c2R is correct. We were taken off the gold standard in 1933, and finalized in 1964 or so. Our money is backed by absolutly nothing.

I've got the palm of my hand backing a twenty dollah bill and my wallet backing a few more liar!:p

well it is backed by the percieved value from ever citizen on the planet. So long as people put value to the american or any dollar it will continue to have value.

I said it was a simplified example.

...and what's more interesting is that cash is going away in the US. Not this year, mind you. But within the next century, everything will be as it almost is today...credit cards and debit cards and token cards (for phone services, games, etc.), except with a marked absence of the one thing I never carry any of myself. Cash. Everything I use in this world takes Visa and/or AMEX except (occasionally) one thing...vending machines; and now even those are more commonly being seen with card slots.

As transaction expenses became so low that the average citizen can now use their debit card for the most menial, cheeseburger, book of stamps and Coca-Cola items thousands of times per month, the expense is nearly transparent for banks. Which is why there are no longer per-transaction fees with many checking accounts for the use of bank cards anywhere.

And since everything down to toll booths and vending machines will have those ubiquitous little slots, cash will quite literally become obsolete.

And people who don't have checking accounts can even get paid nowadays with "pay cards"...rechargeable Visa cards or Mastercards, basically, which are "charged-up" automatically each pay period with the person's net salary. Then they can go spend it without having to pay check cashing fees, or pay their bills online like you can with any Visa/MC debit card.

We will not need cash to "back up" our economy, just as currently Federal Reserve Notes are no longer backed themselves by commodities. Even now, the entire US economy is in databases. Numbers. Software general ledgers. Financial transaction logs. Digital account registers. Soon there will be no need to keep anything in bank vaults except safe deposit boxes for family heirlooms.

Traditional muggings will also be rendered moot. A mugger would simply end up with a cashless wallet full of credit and debit cards that would be cancelled before he could make it across the street with them. And all of which would be insured anyway, just in case they're not cancelled in time.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) panhandling will also be affected...
"Hey buddy, spare a dollar?"
"Sure! Do you take Mastercard?"

Up to a few years ago, you needed a small "backup supply" of cash in your pocket, in case a credit card verification system wasn't working, or in case a vendor didn't accept plastic. But today my credit and debit cards are more reliable than cash. There are some automated cash receivers (like those on vending or change machines) that will spit a dollar bill back at me over and over, but card slots like those on gas pumps never spit my plastic back at me. Ever.

I just realized I lied before about not carrying cash...I've currently got five one-dollar bills in my wallet. They've been in there almost a year. I haven't added or removed any cash to/from my wallet in that amount of time. They'll probably start to decompose before I actually spend them.

And finally, the spread of disease may even be reduced ever-so-slightly when cash disappears. Money is dirty. People blow their noses and wipe their asses with it, for all I know.....and then I hold it in my hand, then use the same hand to hold food that goes into my mouth. And I don't have time to wash my hands 42 times a day to be immune to all the contact with cash I used to have. Not that I ever worried about any of that anyway, but it's interesting to think about.

On the other hand, no one touches my plastic but me. Well, it touches the inside of a swipe slot, which is also touched by other peoples' cards, but that's a lot more of an indirect transfer of germs, so I'll take my chances.

All our economy has ever really been is numbers. The difference is that soon it'll just be dropping the last remnant of tangibility it ever had, that's all. The plastic isn't a representation of money...only a tool for it's transfer. As for our economy: no more gold; no more reserve notes; no more coins. Only the numbers will remain.

And finally, as bills and coins are permanently replaced with electrons in computer databases, there will in turn be a change to our clichés...
"Dude, his new job pays nice coin."
...will become...
"Dude, his new job pays nice electron."
...well, OK, maybe not that. But you get my drift...

:)

wrong image

http://www.acclaimimages.net/_galler...13-1609_SM.jpg

;)

Known fact/myth that over 90% of all U.S. $'s have traces of Cocaine...Makes you wonder sometimes....

I lick them as much as possible:confused:

There is one reason I do not support a cashless economy, and that is private sale. If someone wants to just set up a booth at a discount lot, or have a yard sale, or do much of any selling a private person does, how will they do it?

Unless there's also a feeless, portable cardscanner in the works, I don't think it's very wise. It just tightens our dependence on the retail market...which I know is not any problem for people in high population-density areas, but becomes a larger one the farther away you get them.

It would seem that is the way we're heading. But I do agree that there would be a lot of unnecessary difficulty in exchanging small amounts of money between individuals.

paypal (o;

you can probably still write checks or something, people give money as a gift too often for this issue to not be taken into account in a cashless society.

Eh, that's what our capitalism looked like 150 years ago or so, it'll get there (and a lot faster than we did probably), you can't just start at the top, gotta build.

Staging accounts. Temporary bank accounts set up to hold an amount of money on record, to be withdrawn by a person with the associated pay card, or just by using an access code. After the money is transferred to another account or spent using the pay card, the staging account is closed.

All you IT people out there: Know what VM Ware is? Creating environments on the fly, then removing them and creating new ones? OK, think VM Ware for bank accounts.

Instead of checks, pay cards will be used. Rechargeable pay cards will become as ubiquitous as prepaid phone cards, and will be put into greeting cards by the thousands, just as checks are today.

And this is a good thing, because checks have much less security (they have the routing number and account number printed on them, for crying out loud, and can be easily copied or forged), and they are processed by banks much more slowly than direct account access provides.