Only An Idiot Would Rob a Bank: How Inflation Deflated the Stick-Up
thebillfold.com
thebillfold.com
Doesn't this assumption negate the point about the weight of the currency? Inflation means that larger notes are now more common - to assume Dillinger had the same portion of twenties as the Lufthansa heist is silly.
In the US this has been less the case, but to take Australia for example I remember my grandmother withdrawing cash in $2 and $5 notes. Now (25 years on) the ATMs only dispense $20s and $50s, and the $2 bill hasn't existed since 1988.
No kidding. When I was a kid in the 80s, ATMs only seemed to dispense 20s. Now a large percentage of them also dispense 10s.
A decade or so ago, I was receiving my paycheck via a Maestro card, which at that time could be used as an ATM card in the US, but not at a POS terminal. This meant that even for larger payments, I had to withdraw a large amount or go to several different ATMs, leading to an embarrassing and stressful situation when I tried to withdraw $1000 from an ATM, which was fine as far as the software was concerned, but jammed the dispensing mechanism. These days I'm not sure any ATM will let you withdraw more than a few hundred.
On the other hand, I suppose that most of what people carry cash for is food, and food prices haven't risen in the same fashion that housing and fuel prices have, so the amounts of cash people carry hasn't had to rise that much.
There might be some compression toward the center, but realistically most people only use cash for smaller transactions. $20 is a convenient denomination to get out of ATMs, and of course smaller bills come into play as cashiers make change for your payments. But I seem to remember hearing somewhere that economists now estimate that a majority of the US $50 and $100 bills are either circulating outside the country or circulating within the black and gray markets.
If you commit a crime, moving out of town isn't going to help you avoid the police. If you're wanted, you can't safely drive, or have a credit card, or a bank account, or have a home with utilities, or have a job with a reputable employer. That's a hard list of things to give up.
It's not conventional, but people do make all of those purchases with cash.
Any new car is going to be over 10k, which means you need to either report the transaction or get a loan from a bank... who is going to want proof you can pay it off.
Housing is the same thing. So yes, you can use cash- but you're going to have a hell of a time using cash that doesn't have an obvious, legal source.
from: http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/bsa/
These wouldn't prevent you from making a purchase, and you might falsify information sufficiently to avoid association with your real identity and drawing unwanted attention, but it's another hurdle.
This, I think is a bit of an overstatement. Although wages may not have inflated too much, compared to, say gold, they have certainly inflated in terms of quality of life. Prices of personal possessions are extremely low, compared to 50 or 100 years ago, mostly due to "technical progress". 100 years ago a watch was a great luxury - passed down from generation to generation. But today "everybody" owns a smartphone, a computer, a wardrobe full of clothes. Everyone can afford high-caloric food (at least in the "developed world"). Not very much like 100 years ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/31/w...
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/09/po...
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/immigrants_simpsons_p...
Consider a nation with Steve (income $50) Bill (income $50) and George (income $100). The median is $50. Now suppose Steve's income remains the same, Bill's goes up to $60, and George's income goes up to $150. The median has gone up to $60, right?
However, suppose during this time, Jose (income $30) and Hector (income $40) immigrated. The median is back down to $50 even though every single person saw their income go up.
The longitudinal data I link to demonstrates that this is exactly what happened (albeit with different numbers).
(Note: this is an argument against drawing conclusions from Simpson's paradox, not an argument against immigration.)
At least here in the bay area, I imagine they'd do much better with square readers than a bell and a bucket for change.
Readers for Salvation Army would be a nice idea - SA brand gives enough trust that they won't do something nasty with your card, and if you have a credit card you probably can afford some donation. OTOH, the cost of the reading device would probably outweigh the donations, so unless there are some very very cheap readers, not yet.
The American Federal reserve is a private institution, founded by members travelling on a secret journey from a train station in New Jersey to a private club on Jekyll Island. There the key elements of the Federal Reserve act was created.
On board the train was senator Aldrich, the senators daughter was married to Rockefeller. There was also representatives from Rockefeller and Warburg / Rothschild banking dynasty family.
The whole system, seem to be constructed to create as much debt as possible, which channels money upwards in the economic pyramid.
See Edward Griffins book the creature from Jekyll island http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm
- The system is flawed
Federal Reserve System: "The Federal Reserve System's structure is composed of the presidentially appointed Board of Governors (or Federal Reserve Board), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous privately owned U.S. member banks and various advisory councils."
Federal Reserve Bank: "The Federal Reserve Banks have an intermediate legal status, with some features of private corporations and some features of public federal agencies. The United States has an interest in the Federal Reserve Banks as tax-exempt federally created instrumentalities whose profits belong to the federal government, but this interest is not proprietary. In Lewis v. United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: 'The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.' The opinion went on to say, however, that: 'The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes.' Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency."
The US is so wealthy mainly because it's government has been printing money only relatively recently and with relative restraint. (We've only had the federal reserve for about a hundred years. And we've been completely off the gold standard for less than fifty.) This has enriched the private sector more than in other countries. Also, this has enabled the US dollar to be used as the reserve currency of the world.
As US monetary policy becomes less disciplined, America will go the way of the other countries of the world, it's government will be enriched at the expense of the private sector and economic growth.
I remember as a kid in Italy that the smallest bill wash 1000 ITL (about 50 eurocents) and now the smallest bill is 5 euros, and that is less than the inflation over the 12 years we've had the euro.
So by that logic, bank robberies have become more profitable here as of late.
It reminds me of the scene in The Dark Knight when the Joker is sitting on a literal mountain of cash.
When visualized that way, it's very true that bank robberies no longer make sense.
I really wish I had that in China. Sometimes when paying the landlord, I would need a bag full of 20K RMB, at 100 RMB a note, which is 200 notes. When my landlord wanted bi-yearly rent, it was easier to go to the bank and just do a transfer (electronic banking isn't done in English, unfortunately).