He was, and still is I suppose, a smiling chap carrying a ladder carried over his shoulder and with a big ‘thank you’ when we paid him in cash for doing such a wonderful job of cleaning our windows.
But what will happen now to these people who earn some form of living doing odd jobs, which the population are grateful for, when the banks finally get their way and we turn into a cashless society.
It is so simple to hold your phone over some form of reader and, bang, a sum of money has gone from your account, winging its way, hopefully, to the person you wanted to pay.
That is the problem, an action with no meaning or control, a magical solution for paying your way with currency becoming valueless, as the personal influence over the use of it is taken away, and it is just numbers on a device and on paper.
Since the beginning of time people have used cash in one form or another to trade and live, and before the introduction of bank notes, it was always in hard coin.
Way back, when the Romans and others before, ruled the earth, there was some form of coinage in circulation. There have been numerous evidences of this as hordes of money have been found stashed away by many people in the past, saving for a rainy day or something we will never know about, except their action of being able to save with hard cash.
The sheer pleasure of being able to count it and put it into piles to make sure it is all there. An action we no longer will have, it is not something you can do with a load of figures on a sheet of paper.
Ah! What about the tooth fairy you may ask? One can hardly put a credit card under the pillow of a six-year-old.
There is another spin off, a gain for large organisations, supermarkets and others that used to trade in cash no longer have the cost of counting and storing the vast amount of money spent in their establishments, which in itself must be a saving.
The collection tins seen on the counter of bars and in shops will no longer exist, as waving a credit card in front of them will not work, and even now the charities receiving this coinage from them are having difficulty in disposing of it, as the banks are reluctant in taking shrapnel!!
Recently a family member told of her frustration of having bought a new printer as it only operated through a smartphone, she does not have such a device and does not want one, part of the new order we are sliding into, controlled by the young and knowledgeable totally ignoring those who do not want to, or cannot grasp the intrigue of the buttons in the digital world.
In real terms what it really means is control of all transactions will leave a paper trail, so the window cleaner and the odd job man will have to carry a currency reader with them when they go out to work. I shouldn’t think they will bother, and the likes of such trades will disappear, or will we all turn to bartering with an exchange of goods for services?
Without coin, the difficulty to teach the young who are yet to learn about the written word and figures, how will they be taught the value of money and the art of saving and building up a nest egg for the future if there is no hard cash to slide into the slot on top of the money box. Even more when they are a little older how will they be further taught the value if it is not possible to pay them pocket money to spend as they wish.
‘Percy’s Ramblings’ are available in book form from Percy Chattey Books on Amazon and Kindle.
