When I was checking myself out at the grocery store the other day, I saw a new sign on the keypad:
WIC NOT ALLOWED IN SCO
Hmmm…. For a couple of seconds, I felt bureaucratically challenged. Then I realized that “WIC” meant the welfare debit cards that always seem to slow things down for the less privileged taxpaying classes who have to fund them, as they are programmed not to work with certain items, or they cause the total to exceed the balance of available funds, triggering endless whining and complaining by the “entitled” cardholder….
And it didn’t take long for me to realize that “SCO” meant self check out. Duh. So the sign simply meant that the SCO unit had been programmed not to accept WIC cards. Frankly, I’m surprised that some activist group hasn’t protested this action, for it relegates WIC cardholders to second class citizenship. Just like telling them to get in the back of the bus! I mean, isn’t that economic apartheid? And as the stores have ever fewer checkout lanes staffed by actual human beings, long lines will be in store for two kinds of suspects: WIC cardholders, and people who insist on paying cash. At least in the case of the cash payers, the government does not get to decide what they should and should not eat. For WIC cardholders, there are rules:
WIC Approved Foods :
WIC Approved Foods Consult the Cashier Guide Any fresh, frozen or canned fruit or vegetable, except: No white potatoes No added sugar, fats, oils, sauces No fruit or vegetable juices No dried fruits, nuts or herbs No single servings, party trays or prepared meals Canned green/yellow beans only. No canned “dried” beans (kidney, black, garbanzo, etc) No salsa, stewed tomatoes, cooked sauces No pre-cooked fruits and vegetables. Grocer ECR/scanner systems may be programmed to distinguish approved/unapproved foods Shelf tags (“VT WIC Approved Food”) are available
The above is just one example from a list which is being constantly revised by bureaucrats. Naturally, these revisions occur only after much bureaucratic deliberation and debate by committees which must meet and then issue reports. The reports are then reviewed by bureaucrats with higher seniority (and no doubt much more impressive titles), and then of course someone versed in “writing skills” has to be assigned the job of getting the revisions into the semi-final format which will be circulated to the appropriate departments in other agencies and ultimately to grocery store chains. So, the final copy would be subject to more review and revision. More meetings, more committees, etc. And someone has to be charged with “community outreach,” right? And someone has to be charged with reviewing requests and submissions from the activist groups as well as those who bureaucrats like to call “stakeholders.” And so on.
Not being a bureaucrat, I’m sure I missed something. But no wonder government is a growth industry. There will always be a need for more people who help tell people who help tell people what to do.
Sorry to get sidetracked, for this post is not supposed to be about the WIC bureaucrats. It’s just that when I saw the sign on the SCO, I was reminded of a recent post I wrote about the near-total loss of financial privacy (and the related merchant animosity towards cash transactions), as well as a very disturbing post by Tim Noah that Glenn linked:
TIM NOAH: Ban The Benjamins! Hundred-dollar bills are for criminals and sociopaths. Why do we still print them? Actually, a lot of people use them. And when inflation takes off soon, we’ll be using them for Big Macs. We already quit making $500 bills for Noah’s reasons. But they make 500-Euro notes. And why is it the government’s business how we spend money?
I’m very disappointed in Noah. So is a hedge-fund reader who emailed Glenn:
In monetary theory land, there’s a steady drumbeat of efforts to force all transactions into electronic form, for obvious surveillance and reporting reasons.
A cashless society would cut millions of people out of the economy…those who live the fringe, working “underground”. Folks like Noah will literally have blood on their hands if they get their way, and our poorest folks are simply severed from the economy.
I had not realized what a flaming big government leftie Tim Noah is, and it came as a shock, for he was kind enough to link this blog in its early days.
Noah was then defending the right of people to publicly eat ice cream, so I had assumed he was a libertarianish sort, or at least some kind of freedom lover. So it was a shocker to see him come down on the side of Big Government and the War On Drugs.
I don’t know what to do about this growing anti-cash mindset except repeat what I said in October:
Is the war on drugs really the reason? Or is the goal to monitor all cash transactions, and use the war on drugs as an excuse? Naturally, the war on “money laundering” is a subset of the war on drugs, but that, too, begs the question of whether the war on drugs supplies a very convenient pretext, to be used by those whose real goal is controlling our money.
As M. Simon keeps saying,
DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT
I understand why he put it in large caps, so I left it that way. Big government deserves to be fought in big caps.
Big Government, give us back our big bills!
Fortunately for now (as even Noah acknowledges), getting rid of the $100 would be difficult, as most of them circulate outside of the country by countries using the dollar as the international medium of exchange. But how long will that last?
Returning to the WIC cards, I’m now thinking that my worries about Big Brother monitoring all cash transactions might have been understated. Because, getting rid of cash would enable a lot more than simple monitoring. It would allow the government to control what we purchase, to watch carefully and make sure that we aren’t buying unhealthy foods, too much alcohol, and of course to pull the electronic plug and shut down troublesome citizens entirely. (Considering that most Americans commit three felonies a day, we are all potentially troublesome.)
Seen this way, the WIC cards represent much more than a way to help the poor and provide jobs for bureaucrats. They are an experiment in social engineering, which is for now limited to people receiving government subsidies. But with government-subsidized health care, the class of people receiving subsidies will become greatly enlarged.
And if government-supervised cards were to replace money, they could also be used for redistribution.
What better way (to quote a leading leftie blogger again) “to take money away from people whose consumption has a low marginal value, and give it to people whose consumption has a high marginal value”?
If we are all subsidized, then it follows that for the public good, we should all be supervised. Unsupervised cash thus hurts all of us, and should be replaced by a newer, better form of money which does not enable criminals and sociopaths.
What is money?
To the experts, it is simply a medium of exchange.
Money is any object or record, that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context.[1][2][3] The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally, a standard of deferred payment.[4][5] Any kind of easily verifiable record serves these functions as well as an object (an “object” that is taken as money actually serves as just a type of secure record), and “digital money” that exists only as secure records in computerized files, is now the most common form of money.
A few squeamish libertarians like myself might complain about the new trend and insist that there ought to be a right to use cash. Where we get that idea I don’t know; perhaps some imaginary right to privacy said to emanate from somewhere… But the majority of decent citizens are tired of these concerns, and would probably agree with the commenter who put me in my place:
If you aren’t doing anything wrong, why are you worried about?
Oh, I guess crackpots like me would express constitutional concerns, and lamely ask who should get to decide what it is that constitutes doing wrong in the context of citizens’ spending habits, and why.
But the answer will be that once my money becomes something other than mine, and part of a vast pool of low marginal value versus high marginal value consumers to be adjusted according to the needs of each, then my spending affects everyone, and conditions will attach.
I often feel there is nothing I can do but watch a slow but impending trainwreck. (Or to use a nautical metaphor, the breaking of the bulkheads.)
But I can’t jump from the train or leap from the Titanic, so I write these posts.
Comments
15 responses to “Why not let’s have conditional money?”
Ah, yes, the favored rebuttal of the fool or the hopelessly naive. “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear”.
Let’s see now… We can start with the simple fact that the legal code and tax code in the US is so complex that pretty much every adult is a criminal – and most likely at felony level – multiple times over. So by definition no matter who you are you’ve done something wrong. Ever forwarded or replied to an email and left the original text intact? You’ve committed a several-thousand-dollar-fine offense against the DMCA. And that’s for starters.
Then of course there’s the question of power. If you give the government power to monitor every aspect of the “wrong-doer’s” life, you’ve given it the power to monitor every aspect of your life as well. And the old aphorism about power doesn’t go far enough. Not only does power corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely, power attracts the corrupt and corruptible. Maybe this government won’t use the power they’ve added. But they’ve put the framework in so that the next one, or the one after that can use it.
Personally, I’d rather see guilty people go free than have everyone living in a police state in all but name. And if everything you do is monitored in some way, you are living in a police state.
Eric;
A simple rejoinder to the (incredibly stupid) “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about” is: “You miss the point. You’re not doing anything RIGHT; where the HELL do you get off infringing on another’s liberty?”
And it should be backed up with a willingness to resort to fisticuffs. This BS has to stop. The peaceful acquiescence of liberty-loving, live-and-let-live types is a contributing factor, IMNSVHO, to the sad estate we find ourselves in.
Sounding more like a curmudgeonly old fart every day, I am.
M
Eric, you provide evidence to support conspiracy theory from waaay back. After reading this I looked up an old tract that some door to door wack-job, religious nut gave me years ago. It’s titled:
One World Government – Dream or Nightmare? Cashless Society – A World Without Money
It is copyrighted 1975 by Southwest Radio Church.
You know the type of pamphlet – references to the Illuminati, the Rothschild banking family, and even a tie in with “Adam Weishaupt’s dream and the goal of the Insiders, the ‘eye over the pyramid’ with the year 1776 inscribed into the base of the pyramid in Roman numerals, bannered beneath are the words ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’ – New World Order” on the 1928 Silver Certificate!
Anyway, the 8 page pamphlet is prophetic in describing a cashless society in the making 35 years ago. The writers outlined exactly what we now take for granted, the plastic debit cards, bar codes, and government manipulation of people through this. Their final summary is interesting:
Following the issuance of the plastic card and the special drawing right number, there will remain two final phases to accomplish, both of which will result in the discontinuance of both the card and the number. The government will convince the people that too many individuals are reporting cards lost or stolen.[identity theft?] Without the card, people will be forbidden to work and to buy goods and services. Too much time will be involved in the replacement of the card, resulting in undue hardship to the individuals involved. Therefore, the card will be replaced by a number tattooed in the flesh
And this is of course, “THE SIGN OF THE BEAST!”
Aggitating for a cashless society is far beyond the mere “War on Drugs”. It has been advocated as a way to catch “tax cheats”
http://www.emptytomb.org/mb/29cardscasha.php
(weird website, but original article appeared in the NYTimes in 1990 and one has to pay for that archive)
If all the people who do business in cash were forced to report their incomes accurately — if the underground economy were forced to the surface — the Government could collect an additional $100 billion a year for the national treasury — without raising taxes. States and cities, many in serious financial trouble, would also benefit from collecting previously unpaid income and sales taxes
Let’s not forget that the Soviet Union forbade its citizens from owning/using hard currency, but all that did was give rise to an underground economy that combined barter and the forbidden currency such as US dollars.
A cashless society wouldn’t stop people from doing things “off the books” but would only shift things into a barter system. Good lord have these idiots not seen one WWII or prison movie where cigarettes are used as currency?
Ah. After ten years of college and thirty years practicing a learned profession, I’ve come to the realization that sometimes it’s time to just shut up and go get the bayonet. It’s more personal and communicates a sense of committment
Now the banks and other financial institutions are getting involved. It’s about Wikileaks, but the action taken today can be applied to other targets later.
I have written extensively on how the TSA is an extension of the Drug War.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/12/practicice-run.html
About 99.99999%+ who board an airplane have done nothing wrong. And yet as the above link points out every one boarding is treated as a potential criminal. Contraband don’t you know.
We gave up our IVth Amendment protections to get at dopers. And now we are all treated as criminals.
DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT
(thanks Eric!)
My favorite is handicapped people in the self checkout lanes who require the assistance of a cashier to self-checkout their items.
Your money has value because you would accept it back as value.
That distinguishes it from actual counterfeiters’ money, which is the philosophical problem.
It doesn’t represent wealth in any case. It’s a ticket in line to say what the economy does next, presumably something for you.
They don’t want you telling the economy what to do in large amounts without a record somewhere.
Speaking of trainwrecks,or breaking bulkheads, California is caught between a rock and a hard place(sorry for the mixing of metaphors!)
They can’t afford the legislated spending and will neither be able to cut it or raise spending without a major change to the way they do business. And I don’t see the Feds bailing them out…although the Feds just sent them $650 mil to build 123 miles of track for the High Speed Rail(yeah,5 mil a mile…)
I guess we are all in for a world of hurt…
An after thought..
The one silver lining to the mess ahead…those big government types just aren’t going to have time to worry about how the little folks are spending their cash.
A simple FYI on WIC
WIC is not the same as Food Stamps.
WIC stands for Women Infants and Children. It is a program for pregnant women and their children under a certain age, five years old, I think.
Once a month the woman goes to the WIC location, usually in a community center, to sit through a lecture on nutrition, or maybe basic health and childcare.
Back when I was on WIC, 20 years ago, we received tickets for certain items; cereal, beans, peanut butter, milk, cheese and juice. I’m sure nowadays it’s all on a debit card, but the guidelines remain in place to provide good nutrition to pregnant and nursing mothers. If the mother does not choose to nurse her baby, the vouchers are only for baby formula until the child is old enough for foods, then appropriate food is added for the baby’s age.
We had a little “WIC Store” that only carried WIC approved items. It was much simpler to redeem those monthly tickets there, rather than hold up the line at the grocery.
That is why there are so many restrictions on what WIC can purchase.
One option, other than blogging, would be to start a local currency. There are several examples extant today (Google “complementary currency”) and there are examples of successful local currencies going back to the Depression. Douglas Rushkoff has written a good deal about it.
Eric, I hope you’re being snarky here:
“A few squeamish libertarians like myself might complain about the new trend and insist that there ought to be a right to use cash. Where we get that idea I don’t know; perhaps some imaginary right to privacy said to emanate from somewhere… ”
One of Heinlein’s juvenile novels contained a character–the narrator’s father–who insisted on taking literally the “legal tender for all debts public and private” language. In the naive world of that story, the tax man came around once a year demanding a check, and after long argument left with a bunch of small bills in payment of the character’s tax debt.
I wish it were that simple.
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