Cold cash is not what it used to be by Tony Green

Image of a twenty dollar bill

On this particular Sunday afternoon I took with my son to see a movie and while as we waited in the ticket line the women ahead of me mentioned she had sent her daughter home to get cash since the machine which processed debit/ credit cards was not working.

I thought to myself, “Are you kidding me?”

A few moments before I reached the booth to purchase our tickets the machine came back up. The incident made me think how cashless our society is nowadays. In my case, there are months where I go without using any cash as all.

How can this be? With the use of debit cards, and even using written checks has been reduced a large amount with the implementation of online payment of bills. Will we as a society ever become 100% cashless?

My initial thought would be, as with any electronics based technology, the possibility of a problem with either losing you electronic method of payment or a glitch in technology which would preclude your access to your money. Wouldn’t cash be nice to be able to use in that situation?

Time will tell but if we were to ever get rid of all printed money, what would the mint do with all of the cash?  Another issue which might arise is what happened if a bank was not readily accessible?

As a youngster growing up in Philly before you could open a checking account you needed to take your paycheck to a check cashing place which after a slight deduction for the service of cashing your check you had your wages represented in a pocket full of cold cash.

The future of printed money might be academic. People have bartered and exchanged goods with each other since the beginning of civilization.  The value of these commodities later became what we know today as cash. Since hand- to-hand transactions will probably not disappear it would be hard to imagine an electronic based method of commerce.

With that in mind cash might never fall out of use permanently but still is not what is used to be.