8ipls @ Market& 1st 12 Blocks from Pittsburgh Penn Station…Dont eat anything there if u want to live just get your beer and go Now I bet my counterparts in Philly dont have the same problem
Oddly enough, I’ve been there. A week before Christmas one year, I was paying for some stuff at a local drug store chain. Among the bills I had given the clerk was a 1 dollar bill with a sticker on it. In the place of George Washington’s face was an old time, Thomas Nast type Santa Claus. The clerk wigged out and called the manager over, thinking she had apprehended a counter fitter. As the bemused manager pulled off the sticker, the clerk kept insisting that they call the cops. [oX)]
All these proposals about going cashless is to keep the accountants happy and the people that sell the software to make it happen. “Money” from the transaction goes right from the transaction site to the data base, no muss, no fuss. No sending someone out to collect the cash, count it, sort it, transport it, or any other hassles involved with cash, security or other wise.
Me? I pay cash, all the time. It’s instantly recognizable and always welcome. Besides, I’m probably saving some jobs too. Hey, us workin’ stiffs got to look out for each other, right?
Anyway, the late great Chicago columnist Mike Royko said it best: “There’ll NEVER be a cashless society. Why? How are you going to do ‘off the books’ in a cashless society?”
You can infer what he meant by that.
I loved Mike Royko!
Am I missing something?
Have you forgotten or are you too young to remember Susan B.s? Every man I ever ran into hated them because they were heavy in trouser pockets (before jeans were the thing) and put holes in the fabric. And purses are heavy enough with all the “necessities”. And everyone crabbed about not knowing if they were a quarter or a dollar.
So they went into pig banks and never circulated much at all.
And remember the $2 bill? Went nowhere! And have you remembered, forgotten or never knew about the Sacagawea dollar?
I use a debit card. They give me a receipt which is entered every day in my bank book, I don’t have to carry lots of cash and heavy change, and 99% of the time they are used accurately. Only once that it wasn’t and it was to my benefit. Those receipts show up every day on my bank statement!
The supermarket chain we shop at collects money for a local food program and ask you to round up. So, I usually do within the dollar, up 1 cent to 99 cents to round off to an even dollar whether I pay with cash or debit card. But the kids can’t count, can’t add, can’t subtract even when I tell them how much to add! If I say round up the 72 cents they might do it in increments of pennies and nickels then end up over the dollar limit then have to call their managers to untangle the machines. It’s hysterical if it weren’t so sad.
Sometimes I think “they” watned those coins to fail because they had a woman on them. The good ol’ boys club and all…
I remember Susan B’s! When they came out I gave the first one I recieved to Lady Firestorm. Then I made a joke about it. Lady Firestorm indeed! She’s quite the feminist, don’t ya know. Ow.
How could I forget Susan B’s? Anyway, they should have put Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the coin. Ever see a picture of Lizzie Stanton? She looked like she was a lot of fun to be with. Susan B. Anthony looked like a real sourpuss. Or maybe they should have put Amelia’s bloomers on it?
And Henry, your sad tale reminded me of something I asked a friend once: “Hey Danny, are they making kids dumber and uglier now, or is it me getting older?”
“They’re makin’ 'em dumber and uglier!”
“Thanks man, I just wanted to be sure!”