WIFLI Briefing for Apr 16, 2012 - A Cashless Society May Be Closer Than Most People Would Ever Dare To Imagine

Welcome to this edition of Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing!

What is WIFLI?
You may be wondering what the acronym "WIFLI" means. I started out by calling these issues the Time 2 Escape Daily, but that didn't work out very well. I quickly learned that putting these issues together on a daily basis was a task I was unable to accomplish. To replace "Daily" in the title, I borrowed the acronym WIFLI, which literally means "When I Feel Like It." Putting together a post on this blog WIFLI works much better for my schedule, and for the higher quality of each issue that is eventually published!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This edition of the Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

WIFLI Briefing for Monday, Apr 16, 2012

SPECIAL EDITION:

A Cashless Society May Be Closer Than Most People Would Ever Dare To Imagine

Just as I was getting the latest Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing ready to post on April 10, Rick Santorum announced the end of his campaign. Since then, it was a pretty slow news week. So, I dared to do something a little different in this issue.

The subject matter for this WIFLI came to my attention during the "show prep" for my last edition. An email from one of the sources I subscribe to, Before It's News, alerted me to the lead story in this post.  My original thinking was to include that article in the "OUTSIDE of the BOX" section of the WIFLI Briefing I was currently working on.  But before I knew it, I found even more related material that I wanted to include, as you will see below.  The WIFLI Briefing for Apr 10, 2012 was already long enough, and so I decided to dedicate this briefing exclusively to the cashless society issue, which was actually reported on by mainstream news venues.

Thanks to author David Wolman, most of the material provided in this briefing was published in the last several weeks. His book, "The End of Money," provided several mainstream news sources with up-to-date information about the coming demise of currency and coins that became feature stories on their networks. This was an anomaly, because the subject of "cashless society" seemed to be on the fringes that you would only see in the New Media (alternative news sources), mostly because of the fact that it had been tied to the end times prophecies professed by evangelical ministries.

It seems that has now all changed. When you see the following stories, you may get chills down your spine - for one reason or another. As you will read and see in the stories and videos I have provided in this special edition, there are both advantages and possible hazards that could result from the end of what we consider as "cash" - currency and coins.

For the cheerleaders of a cashless society - banks and governments - one of the "advantages" they espouse is:

Cash is favored by criminals because it does not leave a paper trail. Eliminating cash would make it much more difficult for drug dealers, prostitutes and other criminals to do business.

That sounds so obvious, doesn't it? That sounds like a plausible argument for the elimination of cash. However, the fact is, the criminal elements in society will move to other crimes that don't involve the necessary use of cash for illegal transactions, or the need for armed robberies. Criminal activities are now moving toward cyber-crime, i.e. identity theft and internet scams. Kent Lawson wrote a column on April 9, 2012, called "Why Internet Crime Actually Does Pay." In the article, Kent reports that such crimes as bank robbery have a high risk for the criminals, being that nearly 25% of the bank robbers are caught, convicted, and spend hard time in prison. And how about the cyber criminals? Read this:

In 2011, the FBI reported that 300,000 identity theft victims lost a combined $1.1 billion to Internet criminals. That’s an average of about $3,666 per victim, which is about half the rate the average bank robber makes per robbery.

But here’s the important detail: the typical Internet criminal commits literally thousands of these crimes and almost never gets caught. And those who do get caught hardly spend any time in jail.

That kind of blows a hole in the theory that a cashless society will suffer less from crime. The crime stats (as reported by Roger Grimes) show many more victims with cyber crimes and much less risk for the perpetrators.

There is a reason for many people to be hesitant or even very nervous when it comes to the end of cash. The concern is well deserved when it comes down to why governments would want to demonize the use of cash:

Most of all, a cashless society would give governments more control. Governments would be able to track virtually all transactions and would also be able to monitor tax compliance much more closely.

Think about it: The days of cheating on your taxes by understating your income in a cashless society would be gone forever. (Please note: Most of you that will file your taxes tomorrow wouldn't consider doing that anyway, as you are probably aware of how the U.S. federal government finally took down the notorious gangster Al Capone - which was accomplished long BEFORE the use of electronic transactions!)

But other than keeping tax cheating to a minimum, could there be something more insidious about the kind of control the government could have with a cashless economy? Do you think that Big Brother could end up with a lot more control over our lives? Could it mean less freedom for us? Those are questions that come to my mind and part of the reason why I am posting this special edition to the Time 2 Escape WIFLI Briefing.

As you probably realize by now, and for sure by the time you are done examining this post, the use of cash will eventually be a thing of the past. Society is steadily moving in that direction, and has been for years. However, it does appear as though the trend is picking up speed, and it IS coming closer than most people realize. It could be a very short period of time now, at least in the developed parts of the world. And if you are against eliminating cash, I have some bad news for you: I do not believe there is anything you can do about it! Sure, there will be "extremist" cyber terrorists out there that may try to attack the global banking and electronic money systems, but they won't succeed in the end. Governments and the banking industry are vastly stepping up the cyber security that is necessary to prevent such attacks. For the individual, the average citizen, about the only thing we can do is to try to keep our identities protected from cyber theft to the best of our abilities.

In the mean time, for what it's worth, is that for many people, the belief that a cashless society is a necessary event in the End Time prophecies. Yes, of course, I had that in mind when preparing this publication. At the end of this edition is a youtube video of an Irvin Baxter discussion on this topic. It will give you an added perspective to consider when taking in this WIFLI Briefing. It gave me the motivation and a purpose to publish this WIFLI Briefing! I'm just sayin'...

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A Cashless Society May Be Closer Than Most People Would Ever Dare To Imagine
From BEFORE IT'S NEWS ~ Mar 29, 2012 6:37

Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?

Those are very important questions, but most of the time both sides of the issue are not presented in a balanced way in the mainstream media. Instead, most mainstream news articles tend to trash cash and talk about how wonderful digital currency is.

For example, a recent CBS News article declared that soon we may not need "that raggedy dollar bill" any longer and that the "greenback may soon be a goner"....

... READ MORE ...

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Canada drops the penny
From Fox News FEATURED VIDEOS ~ Apr 7, 2012

Will US follow suit?

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

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Author envisions a cash-free world in years to come
From CTV NEWS ~ CTVNews.ca Staff ~ Mar 22, 2012, 7:04 PM ET

What would life be like without money?

In his new book, "The End of Money," author David Wolman tackles that intriguing question for 21st-century citizens.

Author DAVID WOLMAN

Wolman was able to answer that question after traveling the world and spending one year avoiding the use of bills and coins in his day-to-day life.

"It really wasn't that hard, up until those handful of occasions when it was totally impossible," Wolman said on Thursday on CTV's Canada AM.

From farmers' markets to shoe shine stalls, Wolman came across environments where only cash would seal a deal, even in today's age of smartphones and online technologies.

Even paying his babysitter became awkward.

"I tried to convince her dad to open a PayPal account, but he said no," Wolman said as he spoke via satellite from Portland, Oregon.

Incidents such as these often mystified Wolman, who had become "outraged" in recent years by the high costs attached to producing coins in the United States.

"A few years ago, I was reading about the lopsided economics of producing coinage, especially pennies and nickels," said Wolman.

"Right now, here in the States it costs more than the value stamped on these things," he said.

That imbalance inspired the contributing editor to "Wired" to write a tongue-and-cheek article for the American publication about living in a world without money.

"The response was thundering," said Wolman.

In the book that followed, Wolman presents an entertaining history of money across the ages.

... READ MORE ...

RELATED VIDEO:
In the column above, there is a video with David Wolman being interviewed by CTV News. Unfortunately, that video does not include the embedding code in order to share it here in this blog. (If you click on READ MORE to read the entire column, you can then see that video there!) So, instead, I have found the following video for an interview of David Wolman on youtube.com, which you can view below.

Are We Moving Towards a Cashless Society?

Video provided by TheAlyonaShow ~ Mar 14, 2012

Have you ever wondered if one day, cold, hard cash, will simply cease to exist? As more transactions are carried out via credit, online or on your smart phone, paper money and coins have become an inconvenience. David Wolman, author of the "The End of Money" went one year without using cash, with a few exceptions; he joins the show to discuss.

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Why cash is losing its currency
From CBSNews Sunday ~ Mar 25, 2012 @ 9:24 AM

For generations now, storekeepers have been making change by taking bills and coins out of the cash register drawer. Now many experts say changing technology is nickel-and-diming old-fashioned cash out of existence. So is cash a relic of a bygone era? Our Cover Story is reported by Lee Cowan:


It's what the wallet was invented for, to carry cash. After all, there was a time when we needed cash everywhere we went, from filling stations to pay phones. Even the tooth fairy dealt only in cash.

But money isn't just physical anymore. It's not only the pennies in your piggy bank, or that raggedy dollar bill.

Money is also digital - it's zeros and ones stored in a computer, prompting some economists to predict the old-fashioned greenback may soon be a goner.

"There will be a time - I don't know when, I can't give you a date - when physical money is just going to cease to exist," said economist Robert Reich.

Economists like Reich say the demise of cash has been happening ever since our financial fortunes could first be told by a piece of plastic with a magnetic strip.

That was half a century ago - and now? "95 percent of the transactions in America, or more, have nothing to do with physical pieces of paper or coins," Reich said.

Think about it. Parking meters, taxis, tolls, even Girl Scout cookies don't require cash anymore, all proof (argue some) that cash's days are numbered.

"Everyone thinks cash is so simple and so easy and so fast and so secure. It's NONE of those things," said author David Wolman. In his new book, "The End of Money," he argues the biggest knock against cash is that it's costly.

"It's really expensive to move it, store it, secure it, inspect it, shred it, redesign it, re-supply it, and round and round we go!" Wolman said.

It already costs the U.S. government almost TWICE as much to make a penny and a nickel, than they're actually WORTH.

But that's only one cost. Wolman says cash is also the currency of crime - drug deals, bribes, and bank robberies.

And there's something else: It's not particularly clean.

"I'm right there with you," Wolman agreed. "It's pretty gross!

... READ MORE ...

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A Cashless Society

Video provided by endtimeministries on Dec 15, 2011

Endtime Ministries presents an excerpt of the December 14th show with Irvin Baxter. Visit Endtime.com for more information about Endtime Ministries.

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Don't be afraid!

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