The Dangers of a Cashless Society

Many conservatives and civil libertarians erroneously believed that the implementation of the ObamaCare bill would be the final nail in the coffin of a free society, which is why President Obama spent a full year trying so hard to implement it.  But I respectfully disagree.  Though it is part of the same big government scheme, the creation of a cashless society will be the endgame.  And the movement toward it has already begun.

In March, the government of Sweden announced that it would be moving toward establishing a cashless economy.  Other nations are examining the possibility of using new ways to rid their society of cash, as well as to identify and keep track of its citizens.

Biometric ID devices, or biometric authentication, can identify a human by specific characteristics and traits – fingerprints, iris scans, vein scans, DNA, voice recognition, facial recognition, and even behavior analysis.  These technologies presently exist and are being perfected every year.

The populous nation of India, with 1.25 billion people, announced recently that they were forming a biometric ID program for all Indian citizens.  Each person will be given a unique identification number that will be tied to biometric data, using the prints of all ten fingers, scans of the iris in both eyes, and facial photographs.

In this country, we are beginning to see an increased discussion about the usefulness of a cashless economy backed up with a biometric ID system.  But to impose it, the government must convince us of its benefits.  What reasons might our government have for moving us in the direction of Sweden and India in the future?

For one thing, such a system would be more convenient.  Think about how little you actually use cash today.  Money in circulation is on the decline, accounting for just 20 percent of all consumer spending.  More and more people are having paychecks direct deposited in their bank accounts, including 83 percent of Social Security recipients, and online payments are increasing every day.

According to Robert J. Samuelson, an economics writer for the Washington Post, card-swiping terminals are rapidly increasing, tripling over a recent six-year period, while card usage accounts for 65 percent of all food sales.

A cashless economy would cut down on violent crime, particularly robbery, with no cash to steal and, with no way to buy drugs without any cash, it would help end the war on drugs. Illegal immigrants would have a much tougher time surviving in a cashless society, since they would need biometric identification and would have to use the banking system, making it much harder to hide.

In addition to the illegal alien problem, with the use of biometric ID systems, crimes like identity theft and counterfeiting would virtually disappear.  Welfare and Social Security fraud would also be a thing of the past.

Presently, it costs the US government billions of dollars a year to maintain the cash in circulation.  Each year, over 9 billion individual bills are printed, 95 percent of which is used to replace worn out currency, not to inject into the economy and expand the money supply.  This is yet another cost saving measure.

The federal government estimates that it could bring in up to a trillion dollars a year in lost tax revenue that escapes the IRS from “under the table” transactions.  I’m sure the argument will be that taxes can be cut in other areas.  Let us hold our breath on that one.

These are legitimate arguments for a cashless, biometric ID-centered economy.  Most of our citizenry will most likely jump at the chance to implement it with little thought of its negative aspects.

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the ObamaCare law, like sheep, we are being herded, slowly but surely, into a government-administered society.  Eventually a single payer government-run health care system will come into place, giving the government full control over your physical body.

With a cashless society, everyone will be funneled into the national banking system, allowing the government to monitor your every financial decision, no matter how small. You will no longer be able to give money to anyone, friend or relative, that would escape the government’s notice.  A simple of act of handing a downtrodden friend $100 would be impossible; it would have to be transferred from your bank account to his, presumably with a national biometric ID card, and perhaps later with a implanted chip, technology that also exists today.

Regardless of the specific system it chooses to implement, the enactment of a cashless economic system will be the final nail in the completion of our global financial coffin or, if you will, a new world order.  Once the government forces us into its controlled economic system, our republic is done for.