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The Pros And Cons Of A Cashless Society

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2.1 Toward a Cashless Society In this article, the writer Elizabeth Kolar (1993) discusses the progress towards cashlessness and its relevance to free banking. Contemporary discussion of likely changes has focused increasingly on the possibility of a cashless society. The technology for such a society exists. However, the benefits of cashlessness are not yet perceived to outweigh the supposed disadvantages. A cashless society would mean, of course, the absence of currency and coin. Therefore, a cashless society could mean a barter society in which commodities were traded for commodities. However, barter would represent a major step backward. The cashless society envisioned and discussed herewith refers instead to the widespread application of computer technology in the financial system. Increasingly, funds are being transferred via an “Electronic Funds Transfer System” (EFTS). The amount of transactions and information have increased so rapidly during the last decades, so it is impossible to even think about …show more content…

currency supply in circulation with the public reveals that predictions of the advent of the "cashless society" are unfounded. Despite financial innovations giving rise to convenient substitutes for cash, per capita cash holdings continue to increase and by the end of 2011, amounted to $3000 for every man woman and child residing in the U.S. While this figure does not comport with our common sense notion of how many dollars the average person holds in her wallet, we show that Europeans and Japanese citizens hold even larger amounts of cash. Two explanations are offered for these large cash holdings. The first posits that a large fraction of U.S. currency is held abroad, the second that large amounts of cash are employed to undertake transactions that individuals and firms prefer to hide from the government either to avoid taxes, regulations or punishment for illegal

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