Here's Your Change: Dumbing Down The Public

     When was the last time you paid cash for something in a store and the person at the register --I mean terminal since it's a computer now-- counted your change back to you? I think I may well have been a brunet back then.

     The phrase, 'when I was your age' or 'back when I was a kid' caused major eye-rolls when I was a kid. Now those dreaded phrases begin most of my stories. For instance, back when I was a kid in school I remember practising with my parents making change. We not only learned to count it back, we made the money out of construction paper. We learned to play Monopoly with paper money.

     Store employees today are told by the terminal how much money a customer is due, pulls that amount from the cash drawer and hands it in one lump with the receipt. Is counting back change a lost art?

     Counting change was the first lesson about money. The second was the game Monopoly, a board game invented in 1933. The Great Depression was certainly a time to teach children about money even though the lesson came late to some adults. Now Monopoly has gone digital. Players use debit cards on an ATM device. No wonder I often overhear children begging a parent to buy something by saying, 'Just use your card.' They have no concept of what $50 is, just that somehow their parents buy things with the use of a card.

     The financial segment of the morning news yesterday featured another scheme to dumb down the public by distancing them from cash. A smart phone app now will allow you to loan a friend some money and be repaid the same way. Baby-sitters will have an earnings record. All tips will have to be recorded. No one will be able to earn cash under the table. 'Cards and apps are safer than carrying cash' the report said. 

     Cards and apps are safer until a hacker hits the bank or a chain of stores, like that doesn't ever happen. Cards and apps are novelty now. The focus is on convenience. What about the trail every single thing you do with your money using those apps creates? What about privacy?

     The transparency for banks and government bantered about is just that: your transparency for the banks and government; not their transparency for you.

     Just think, no more coins in a jar, saved for a special treat. No more extra cash to stash in the safe in the closet for emergencies. Everything we have, everything we we purchase, everything we give away will be a matter of record. 

     The frog I mentioned yesterday sat in the skillet because he thought it was a convenient place to sit. Modern digital conveniences are turning up the heat on us and we don't even realize it.  We know what happened to the frog.

     Some change is best left on the counter.

Read. Learn. Take defensive action.