.“Even If Not Intentional Discrimination, It’s Still Discrimination.”
“Even If Not Intentional Discrimination, It’s Still Discrimination.”
Posted in Dinar Recaps Archives on 8/2/2019
Going Cashless Looks More and More Like a Capitalist Scam
By Ankita Rao Mar 22 2019
Paper vs Plastic
Lawmakers argue bans on cashless stores could protect tens of millions of Americans without access to credit cards.
When Bluestone Lane decided to go cashless, the people running the coffee franchise were thinking of efficiency.
“Cash takes time,” said Andy Stone, vice president of brand marketing and events at the company, which was inspired by cafe culture in Australia.
“In New York, nobody wants to be waiting in line.” There’s also the counting of cash, the moving and transferring of it in actual trucks, which can be vulnerable to theft.
And, Stone noted, the transparency question. “Whatever comes into the system, comes into the system. It’s better for society if we pay more taxes.”
Bluestone is far from the only business allowing solely plastic or digital payments in a country where, a Federal Reserve report last fall estimated, credit and debit cards were used in 48 percent of consumer transactions in 2017.
But in the past several months, local and state governments have moved to resist this trend, citing concerns that a cashless economy could discriminate against the roughly 6.5 percent of US households—disproportionately young, low-income people of color—without bank accounts, and hike up the cost of goods to account for credit card fees.
In early March, Philadelphia became the first major US city to ban cashless businesses.
A couple of weeks later, the state of New Jersey followed suit, becoming the second state to ban virtually all cashless businesses after Massachusetts, which has had a policy in place since the 1970s.
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