I want to point out to everyone a phenomenon I personally first noticed around the middle of 2011. A hat tip to you, if you’ve noticed it also.
It was probably the Fall, right around the time when I was getting my face clobbered by the energy-short-gone-wrong that I pulled into a gas station and realized, “holy shit, there are two prices listed on the sign for the same octane.”
And indeed, there were.
One of those prices was for cash, and one of those prices was for credit.
This is a fantastic experience, which is crowded out by the seeming innocuousness of the observation. In the age of credit and computerized transactions, the good, old fashioned ledger book and under the table trade is winning out.
And why shouldn’t it? Cash transactions are excellent, in their ability to afford the cashier certain “leeway” in interpreting just how, when, and under what conditions said transaction took place.
Did that gasoline get sold when the price was $3.99 a gallon, or $3.88? If both prices were witnessed between refilling of the tanks, who’s to say? Plus, those convenience fees that are allocated to the extenders of the credit, those nickels and dimes, are wiped out, buffering the salespersons bottom line.
I want everyone to recognize how important this is. The single greatest outcome from digitalized transactions was the transparency of auditing. With all cash transactions, auditing begins to become, not opaque, but certainly more translucent.
It’s no wonder that the FBI put out a warning not long ago on the “terrorist nature” of all cash spending. Cash transactions will hit local, state, and federal budgets, while taking huge sums of money into black markets and out of the controlled circulation of bank transactions and financial circles. It undermines economic policy from the Federal Reserve. It strengthens the dollar, while causing the potential to impair debtors and their delicately balanced loan maturities.
In that sense, all cash transactions are a key sign of economic degradation, like carrion birds marking a carcass.
It will be interesting to see whether this phenomenon continues for long, or if at some point incentives or underhanded government strong arming attempts to force these transactions back into electronic form.
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Ended the day up .8%
See example of Greece for how ‘Cash Backed Translucent Auditing’ pans out
I think you might be reading too much into this. Visa and Mastercard rape businesses to the tune of >3%/transaction. Methinks it’s just a way to either pass along the savings or charge for the convenience.
Oh definitely that’s part of it. But that’s not all – those other things I mentioned are happening to.
From the few gas station owners I’ve known, I can imagine they all love the idea of going back to cash businesses.
Paying with cash prevents some kinds of so-called identity theft. A cash card does likewise (e.g. a BP gift card).
One of the greatest feelings I ever had was paying cash for my vehicle over here in Thailand. Walked into the dealership with $50k in local currency. The largest denomination is a 1,000 baht note. Dumped out 15x stacks each with 100 of those notes. I felt like I was living in a hip hop video.
If it wasn’t punishable by a long prison sentence (and a sure fire ass kicking by the locals) I might have lit up one of those notes to get a cigar started.
Hahaha is it really illegal?
Makes sense. Bullshitters absolutely hate when you call their meaningless promises.
Yes, it is a big deal over here since the currency has the King’s portrait on the front. Anything anti-monarchy here gets you in a world of shit and a previously mentioned ass kicking. The people here are serious about this stuff.