The cash consumer will pay the cost of the Trump-Musk penny-elimination gambit: Is it the harbinger of a coming cashless tyranny?

"The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red."

 

The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.

And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.

We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.

Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.

How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.

Every. Damn. Time.

 

To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...

. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.

“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...

Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.

“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”

More.

 

The tyranny of modernity: Obama says it has tolerance for all (except for fundamentalists, racists and ethnic supremacists)

But he repeats himself.

Quoted here and here:

“We must reject any form of fundamentalism, or racism or a belief in ethnic superiority that makes our traditional identities irreconcilable with modernity,” Obama said before the U.N. “It’s a truism that globalism has led to a collision of cultures.”

"Instead we need to embrace the tolerance that results from respect of all human beings," he said.

I'll go along with this analysis when the Amish mafia takes over the country and makes it so violent and undesirable that the foreign hoards suddenly stop trying to come here.

First New Bank Start-Up Since 2010 Caters To Pennsylvania Amish

The Wall Street Journal Reports here:

The number of federally insured institutions nationwide shrank to 6,891 in the third quarter after this summer falling below 7,000 for the first time since federal regulators began keeping track in 1934, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The decline in bank numbers, from a peak of more than 18,000, has come almost entirely in the form of exits by banks with less than $100 million in assets, with the bulk occurring between 1984 and 2011. More than 10,000 banks left the industry during that period as a result of mergers, consolidations or failures, FDIC data show. About 17% of the banks collapsed. ...

Unlike before the financial crisis, new startup banks aren't rushing to take the place of exiting institutions. Every year from 1934 to 2009, investors in the U.S. chartered at least a few and sometimes hundreds of new banks, according to the FDIC data. The Bank of Bird-in-Hand opened in Bird-in-Hand, Penn., on Monday—it was the first new bank startup in the U.S. since December 2010. ...

While the new bank will offer online deposits and target local customers who aren't Amish, it will also operate a courier service to accommodate customers who might not be able to drive up or log on—a nod to the fact many Amish don't use cars or computers. The drive-through window of the bank's one branch accommodates a horse and buggy, and there is a shelter in the parking lot to shield horses from rain.