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| ▲ | bigfishrunning 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If your margins are so razor thin that the cost of handling cash is significant, you need to raise your prices. Cash is legal tender -- not accepting it for in-person transactions is really shitty (maybe shouldn't be allowed?) | | |
| ▲ | 9x39 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > you need to raise your prices. And if the competitor doesn't? Ouch. I think there should be a "digital equivalency act" or something to hamper full digital capture, but my feelings aside, there's a few powers that dislike cash: Free people like cash, but businesses with low-skill/low-trust workers dislike cash because despite the CC fees, there is less theft, less overhead with cash reconciliation, cameras to watch cash with, less safes to manage, less cash pickup services. The IRS hates it because there is a cash industry (as there should be, imo, but I'm injecting too much opinion already) that doesn't report earnings. I personally know barbers, housecleaners, handymen that admit to reporting no or few earnings, and synthesize a living off cash and benefits. If you stop paying taxes, this actually works pretty well compared to a low-end tax-paying job. My housecleaner takes overseas vacations (like, thrifty ones in hostels) 2-3 times a year this way. Banks (arguably the IRS again, deputizing them with KYC) squint at you when you deposit or withdraw significant cash - ask any weed industry participants. Untrackable currency is a natural catch-all for people they don't want to bank with, so it's just friction and headache naturally. | |
| ▲ | leothecool 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can't even get coins counted for free at retail banks anymore. Cash handling is too expensive even for the place that ostensibly provides cash handling services to the general public. | | |
| ▲ | speed_spread 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just make all your prices round up to the nearest dollar bill after tax. Eliminate coins at the source. |
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| ▲ | razakel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "Legal tender" only means it must be accepted to settle a debt. | | |
| ▲ | rdiddly 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Walking out of the store with groceries generates a debt, no? | | |
| ▲ | phainopepla2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I believe that's more likely to generate a criminal charge | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Then how about paying after ordering and eating a meal? | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Depends. If there was a posted notice that no cash is accepted it's unlikely you'll get a criminal charge, but you can get civilly sued. Most places will just accept the cash then put up a picture saying "If this asshole shows up again, trespass him" |
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| ▲ | fragmede 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can't go into a store with a gun and demand the cash out of the register if there is no cash. | | |
| ▲ | skrtskrt 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The actual cost is shrinkage from general human accounting mistakes and all the extra time it takes to manage. I worked at the gym in college and we sold like one item a day and it was still a whole bunch of work and pain to keep up on the cash counts correct. I definitely believe that all businesses should take cash as much as is reasonable, but logistically it is understandable why some choose not to | |
| ▲ | bigfishrunning 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You shouldn't do that anyway; also, you can't skim a credit card I'm not using/carrying. There are crime arguments on both sides. |
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| ▲ | whamlastxmas 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks. If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail. | | |
| ▲ | bigfishrunning 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If everyone has to accept cash, then everyone has the same costs and the point is moot. At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender, and I think that requirement ought to extend to businesses as well. | | |
| ▲ | angoragoats an hour ago | parent [-] | | > At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender Assuming you’re talking about the US here: there is no such requirement, at least not at the federal level. Individual states may have their own laws, but see for example this notice [0] from a Texas federal court that they will no longer accept cash as of May 21, 2021. [0] https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-long... |
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| ▲ | underlipton 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The real problem for those businesses is way upstream of payment processing costs, namely in the cost of business loans, the general poverty of the American consumer, and (for brick-and-mortars) zoning. The latter is a matter of getting municipalities to relax restrictions put in place mid-century literally to support segregation, and the former two are a matter of forcing the wealthy to eat the costs of their poor decisions from the last few decades, rather than continuing to allow them to socialize related losses through avenues like scandalously low labor pay vis a vis productivity and various investment/asset market scams (which, through housing and passive retirement investment, they've roped in Boomers and older Gen-Xers). If you wish to make an apple pie shop from scratch, you must first invent an economy that isn't hamstrung by legacy obligations from ventures that people who are long-dead somehow were allowed to finance with your paycheck. (Somewhere, a middle-aged nepo-baby is clutching her pearls at the thought, and I just think we should cherish, rather than shy from, the opportunity to throw her and her siblings under the bus.) |
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