paper money refused to die
In a world of credit cards, electronic cash transfers, and Bitcoin, you'd think paper money would be slowly heading toward extinction. Who needs hard cash in their wallets or purses anymore? When I'm out shopping I can pay for stuff by waving my phone, I don't even need credit cards, nothing has to touch
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Well, first off, the Germans somehow don't want to let go their hard cash, they stick to it because of some weird kind of "tradition".
So my argumentation chain comes from an area which still deals with cash to a fairly big amount in general, compared to other countries (Otherwise it wouldn't be emphasized ehre and then, would it?).
Hard cash is a good thing in poverty.
Why? Because social security services can check the activity of your bank account whenever they want to. It's a condition you sign up to when applying for those services.
At least I never had problems with a transaction being too big until now; when I was asked for "Where does this little amount of money come from?", then this was for money that suddenly appeared on my bank account statement with no origin detectable (this was money I paid in myself) - but still I do take care and try to rather avoid huge transactions through my bank account. For example, if buying something more expensive through the net, I'm happy if they offer the payment method "cash on delivery" because it completely passes my bank account.
Hard cash is also a means, as a poor person, to save some bit of money in that situation (if you can) - without anybody ever pointing at you "oooh, now you saved up enough money, so that you can live without us for a month or pay us some back what we've given you as social benefits over the last 10 years". There is no mechanism by which social security services can enforce to get enabled to check personal savings that you deposit at home. - I guess, they could only do that if there was a serious suspicion about you committing fraud to them, or if there was any other criminal investigation going on against you.
It's a way how you can do that because - if you spend all your hard cash during the month or if you could manage to have 50 bucks left in your pocket, nobody knows that for certain. Officially the money has been spent and it's gone.
Another thing that comes to mind for me, beside the illegal activities and businesses which can't be paid via electronic means: Hard cash as a reserve for pretty bad times.
Okay, this method is fucked if inflation goes up extremely... But otherwise, in times when banks go broke because their book money had been not offset with enough valuables, or because all people want to plunder their bank balance all at once, owning quite an amount of hard cash is a security in order to be able to pay for goods and services. (This could be very well observed as Cyprus was in a national financial crisis almost 10 years ago - if craftsmen or just stores that sold consumer goods, they didn't accept any book money and plastic cards anymore. Only hard cash. Because you couldn't be sure which bank was the next to be officially broke and you wouldn't even be going to see payment for your service! Hard cash was immediate payment that you could rely on.)
Who knows, maybe quite a chunk of people exactly puts its bets on hard cash because of that? Because they want to be in advantage when it all breaks down big style?
And, another issue from the practice with cash and plastic cards to pay... A plastic card or phone always looks the same, if you still have much or only few money left in your account. When your wallet slowly gets empty, you take notice of that visually without being able to take no notice of it.
That's also a thing you can call "lessons from poverty"... (If you behave smart, even as a poor person.)
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