Why is the US one of the few countries that can't keep a consistent design across their bills and still does not have a way for blind people to identify which note they have. They are all the same size and have no embossed markings.
The redesigns were mainly about preventing counterfeiting. That's also the reason for continuing to change them periodically. In some places outside the US money shops and banks won't exchange the old style notes after a certain time. Changing the design resets counterfeit operations back to square one. Then they added the embedded strip. Color doubles or quadruples the number of printing plates and steps needed and truly large (or state-sponsored) operations may have to start over when that happens.
However someone in Congress got a bee in their bonnet about the changes and passed a law that prohibits Treasury from redesigning the $1 bill so it will continue to remain disjointed. That irks me tremendously. There never were any plans to redesign the $2 which also irks me.
As for bill size Treasury/Fed has this philosophy not to stray too far for the appearance of stability. The US doesn't demonetize currency unlike many governments so your grandma can redeem an ancient $20 for a modern one without question. The cotton rag paper, identical size, etc is part of that stability. Also why the color changes were so subtle. The secondary reason is the huge chaos it would create as millions of bill acceptors will not or even cannot take a firmware update and would need complete replacement to handle a new size.
You might not _agree_ with the reasons. They may not be _good_ reasons. But stability/tradition, Congress being idiots, and expense are the reasons the bills don't change much (or at all for $1/$2).
There's another reason - I suspect most blind people can see "well enough" to distinguish if they really need to. And they rarely do, because they likely pay for most everything with credit or phone these days.
Then all you have to do is make sure you only have one size of bill in your wallet and you've solved most of it.
> I hoped to watch the birth of a new cohort of pennies in person, but a Mint press representative insisted to me that he and other Mint professionals had “no idea” when or where the Mint would ever be making pennies — that these people could not narrow it down by day, or even week, at either facility. Did this mean, I asked, that it was standard procedure at the largest coin-making operation on Earth (Philadelphia), which last year minted more than two billion pennies, to decide “day of” which of six possible denominations it was going to produce? “Yeah,” he said — though, to be fair, there is vanishingly little proof he was paying attention to what either of us was saying.
It is already big a deal to change the images on currency (no matter what country). Given the US dollar is viewed as somewhat of a standard, you can imagine that to change its size/shape would be quite difficult to generate enough political enthusiasm for.
I personally far prefer the cotton paper money over any polymer notes or coins and hope we keep using it despite any other potential changes to the sizes or designs or whatever.
I think it is a nice material that is highly robust, tolerates creases and heat significantly better, and feels much nicer. I don't really understand why anyone would prefer polymer notes.
I wish it was the reverse. I’d prefer to have the smallest denominations within easiest reach by being the biggest and the largest denoms tucked away and hard to get to.
But retailers would protest I’m sure: it’s not the psychology they want.
There is one private company that either directly manufactures or leases the machines out to produce every polymer banknote in the world. In theory Romania already has 80% of what they need to produce Australian bank notes and vice versa.
There isn't anything other than US bills you can use to get the raw materials for US currency.
All you need is the cotton blend of paper. There's no secret ingredient. Either find a paper pulp manufacturer who sells the blend like this guy from Quebec or build your own processes like North Korea. Many developing world currencies are more secure than the USD.
The printed design has remained the same but the form factor has been pretty static for the last century or so. Things like bill readers are a big reason for that once they appeared it became a lot harder to swap around bill shapes.
I remember hearing that the Susan B Anthony dollar coin failed because there was no extra position in the coin drawer of cash registers to put it in. Can you image if every cash drawer now has to be redesigned to have different sized bills?
(I know, I know, it's not actually that big a deal. The drawers have removable inserts, but you get the point of it.)
(actually, on second though, automatic bill readers in vending machines, etc. would need a big retrofitting, that's probably much more a big deal).
The cash register issue I think could be papered over by just having the bills be smaller than the existing bills, ie $100s stay the same size and we cut off a bit of the bill for each denomination step downwards. That would keep them fitting in the drawer and be in line with the pattern of other countries who also make larger denominations physically larger.
1971 wasn't such a big deal. Between the 1930s and 1971 only foreign central banks could redeem their dollars in gold. So I would put the 'partial default' in 1933, if you care about gold.
But they had suspended convertibility of dollars into gold every so often before that. (And, of course, the dollar wasn't always about gold. They also experimented with silver and bimetalism.)
> But they had suspended convertibility of dollars into gold every so often before that.
They suspended redemptions of the certificated amount. You could not own gold until 1933 from 1974, but excluding of that, you can always convert your money into gold outside of the government if you want.
It’s a feature (or bug)of US democracy that one of its primary values, its reason for existing, is to support individuals and their freedom. Individuals are the values.
And people seem to forget that the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It's a democratic republic that is becoming more and more republic-like than democratic-like.
Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate.
Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.
The U.S. is controlled by an ever shrinking collection of people and institutions, namely corporations and extremist groups. That's how it's more and more republic-like.
Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.
The thing I cannot fathom is why quarters are so huge, considering they’re nearly valueless. Then you need whole stacks of $1 bills to pay anything relevant. I find both constantly cluttering up my wallet.
Quarters and dimes used to be made out of silver so a quarter had to be 2.5x the volume of a quarter so their metal values matched their face values ratios.
> I find both constantly cluttering up my wallet.
The majority of Americans do not have an ongoing problem of having too much cash in their wallet, even if you consider single dollars to be practically irrelevant. Most people would rather have their money in aggregate take up an inconvenient amount of space rather than having there be a risk of losing it because it's so physically small.
This is one of those logic puzzles, about how many bills you can end up with in your wallet (you dump the coins in a dish at home each night, of course).
Because if you start with $1000 in fifties, say, the first time you buy something (not using hundreds because many places don't like them), you'll get smaller bills back in change, but the next thing you buy you can probably use some of the smaller bills, so you'll never end up with 50 ones.
I like to keep a balance of $5-10 in ones, and the rest in twenties, with $5/10 sometimes appearing.
it's way easier (for some people) to go to the ATM once a month and then have a physical pile of money you're using, ams physically see how much you're spending and adjust habits. A digital card that looks the same all month when you pull it out of your wallet has no such quality and is a basically scam on certain kinds of people to get them to spend more money.
That is far too generalised for my taste. There are just as many people which tend to spend all the cash they have in their wallet because it isn’t on their account anymore, so it’s ”spent already anyway“, and vastly prefer keeping the tabs on their banking app, which provides a proper overview of their finances—no calculations and counting necessary. Maybe it’s just an age thing?
Okay. I added "for some people" to my original comment. Hope that helps.
Taking the amount budgeted for petty cash means you only spend that much "that's spent already", which makes it easier to stick to a budget (because you can't spend cash you're not holding). if the problem is overspending, and there's a budget, there's not generally a problem with underspending that amount, so the idea that it forces more spending isn't a problem (for some people).
Given news reports that (some people in) GenZ has trouble after joining the workforce with computer skills later generations take for granted, and other reports on how much GenZ is unable to save, I doubt it's an age thing. Some people are just better with physical objects vs digital. (Some people do just deal with it just fine, mind you.)
> Given news reports that (some people in) GenZ has trouble after joining the workforce with computer skills later generations take for granted, and other reports on how much GenZ is unable to save, I doubt it's an age thing. Some people are just better with physical objects vs digital. (Some people do just deal with it just fine, mind you.)
My (step)son has had his own bank account - joint with myself and my wife since he was 9 years old. I transferred his allowance to it. Before he was 12, he had to ask us for his balance - which he did frequently - because he couldn’t get his own sign in.
Since then, he has had his own sign in. He is 22 now and we still have the same joint account with him.
It has overdraft protection to a savings account with $500 in it that we all use for overdraft protection.
I know he checks his account often because when it does slightly overdraft and things are pending. He transfers money from his own savings account that is separate from ours to catch it.
I taught him good money habits from the day that we became a family.
When you use a debit card, the amount is immediately deducted from your checking account and you can check to see how much you have left by logging into your account.
That's true, but totally dismissive of what works and doesn't work for some people. A number in some app (that I annoyingly have to 2fa into) which I have to check on a debit card balance isn't at all helpful if you don't actually check it. For the obsessive smartphone app checker, I'm sure it works, but ask all your (close) friends what their current credit card balance is. I bet no one is closer than $100 and some probably aren't even within $500.
By the time the card fails a transaction and is getting denied because the card, I'm already at the whatever store and have to give up the purchase in a hugely embarrassing way. A physical bit of cash that you have in your wallet and at home is, well, physically present and simply feels light when you're running low. A debit or credit card with a number in some app does not do that.
2fa is a large blocker here, and while it's understandable from a security practice (so I'm not any to turn that off), it's enough friction to not be convenient, and that's assuming you configure the banking app on your phone because you're not scared of attacks to your phone SMS (which you should be).
Not enabling biometrics in the banking app means adding FaceID isn't enough.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> So the people who are too lazy to check their app are okay with going to an ATM?
If we're at the point we're calling people names I'm not sure further discussion will be productive. The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here. It also uses a different part of my brain because I physically walk past to jog my brain (and walking does it in a way that driving past the freeway exit does not).
Again, what's a number that's on a phone, even if it's being texted to you, going to do for physically altering the size and weight and feel of a debit/credit card? That's just another text that gets recieved and disappears from my brain until it's too late.
I'm glad you've got a system that works for you, but the only thing that works about debit/credit card money is I end up spending more money than I would with cash. Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card. (There are some places that don't take cash so I need to use debit/credit, but, for now at least, that's not the norm.)
> The ATM is on the way to the subway (which has poor reception), and we're talking about once a month here.
And my phone is always on my person. You don’t need “reception” to use your debit card.
> Changing habits to spend less money works by using cash works in a way that I couldn't get to work with a debit/credit card
And yet my 80 year old mom can as far as debit cards and my 82 year old dad just started using Apple Pay. He had a really old Android before that couldn’t use Google Pay
I do this before most purchases. I have most of my money in a savings account, and only what I want to spend on the card itself – mostly so that if it’s stolen, I don’t lose a lot of money. Not sure if this helps me spend less, though!
I do this once per day. I have been doing it since the mid 90s before my bank had a website and you used a propriety money management program (forgot the name of it) that would dial into the bank and download posted transactions.
> I use cash because it contributes to the local neighborhood economy more than not using cash.
The merchant gets all except for a 2% fee when you don’t use cash. Cash handling also has cost - theft both from employees and outside actors - too.
> I use cash because I do not want to risk a banking app being broken by a non-banking app.
When has Apple Pay or Google pay ever been “broken”? Do you not use a bank at all or not use any banking apps or websites?
> I use cash because not using cash charges extra (often-hidden) fees while using cash often comes with extra discounts.
There are very few places in the US that up charge for credit card transactions. Mostly gas stations and then mostly only for gas.
> I use cash because the modern economy is a give-business-money-for-nothing-because-fuck-you economy and I don't want to contribute to that.
You don’t think the merchant network does anything? Even if you are opposed to credit card transaction fees are you also opposed to debit transaction fees which are much lower and where there is a legsl cap?
I use cash because it doesn't require batteries, and because my cell phone won't let me use Google Pay, as it's running a custom OS (before that, was rooted) so I'm obviously untrustworthy.
I do use a credit card pretty often too, but I always have a little cash on me and I use it at least weekly.
Imprint machines are dead; most of my cards don't have raised numbers, possibly none of them have them. Where I live, most of the terminals are either on batteries directly or via a UPS.
If someone is anti-battery, they shouldn't use credit cards here. Although, cash registers are usually on a UPS too.
To pile on the battery issue, we had some very severe storms in my area that took down power for days and internet for weeks. Credit card processing was not possible for gas stations during that time period, but the pumps worked when the power came back on. The only way you could fill up at those stations was with cash. It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen, and perhaps more importantly could be made to happen.
Not that cash is necessarily a lot better. I can't remember what sci-fi character made the observation that "all currency is mutual delusion", but I observe the truth of that. I've thought it was in Hyperion, but have not been able to find it.
> And during the severe thunderstorms in Florida when everyone was coming to Orlando, places ran out of gas. We had an EV and charged at home.
Having an electric vehicle is NOT the benefit you think it is here.
You could just as easily have an internal combustion engine and spare fuel tanks. My car holds about 12 gallons of fuel and I have three 5-gallon fuel jugs ready to do. I use the fuel jugs for my lawnmower to keep the fuel fresh, but the jugs serve just as well during an emergency. And the benefit over an electric vehicle: I can put the fuel jugs into the tank or the trunk and just go.
If your EV is drained... good luck getting it charged when you're given an evacuation order.
Places running out of gas? That's a consequence of poor planning or a just-in-time economy (take your pick) on the gas stations, and a consequence of poor planning or a just-in-time economy on the people buying fuel from gas stations when they should have fueled up before the emergency.
Not everyone can buy fuel jugs. Good luck storing fuel jugs anywhere safe when you're living in an urban environment. It's the same for EV batteries too.
Operative word is “had” which fairly enough could be interpreted as the storm was in the past tense or the car was in the past tense. I meant the latter.
We only had it for six months (SixT month to month car subscription) while trying to decide what our next move was. We didn’t know whether we were going to stay in Florida all year or travel half the year and rent our place out and stay at home half the year or not.
We had just come off of a year of doing the digital nomad thing and flying one way across the country.
> Operative word is “had” which fairly enough could be interpreted as the storm was in the past tense or the car was in the past tense. I meant the latter.
> There are very few places in the US that up charge for credit card transactions
I actually see it quite often here in the Twin Cities at small stores, bars, restaurants. A 1~3% discount for cash.
> The merchant gets all except for a 2% fee when you don’t use cash. Cash handling also has cost - theft both from employees and outside actors - too.
I've asked quite a few merchants that take both whether they have a preference for cash vs card. Most (~90%) say they don't care either way. The remainder all say they prefer cash. I've never had one reply they prefer a card to cash. Also, when making large (like four- or five-figure) transactions with people like home contractors, they all request payment via personal check, to avoid the card fees eating a huge chunk of the transaction.
I also dislike the idea of all transactions being trackable/identifiable. I think there's value in being able to perform anonymous transactions.
> I actually see it quite often here in the Twin Cities at small stores, bars, restaurants. A 1~3% discount for cash.
For reference, I have a card that gives me 3 points back for all restaurants and another card that gives me 2 points back for all other purchases.
Doing the simplest thing possible and transferring those points to Delta for flights nets me 1.3% for each point meaning I will at least get 2.6% back on general purchases or almost 4% back worse case on restaurants.
If they have to accept cash or credit cards, yes they will prefer cash. But there are reasons that some places don’t accept cash at all. It’s because of employee theft. But it’s harder to steal cash at restaurants and bars because everyone gets receipts.
The usual theft from bars come from bartenders pouring more expensive liquors and charging for cheaper liquor and then accepting larger tips.
People get benefits back from their cards because of the transaction fees. Thats where the money comes from, not from the bank accounts of Visa and Mastercard's CEOs.
Merchants are prevented by their contract from charging the transaction fee to the customer using the card. Therefore all customers pay the fees though increased merchant prices, even those using cash.
I resent paying for peoples credit card "benefits" - actually they're payoffs - every time I use cash.
> Merchants are prevented by their contract from charging the transaction fee to the customer using the card. Therefore all customers pay the fees though increased merchant prices, even those using cash.
> As a result of a legal settlement to resolve claims brought by a group of U.S. merchants,
merchants in the U.S. and U.S. territories may add a surcharge to certain credit card
transactions, starting January 27, 2013. Merchants who choose to surcharge must follow
> I resent paying for peoples credit card "benefits" - actually they're payoffs - every time I use cash.
You really think retailers would reduce their prices by the amount of credit card fees if they didn’t pay them?
Congratulations on enriching credit card companies. Those credit card perks are directly subsidized by the handling fees they charge your local businesses
Indeed? I'm saying it likely does hurt the customer and in ways that the customer often doesn't realize. That doesn't make it bad per se, but it would be great if more people would realize and address the risks involved.
> Those credit card perks are directly subsidized by the handling fees they charge your local businesses
The “local business” more than makes up for credit card fees via increased spending. They know their margins and the minimum amount needed to make a credit card transaction worthwhile. That’s why many have minimum transaction amount to use a credit card.
Those points don't come from nowhere, they come from the business you're buying from. For local businesses, I'd rather I keep 1% and the business keeps 2%, than Visa takes 3% from the business and gives me 1.5% back.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to do in this thread. You asked why people like to use cash, and we're answering your question. You don't have to agree with us, it's OK for people to have different opinions about stuff.
Retailers don’t “lose money” by accepting credit cards because on average consumers spend more when they use credit cards than they do when using cash.
Yes, I’m saying that the merchants aren’t “losing money” by paying transaction fees if they make more by accepting credit cards than not accepting credit cards.
I don't think anyone suggested they should not accept credit cards. You asked why I like to use cash, and I answered that one reason is it gives more money to the vendor than if I used a card.
> When has Apple Pay or Google pay ever been “broken”?
Dunno, don't care. I'm not going to mix my banking stuff with my non-banking stuff.
Not being "broken" publicly doesn't mean it's bug-free. You and I both know that Apple Pay and Google Pay are both written with software and enabled via hardware. That doesn't mean it's bug-free. That doesn't mean it can't be broken.
Why risk it? It's not worth losing your livelihood over a very slight convenience.
Would you put a needle into your eye if everyone around you, except for your doctor, told you that you'll see better afterward? No of course not, you're not stupid. Would you put a needle into your eye if your doctor told you to? No, of course not, you are not trained for it. So why would you install a banking app which grants access to your finances, and which cannot be proven to be secure against other apps running on the same device? Of course that's your choice, and I choose to not put that risk in my life.
At least with cash or a debit/credit card, the risk is physically separated.
> Do you not use a bank at all or not use any banking apps or websites?
I wish that were the case. Alas, banks are practically a requirement even for local communities. You'd be stupid to put all of your cash under your mattress or in your home. You'd be stupid to walk around all day every day with a significant chunk of cash/change. Keep excess cash in the bank or investments keeps it separated from the risk that your house is broken into or burns down, and separated from the risk of being mugged.
Banks are regulated (in all countries I can think of) and federally insured in the US (I dunno about other countries' monetary insurances or policies). So if it's a separation of risk, then why undo all of that by walking around with all of your money in your phone? It's exactly the same problem but now in a brand-new electronic domain with little or no regulation at all. That's a stupid thing to do.
So no, I do not use banking apps. Just as I don't put work shit on my phone, I also do not put banking shit on my phone. My phone is where non-technical people talk to me, and is high risk for incoming malware. Your employer doesn't want that, your bank doesn't want that.
For the same reasons, I only open banking websites on a dedicated computer for the same reason.
> There are very few places in the US that up charge for credit card transactions
You already stated that "the merchant gets all except for a 2% fee". So (unless you want to argue that places take the fee at a loss) all places charge it, but many simply don't include that charge as a line-item on your receipt.
It is therefore "often-hidden", which you quoted but ignored.
> You don’t think the merchant network does anything?
I didn't say that at all. The merchant network does help prevent fraud and I use my CC for items that I worry could be fraudulent. I simply don't buy from Amazon because fraudulent activity is too high and it's not worth the hassle. But on the other hand: medical costs, computers, digital services, and even local vendors can be shady as fuck.
But there are plenty of places where you can build trust with your community. Your grocery store with perishable foods is in my experience much less likely to defraud you, specifically because you're able to look at and inspect items before purchase.
> are you also opposed to debit transaction fees which are much lower and where there is a legsl cap?
That's twice now that you're putting words in my message that weren't there. Maybe you should read my message again in a few hours after your next meal.
You're stuck thinking about fees. No, the fees themselves aren't what I'm worried about. I'm worried about shit companies like Amazon who have no moral qualms about mixing fraudulent items with authentic items. I'm hateful of companies like Google who have absolutely no interest in providing help or support to the real people that they harm. I'm resentful of "businesses" who steal your data and get you addicted to stupid shit, just so they can make a profit off of you. I'm distrustful of any "business" who only takes sales online, sends spam, steals or abuses data about you, uses dark patterns for "engagement" to get people to do what the business wants them to...
It's not all doom and gloom. I use a lot of cash, but I don't use exclusively cash. I have debit cards and credit cards and they definitely serve their purposes too. But cash is way more useful than some people on Hacker News want you to believe: if someone is talking against cash then there's a high likelihood that person either has an agenda that won't benefit you or is naive enough to advance someone else's agenda that won't benefit you.
> Dunno, don't care. I'm not going to mix my banking stuff with my non-banking stuff.
If you are really concerned with security, you should also be concerned with the security of your bank. Do you keep all of your money under your mattress?
> Why risk it? It's not worth losing your livelihood over a very slight convenience.
You realize that no one has ever lost money in an FDIC insured bank account because of either fraud or a bug in client software.
Do you also never use credit cards or debit cards? There have also been security issues with POS terminals and large retailers.
> Would you put a needle into your eye if your doctor told you to? No, of course not, you are not trained for it. So why would you install a banking app which grants access to your finances, and which cannot be proven to be secure against other apps running on the same device?
So do you fly when no one has proven with a 100% certainty that the plane won’t crash? Do you get in a car? Take medicines that haven’t proven not to have side effects? Would you go to the hospital knowing there is a chance you can get an infection that antibiotics can’t cure?
> If you are really concerned with security, you should also be concerned with the security of your bank.
Yes, of course. There are reasons I don't bank with every bank under the sun.
> Do you keep all of your money under your mattress?
No. Do you?
I'm starting to think you're not having this conversation in good faith.
> You realize that no one has ever lost money in an FDIC insured bank account because of either fraud or a bug in client software.
You can claim that all you want.
Meanwhile time is money and dealing with banking issues takes time out of my day. Meanwhile FDIC is insured via taxpayer money and so my taxes absolutely cover the fraud perpetuated by whoever.
Nice trolling in the thread.
> So do you...
I fly because flying is regulated.
I drive because driving is regulated.
I take medicines that are regulated.
I don't go to hospitals in the U.S. Fuck that noise.
> Yes, of course. There are reasons I don't bank with every bank under the sun.
But you have an issue with the security of Apple and Google but you don’t have an issue with the security of your bank?
You haven’t seen the quality of software developers at the typical bank have you?
> I'm starting to think you're not having this conversation in good faith.
Your threat model is not backed up by any evidence
> You can claim that all you want.
Is my claim false?
> Meanwhile time is money and dealing with banking issues takes time out of my day.
And which banking issues have you had to deal with because the supposed insecurity of Apple and Android with respect to the banking apps?
> Meanwhile FDIC is insured via taxpayer money and so my taxes absolutely cover the fraud perpetuated by whoever.
Your funds aren’t insured by taxpayer money. Banks pay into the system based on the deposits they have.
And if you trust the fraud protection of your bank? Why are you worried about supposedly insecure phones that would cause fraud even though that hasn’t happen since the modern phone?
> I fly because flying is regulated.
>I drive because driving is regulated.
> I take medicines that are regulated.
And banks aren’t regulated? What is the threat model you are guarding against?
> I don't go to hospitals in the U.S. Fuck that noise.
You mentioned the FDIC which only governs the US. If you are in a car accident or have an illness, you are going to get treated outside of the US?
> > > You realize that no one has ever lost money in an FDIC insured bank account because of either fraud or a bug in client software.
> > You can claim that all you want.
> Is my claim false?
Yes.
My family specifically have lost money due to fraud, non-recoverable from the bank.
Many people have lost money from bank bailouts which only occurred because certain banks were fraudulently packaging mortgages. That's happened more than once.
> Your threat model is not backed up by any evidence
Isn't it? Let's see.
1. Spam is indistinguishable from spearphishing. It seems nobody understands this.
2. Working in high tech or finance results in higher amounts of targeted spearphishing.
3. Working with people in journalism or political activity results in higher risk of malware.
4. Having friends or family with criminal history or mental problems results in extreme loss of privacy.
5. Having ex-friends or ex-family (eg, divorce) with threats of physical harm results in a sensitivity to privacy. For example, having your name mentioned in court proceedings, even when you are not there, is publicly searchable and gives a reasonable estimate of your location. There's a reason that Witness Protection programs exist and it takes some extra levels of threats to make it into that.
6. "Security" software is often shady ([0], [1], [2], need I go on?)
So with that in mind, consider the following threat model built upon those:
7. "Businesses" who don't have a way for a real person to resolve an issue, such as Google. Let me know what phone number to call when my Gmail account is suspended because someone else tried to hack their way in, would you?
8. "Businesses" who use shady practices to steal data without consent. Let me know how to selectively share single data-points of contact information to a single app, would you? I want this app to have an email address, that app to have a phone number, the other app to have a different email address, blah blah. Good luck.
9. "Businesses" which abuse interstate or international policies to maximize profits. One state says it's illegal to hold data? No problem, hold that data in a different state!
10. "Businesses" which flagrantly disregard laws and fight tooth-and-nail to prevent loopholes from being closed. Every single billion-dollar "business" does this, including Apple. Just look at how much pushback Apple had against Europe enacting sane privacy laws.
11. "Businesses" which consider my work to be their work. Good luck getting paid for art when the art is stolen wholesale. Want to make a website with cool stuff? Good luck keeping bots from scraping it and putting advertisements up with no profit for you.
Don't presume that your threat model applies to everyone.
> And which banking issues have you had to deal with because the supposed insecurity of Apple and Android with respect to the banking apps?
None because I don't use them.
I have had banking issues, even without apps. So why add to the flavor?
One issue that I'm willing to share: create a technical-oriented business whose name reflects SQL injection. Something like `select * from \' -- or drop table systable;`. The local municipality was fine with that name. The local bank? Well suddenly their system crashed when trying to create the account for the business. That was a not-fun fun day.
Hell, another issue even unrelated to banking. Another regulated industry, telecom. I had an issue with T-Mobile wherein I could not log in to their website at all using Private Browsing in Firefox on Linux. I could log in with Firefox on Linux without Private Mode. T-Mobile's statement was that this is intentional. After over a year, T-Mobile quietly fixed the problem. There was literally no* technical reason whatsoever to be unable to log in. I had to call every month to make a payment, and also ask for a refund of the call-in-fee because I could not access the website. That's both a lot of time for anyone and also easily troublesome for someone without mental faculties to navigate the stupidity of T-Mobile bureaucracy.
> Your funds aren’t insured by taxpayer money. Banks pay into the system based on the deposits they have.
K. Wanna talk about bank bailouts? Too-big-to-fail?
> And if you trust the fraud protection of your bank?
No, I don't trust the fraud protection of my bank. I trust the fraud protection of the FDIC.
> And banks aren’t regulated?
I literally said that banks are regulated.
> If you are in a car accident or have an illness, you are going to get treated outside of the US?
If I can get outside of the US, sure. Otherwise I will surely die. That's the effect of capitalism's hyper-optimization for profit at the cost of real lives. Ever wonder why so many people are upset with insurance companies?
Outside of serious injury or illness then there are plenty, but fewer every year, non-hospital doctors offices around me who I can rely on to give me a sane price for normal health maintenance. Unfortunately, "normal health maintenance" is not private if you're coming with insurance.
The US is so weird about its currency. The repeated attempts to get rid of the dollar bill (dollar coins, two-dollar bill, etc.) have all "failed".
I put "failed" in quotes, because all it requires is for the government to do it. Take the one-dollar bills out of circulation, no discussion, done. At this point, take the two-dollar bills (no one will notice) and the penny as well.
> The US is so weird about its currency. The repeated attempts to get rid of the dollar bill (dollar coins, two-dollar bill, etc.) have all "failed".
> I put "failed" in quotes, because all it requires is for the government to do it. Take the one-dollar bills out of circulation, no discussion, done. At this point, take the two-dollar bills (no one will notice) and the penny as well.
The US electorate is no stranger to single issue voting. If one party spearheads the elimination of the dollar bill, expect them to lose the next several rounds of elections and the other party to reinstate dollar bills. If it's bipartisan, expect a dollar bill party to surface and reinstate dollar bills.
Also, I don't think the $2 bill has anything to do with trying to get rid of the $1 bill? They've been produced most years since 1862, just a 10 year hiatus between 1966 and 1976.
> all it requires is for the government to do it. Take the one-dollar bills out of circulation, no discussion, done.
It turns out that democratically elected officials are compelled to be responsive to the voters, and don't want to anger them unnecessarily or waste time and political capital on low-value issues.
Coins are easier to count than bills. They are thick enough that you never confuse two coins for one, even when they are stuck together. And they are also more convenient in your pocket, because you don't have to fold or otherwise organize them.
Dollar bills are usually in terrible condition. Folded corners, creases, dirt. Ten singles take up more space in my wallet than just about anything else I'd put in there.
I'd rather have ten coins. They'll easily fit in the bottom of my pocket, and when I pull out change there's likely to be a useful amount of money in it.
Unfortunately, yes. Drugs are well-known to be the only product for which cash is an acceptable form of payment. The utility of hard currency really took a hit when all the hookers moved to Venmo.
Coins last much longer in circulation than bills, a coin can last decades while a bill only lasts a few years so some estimates put the yearly savings at 500-700 million a year in printing, paper, etc costs saved. It's worked just fine in other places they just had the courage to phase out printing of paper bills to force the issue. People would adapt quickly given no option but the soft handed approach basically guarantees people won't encounter the new coins regularly.
That was the savings estimates at the time from sources in the government iirc so I think they would have included the relative durability of the cotton bank note in the calculations. [0] Of course that's just the savings not the costs but a lot of those are one time as different coin op mechanisms get updated to accept dollar coins.
[0] The $1 notes also go through a lot more use in their life so they degrade much quicker iirc and a bit over 40% of the bills in circulation are $1 bills too so switching over to a coin that lasts decades instead of 6-7 years (https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...) would really cut down on printing costs.
Printing is just not very expensive, relative to the size of the US economy. People like the $1 note. I just don't think it's going to happen for another 2x-4x reduction in the value of the note.
Give it 15-40 years and we'll think about it again!
Of course, by then, so much of commerce will be electronic that I don't think anyone will care about what notes still circulate, other than the $100, which is used more outside the US than inside.
It's not _just_ printing though it's transport, storage and distribution then at the end of it's life span collection and destruction. In 2023 the US printed 2,397,104,000 in $1 bills alone. Doing anything at that scale is not cheap no matter how inexpensive a single unit of production is.
Well, about 25 years ago the EU issued 1 and 2 Euro coins (no bills for those denominations) and as far as I know still do. So it's working for them. When I lived over there (2005ish) I didn't care much for carrying a coin purse in addition to my wallet, but I think that's just a cultural/personal preference. Likely same as you.
1. Switching costs. There are a ton of vending machines and other automated stuff that takes dollar bills but not coins. You can say “oh they’d switch”, and maybe, but they don’t want to because it’s expense and complexity for little/no benefit.
2. Critical mass. Similar problem: nobody will invest in supporting dollar coins as long as their customers don’t use dollar coins. Customers won’t use them because they won’t accept them from banks and stores. And they won’t accept them because they know lots of infra doesn’t support them.
3. US psychology sees coins as “change”, not money. If you see someone buying lunch with change, the assumption is they’re homeless or something. It’s irrational, but so what? And it would change… if we ever got over the hump.
Don’t think of the problem like a technocrat, where any 5% improvement is obviously worth it. Think of it like a marketer, where you have to change customer behavior, and that needs a 10x value prop.
Or I guess we can think like autocrats: we know what’s good for ‘em and they’ll just have to accept it.
For many classes of vending machines, dollar bill support is going away without government intervention. For a while it's been very common in the US to see vending machines that have bill, maybe coin, and card options. It's increasingly common to find machines that only have card options, no cash. Products are more expensive and people use less cash generally...how many customers actually carry enough $1 bills to buy themselves a $3.75 bottle of soda?
They're already switching because it allows them to charge higher prices with less friction. You'll likely grumble a bit while you're feeding the 4th dollar bill into the machine but a card swipe or tap is the same level of customer effort regardless of cost.
Vending machines will continue to move towards electronic payment as the preferred and eventually only widely available option, and will no longer have relevance to what a physical dollar looks like.
All the novelty $1 coins since the Sacagawea offer the potential for a gradual shift too. Modern multi-denomination coin mechs are likely to accept them, unlike the Susan B Anthony's that were too close to quarters [1]. Some of them even have a sticker near the coin slot advertising the feature. So if someone has given you a dollar coin in change (probably a government cashier or machine), you might be able to use it in a machine. I couldn't find a well reported number on dollar coin acceptance --- just an undated claim of 30% of machines accepting them according to Vending Market Watch but no link to an article or anything. I did see an article on VMW from 2011 about cash recyclers that allow a machine to take a larger bill and issue change with smaller bills rather than only coins, that featured a quote that resonates with me:
> "Customers have told me firsthand how thrilled they are to receive bills as change instead of dollar coins," said Mike Gallagher, service manager for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. "Sales on those machines have increased, and the technology has been extremely reliable." [2]
[1] I did see one coin mech in the wild that took Anthony dollars; but it was a spendy arcade game and had a dispenser next to it to get the dollar coins you needed from bills or quarters. And there were big signs about it, at the Disneyland StarCade in the 90s.
There was always a potential, but without a plurality of momentum, they're not going to replace their predecessors. The early 00s was the best chance for this, in the wake of the Susan B Anthony reissuance and the new Sacagawea dollar, when there was a decent amount of public interest, but as it turns out, anything less than 100% acceptance is just not as good as the 100% acceptance of quarters in coin machines, or dollar bills in bill readers. People won't use them if they aren't accepted, and retailers won't accept them if they aren't used.
Do you have any experience in countries with large denomination coins? Anything smaller than a quarter is super annoying, even the quarter is borderline. It says something when a countries largest coin is too small to be useful. A 500 Yen (~$4) coin OTOH, is super nice.
That’s more of an issue with the US financial infrastructure. There are plenty of poorer countries where mobile payments are more the norm than in the US.
Yes, I’m really worried about what exactly? The places where cash are feasible to be used - in person transactions - aren’t the places where I would worry about government funding out what I’m doing.
Yes I know about regressive states and tracking women who might be pregnant to “protect the unborn”.
Denial is a common coping mechanism about the ever growing corporate surveillance state and all the ways its power may (and thus eventually will) be wielded to further economically disenfranchise most people.
First, yes companies make it directly harder for customers to give them money all the time with repeating high-discount sales, bespoke proprietary web/mobile store apps, captchas, loyalty/sunk cost programs, etc. These all frustrate market efficiency, so the company can then capture some of the surplus value accumulating due to friction. "Creating a moat" (aka market inefficiency) is like business school 101.
But the longer term disenfranchisement trend I see is making the numeric value of money itself ever more depreciated in favor of fine grained price discrimination. So it's not that it will be "harder to give them money", but rather that you will be paying twice as much (ie not receiving coupons/vouchers to obtain the real competitive price) based on them knowing that you personally will still buy.
> it's not that it will be "harder to give them money", but rather that you will be paying twice as much (ie not receiving coupons/vouchers to obtain the real competitive price) based on them knowing that you personally will still buy.
JCPenney has been doing that for decades. When Ron Johnson - the former CEO of Apple retail - came in as CEO and tried to get rid of the constant coupons and “sales” and implement everyday low prices, consumers rebelled and he was rapidly fired.
Even with cash, stores have loyalty programs that consumers gladly sign up for. In the mid 90s, I worked at Radio Shack which was infamous for tracking how often employees asked for names and addresses just to buy batteries
I don't see how that addresses what I said. Sure, similar dynamics have existed for a while. And sure, many consumers are happy with simulated achievement. That doesn't mean they aren't getting taken advantage of, or that the dynamic won't continue to get ever worse as the corporate surveillance machine gains more capabilities.
How much “worse” can they get? Radio Shack for instance has your information about your sales patterns since the 1990s even when using cash.
Credit cards vs cash is the least of your problems and on a meta level, users have been willing to give their information to retailers and been doing couponimg for decades.
I'm still trying to work out whether you don't realize that Radio Shack closed like ten years back, or if you really think there is no difference between the information systems of now and thirty years ago.
Do yourself a favour and search HN for people's stories about their BigCo accounts for paid services being closed for no apparent reason. Most of the time these are accompanied (by design) with no way to getting beyond automated denial bots.
The tired trope of capitalism ensuring that all customers will be served needs to die. Businesses always evaluate any additional revenue against the cost of getting that revenue.
There are a multitude of ways in which the cost can exceed the revenue. The mundane example is that it's more expensive for Google to maintain non automated support for 'non core' services. A more harmful example is the practice of 'redlining' after the great depression where largely due to non financial reasons, the 'cost' of providing mortgages to non whites was deemed larger than the expected revenue from those mortgages.
> Businesses always evaluate any additional revenue against the cost of getting that revenue
nit: this is still coming from the vein where businesses are taken to be super-computational agents/oracles. whereas really there is a lack of evaluation of the possible revenue being left on the table, and the focus is on what has already been found to be profitable.
There's no need to go to the trouble of making these changes. Cash money has been illegal in the United States since before most here were even born. If they discover you have cash, it can be confiscated (and charged with a crime... not you, but the cash can be charged). If you deposit more than $10,000 at a bank, the banks are deputized to snitch on you. If you deposit exactly $10,000, they snitch on you. And, because some criminals might deposit less than $10,000 to try to avoid consequences, if you deposit less than $10,000. Not just banks, if you bought a new car (or new RV, or new tractor, etc) at a dealership with cash, they'd have to report that too. Social norms have been subtly manipulated to convince you that people who have cash or pay with cash are shady.
LOL. The lack of a consistent design is a core accessibility feature.
Most "blind" people have some amount of vision. So starting in 1997 they began adding the very large numerals on the back and visual inconsistencies to the front so you can tell them apart with limited sight. Have a look at the bills side by side and you can see how they vary the background gradients and layout for easier identification: https://www.uscurrency.gov/denominations/100
With the 2020s series refresh (Catalyst) all the denominations will get a tactile area to assist the completely blind.
The government also provides free of charge to any legally blind person a small device that reads special markings on the bill and will audibly announce or vibrate the denomination. They also funded iOS and Android apps that use the camera.
The accessibility of USD notes is notoriously poor. EUR, AUD or CHF banknotes have a consistent visual theme, but each denomination is a different size, has a bright and distinct predominant colour and they've had tactile features for decades. Sure, they look like monopoly money, but that's a good thing.
The US dollar notes are 7 different shades of nothing much, with a man's face in the middle, a near-identical fancy border, and a circular stamp on each side in black and dark green. The numbers are in a decorative font, and merged into the border.
On the reverse, there's a building and a similar decorative border.
Your link even describes the "subtle background colors"!
Only the $5 and $100 have a bold, contrasting number.
All the banknotes are the same size.
I challenge you to find a circulating currency with worse accessibility.
ADA compliance is always a struggle in the US, but if you travel around the world, the US is leaps and bounds ahead of many places that don't even have the equivalent of the ADA to fight for.
Does "other people do it worse" mean we do it well?
Because I only put forward the claim that the US does it poorly. Whether others do it worse seems to have no bearing on whether we should strive to improve or not...
If the US is the best at accommodating mobility impairments, that's got to count for something. Maybe it's not handling it well, but if it's the best than anywhere is doing, keep asking for better, but set reasonable expectations.
IMHO, there's a lot more room to improve accommodations for non-mobility impairments however, and there's examples of other countries doing better in some aspects to compare to. On-topic, accessibility of currency is clearly a US weakness, although the upcoming bill designs are supposed to address this, although we'll have to wait and feel if it works as announced.
Absolutely no political party in the US is railing against the disabled. The ADA was championed by Bush - a Republican candidate.
Especially seeing how many people in “rural America” are claiming disability benefits that could work. But don’t have the necessary skills to get the jobs available are a willingness to move to where the jobs are.
Yes I realize that moving somewhere without the extended family support system is an issue and it’s failing of the government and job training services
I'd argue neither political party is helping people with disabilities, and both are pretty strongly neglecting them. I don't think any of the current slate of politicians care at all. Bush I was a generation ago.
More details, it’s more of an irritation for me than a life altering issue - my CP is such that I can only grab things with my left hand and I have a slight limp because of weakness in my left foot. But properly conditioned, I can run a 10 minute mile (not great. But not bad).
So this is an honest question, I (or my parents) really haven’t needed much government help even though I did go through various therapies until I was 12 when my “therapy” became lifting weights.
> The ADA was championed by Bush - a Republican candidate.
No it fucking wasn't. What are you smoking?
>n 1986, the National Council on Disability had recommended the enactment of an Americans with Disabilities Act and drafted the first version of the bill which was introduced in the House and Senate in 1988.
> Despite pressure from some church groups, who felt the ADA unfairly burdened them, the bill passed the House by unanimous voice vote and the Senate 76-6, paving the way for its signing on July 26 by President Bush, who said, “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”
I made no claims about other countries. I forwarded only the claim that the U.S. treats disability as a failing.
Let's start with various cognitive disabilities -- depression, for instance, is heavily stigmatized. Seeking medication and therapy, and especially talking about medication and therapy, is considered awkward and uncomfortable in most circles.
Or ADHD, which causes a whole range of executive functioning failures - inability to focus, manage schedules, etc. Yet we make access to diagnosis and medication very difficult, and workplaces often fail to accommodate people.
On the physical disability front, one of the easiest and fastest things we can do is add alt text to images, yet even "progressive" places struggle to do this. In fact, a coffee company just sued for the right to not have to provide an accessible website, trying to undermine the ADA's protections of digital spaces.
But don't take my words for it, there are many resources online that are worth reading:
> Pre-existing conditions, which as far as I'm aware, is a US-only concept
Most of the world's population has no concept of socialised heath insurance. Pre-existing or novel. Someone in a wheelchair, or who is blind or mute, is much better accomodated in America than in most of Europe. (In part because the former is richer.)
>Someone in a wheelchair, or who is blind or mute, is much better accomodated in America than in most of Europe. (In part because the former is richer.)
I guess it just depends on who you talk to and their particular values.
I love my country, but to give a bit of a counter point : I am paralyzed due to a cervical spine injury.
Medicare will pay 80% of the cost of a new chair after payment of deductible once every 5 years. They do not cover maintenance and repair in most cases.
A decent mid-range power-chair with posture and repositioning aids costs between 15k-25k. The air cushion for this chair to prevent pressure sores costs 400-800usd.
So, essentially, that means that a permanently disabled person making the high SSDI income of 18k a year is going to be asked to pay 4.5k USD out of pocket every 5 years just in order to take advantage of the offers from Medicare -- and this isn't including repair, wear and replacement of items, or the short 1-2 year life span of most air cushions. By the time the chair hits the next replacement window it will have gone through 2-3 500-800usd cushions and numerous other repairs.
To contrast : My friends with similar injuries who are insured under the British NHS receive a voucher for a new chair every 3-5 years. They receive vouchers for repair at local shops. Cushion replacement is deemed necessary during the repair process and they are replaced w/ vouchers as needed, not on a schedule.
It's all grass-is-always-greener thinking. The NHS has huge problems, too. But as a wheelchair user I can't wholly agree with the take that we're better accommodated over in the U.S. in any absolute sense.
If we're comparing the United States against third-world countries and not against their peers, then this isn't really a discussion worth having.
> Someone in a wheelchair, or who is blind or mute, is much better accomodated in America than in most of Europe.
I find that hard to believe given the lack of public transport, lack of funding for widespread public facilities, lack of empathy from insurers, lack of governmental social safety nets for those who come under unexpected hard times.
As a European, I can confirm that wheelchair accessibility is traditionally better in the US than in Europe.
I suspect it's a combination of getting relevant laws earlier (don't know that, just guessing), having less old infrastructure (building new with accessibility is easier than upgrading existing buildings), and having more space (so adding a wheelchair ramp is less of a deal).
Europe is generally catching up, but I'd say it's still behind the US. At least the places I know.
But of course, that's not the whole story, as another commenter illustrates with some concrete examples for the cost of wheelchairs and wheelchair maintenance.
The context “pre-existing conditions” is most commonly used in the USA used to be for underwriting health insurance, but since 2010, the Affordable Care Act prohibits health insurance businesses from using pre existing conditions to underwrite health insurance:
Everyone is eligible to purchase health insurance, and pricing can only be based on
1) age (loosely, old people are heavily subsidized by young because highest premium is capped at 3x lowest premium)
2) tobacco use (tobacco users didn’t have the political power to prevent this habit from being an underwriting factor, as opposed to alcohol and sugar and excess carbohydrate users)
I was caught up in the pre ACA health care system trying to find insurance outside of working for a company.
I have very mild Cerebral Palsy and back then, I was in great shape - a part time fitness instructor, had just run two half marathons in an average time, I could pass any of the standard fitness tests for my age etc.
I had one surgery in my entire life - four surgery at 21 12 years prior. I could not get insurance at any price even though they could have given me any fitness test including running on a treadmill with flying colors.
I was making more than enough as a contractor to pay for it.
I looked on the open market last year when I briefly thought about going independent and I could have definitely made the numbers work.
> What research did you do before making your statement?
I clearly stated "as far as I'm aware" and that I am happy to be corrected. I appreciate the extra information, but the tone here is not appreciated and is skirting close to breaching the HN guidelines.
There was nothing wrong with you making a statement qualified with "as far as I know". You're good.
Likewise, there was nothing wrong with another person asking for details regarding what effort went into "as far as I know". They're good.
Someone who is in any given field and has researched it for decades might have more related knowledge included in "as far as I know", than someone who didn't. So it's totally reasonable to ask them how they came to know 'as far as they know', because that information is critical for everyone else to judge how much credence to lend to that someone's posts.
Switzerland has them for supplementary health insurances.
In a nutshell, Switzerland has two types of health insurances. The basic one, which is mandatory, and whose coverage and price is set by the government. It covers more or less everything that endangers your health. Pretty close to ACA in the US if I'm not mistaken, but a lot more regulated.
And then you can add supplementary insurances, for stuff like dental, private rooms in hospitals, experimental treatments, ... It's common to be denied coverage there, especially as you get older.
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