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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   30803 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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The reason the US doesn't have large bills is because it's convenient for the government that we don't, not because they weren't "needed".

Agreed. Governments hate cash for the same reason they hate crypto; it enables people to escape their control. The state can't get of the cash yet, but they are sure as fuck not going to make it more convenient to use by printing bigger bills. Instead, it will watch as inflation slowly makes the $100 bill as irrelevant as the penny.

From "In Praise of Cash" by Brett Scott:

The psychological assault is working. The Netherlands – where I face my vending machine – has become one key front in the war on cash. Here cash is becoming viewed like an illegal alien on the run, increasingly excluded from the formal economy, drawing dirty looks from shop assistants. Signs say ‘Card only’. Who is Card? Card is a glamorous socialite, welcomed into stores. Card is superior. Look at the bank adverts showcasing their accessories for Card. Nobody is building accessories for Cash.

The frontlines, though, are now creeping to poorer countries. India’s recent so-called ‘demonetisation’ was a brutal overnight retraction of rupee notes by the prime minister Narendra Modi to bring discipline to the ‘black economy’. It was an exercise that necessitated choking the poorest Indians, who depend on cash and who often lack access to bank accounts. Originally cast in popular terms as an attempt to stem corruption, the message was later ironically altered to cast cashlessness as a way to create economic progress for India’s poor.

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