Skip to main content

Life imitating art

Just like the Visa commercial depicted below, the seemingly efficiently flowing checkout line, Edie and I were standing in at our local Costco today, came to an abrupt stop, when the couple in front of us, decided they would pay cash for a $900 Visio LCD TV.



Now while these people did not appear to be criminals or otherwise trying to evade paying taxes, non the less, when someone pays cash for a TV worth $900, it sure raises suspicion with me.

It obviously raised suspicion with the Costco personnel as well, since the cashier had to call for a supervisor to approve the transaction.  Not only that, but the cashier inspected each bill to ensure it wasn't counterfeit, after which both individuals (the cashier and supervisor), counted the payment at least 3 times, to be certain of its accuracy. Then the cashier had to close his register, while the supervisor collected the cash to transfer off the floor, before reopening the register, to check out customers in what now had become a pretty substantial line.

Haven't these people ever heard of a credit card? You get to use the banks money, at least for a little while for free, and many times you get points which can be exchanged for cash, trips and many other different things.

I just don't understand why the government doesn't mandate the use of debit or credit cards.

At a minimum, it would speed things along at the check out counter, do away with the underground economy, make the IRS's job of collecting taxes much simpler, eliminate losses due to counterfeiting, and it would do away with the need for the US Mint, all of which would save the government countless billions of dollars.

It might even save the government enough money to provide health care for everyone living in the US [like in every other civilized country in the world].

Labels:

Comments

Claude (France) said…
Hi Marc,
I agree fully with you, in France it is worse !
some pay taxes and other throw the money by the windows !
Keep riding,
Claude
6:43 PM
Alan Posner said…
Marc,

While I always use credit cards (for the reason you mentioned), keep in mind that merchants pay the credit card companies 2% on each transaction. Who do you think really pays that 2%? It's an extra 2% tax on the consumer, even if he uses cash.

Bottom line is that the Credit Card companies are sucking 2% of our consumer economy.

Alan
9:14 PM
Becky said…
I always use cash at Independent Stores for books, music or yarn, or write a check rather than use my debit card. And when John does a side for someone that we don't know very well, we cash the check at the bank where the check was issues from and then just use the cash. It's a pain in the butt to go inside TWO banks and I don't trust an ATM with large sums of cash. Some people have bad credit and don't have credit cards and some people like my mother buys everything with cash because she doesn't believe in credit cards. You should have seen the greenhorn salesman when she paid cash for a brand new car.
3:21 AM
Marc said…
Alan, while I do agree there is a direct cost to the price of goods, the indirect benefit received from the elimination of the untold billions of unpaid taxes, due to the underground economy, and the elimination of losses by businesses due to counterfeiting, far out weighs any such cost impact.
4:30 AM
Marc said…
Oh yeah and Becky, if we did away with cash, John wouldn't have to cash a check, the money would just automatically be deposited in to your account, and you wouldn't even have to go to one bank.

It will eventually happen, just probably not in my lifetime.
6:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fatigue! Part II - Maybe it is real?

Or it's actually Motivational Deficiency Disorder, MoDeD (pronounced Mo-Dee-Dee) for short. In a report this week by Roy Moynihan who reports for the British Medical Journal Austrailian scientists may have come across the reason for extreme laziness . The condition is claimed to affect up to one in five Australians and is characterised by overwhelming and debilitating apathy. Neuroscientists at the University of Newcastle in Australia say that in severe cases motivational deficiency disorder can be fatal, because the condition reduces the motivation to breathe. Neurologist Leth Argos is part of the team that has identified the disorder, which can be diagnosed using a combination of positron emission tomography and low scores on a motivation rating scale, previously validated in elite athletes. "This disorder is poorly understood," Professor Argos told the BMJ. "It is underdiagnosed and undertreated." Who knew? Maybe I have MoDeD, from my attempts to become a...
Post a Comment
Read more

My concerns reaffirmed today

When I was first diagnosed with MCL, I pretty much read just about everything I could get my hands on, I attended various conferences, and I talked to anyone who would listen. One of the most important lessons I learned, and which I've mentioned numerous times before was No one cares more about you than you. But in addition to that, I learned to fear the drug Doxorubicin , AKA Adriamycin, Doxil, Hydroxydoxorubicin, or more affectionately the Red Devil. Besides being a deadly chemical, as is the case with most chemotherapy drugs, it is one of the few chemotherapy drugs known to cause permanent heart damage. I even heard Dr. Sandra Horning , a noted Stanford lymphoma specialist, state at the first lymphoma conference I attended in LA, there was no evidence Doxorubicin provided any added benefit to chemotherapy protocols. This was music to my ears, since Doxorubicin is very common in most lymphoma treatment protocols. And even though Dr. Horning has since changed her tune [which my sk...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tacitly condoning racism?

I learned something very discouraging in my current events class yesterday, there are a lot more racists and bigots out there then you may think. They may not admit it, or they'll claim otherwise, but when someone says they place the blame for what happened in Charlottesville on both sides, or better yet, they don't know where the blame lays, then they are condoning the action of the white supremacists groups, and in my book that is a racist/bigot. The truth is, there should be no doubt where blame for Charlottesville lays. It lays with the white supremacists, neo-Nazi's, KKK, etc, plain and simple! The hatred, bigotry, and misogyny displayed and espoused by these groups, coupled with the tacit approval of President Trump needs to be confronted at all cost, and history tells us so. If only the Jews, in pre-WWII Germany, had confronted the Nazi's in the same manner, Hitler might never have risen to power, and we would not be looking at the prospect of a  third anti...
Post a Comment
Read more