What’s wrong with cash? It’s too…free?

Saw a commercial today that really threw me for one.

In what is perhaps a perfect statement of irony, I don’t remember which it was for, Visa or Mastercard. So ha. Screw you guys. Your bone-chilling maschinations didn’t even do their work. :-P

The intimation of the commercial was that money, in the form of cash and checks, is inefficient and "lame". That today’s consumer needs "faster" money, money that is cool-looking and bright-colored, money which will make total strangers stop what they’re doing and think, "My, what an intelligent and surprisingly sexy person."

You know what’s "lame" about money? That you’re not pocketing enough of it! That’s all you’re trying to fix. There’s so very little about your services that’s actually useful or cool that I’m amazed you get away with charging for it at all, and yet your pricing schemes have put countless families through bankruptcy or worse. Why people in this country don’t throw all their plastic money in the chipper baffles me. The savings would be astronomical!

Seriously, they would. The entire middle class, plus sizeable chunks of the rich and the poor, would suddenly be richer. To demonstrate by how much, I pay about \$17 in interest on credit per month, not including student loans or mortgages or such; just good old bank-owned microloan on plastic for various crap. So minus any \$35 late fees or sudden increases in interest to 30% for no reason, I pay a bank \$204 a year for the "privelege" of paying with plastic. That also doesn’t count the various fees and whatnot associated with using my debit card, AND the fact that they take a percentage from the merchant every time I buy anything with it as a credit card!

But making money hand over fist isn’t enough, and being allowed to trample people and families in your quest for endless growth — not enough, eh? Now they’re hinting that they need to have control of, and to profit from, every transaction.

How long until somebody, having been thoroughly probed by lobbyists, steps forward and moves to outlaw or severely limit the use of cash and/or checks?

…And tangentially, what do you think of the idea that maybe credit card companies are behind the persistent rumor that it’s illegal to send cash through the mail? (It isn’t! Here’s proof.) I’ve wondered…