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 The Race to Cashlessness Hits a Speed Bump
In 2016 digital money formally went to war against cash. Visa Europe launched its “Cashfree and Proud” campaign, the “latest step of Visa UK’s long term strategy to make cash 'peculiar' by 2020." "(N)ew money doesn't need a wallet,” PayPal billboards proclaimed. Its Superbowl ad declared, "New money isn't paper, it's progress". At a well-attended fintech Congress held in Amsterdam, the Italian association, CashlessWay issued a Cashless Manifesto.
To most observers, these public campaigns, although conducted by companies profiting from digital cash transactions, simply affirmed the inevitable: Much of the world is leaving cash behind.
In 2017, only 25 percent of Swedes paid in cash at least once a week, down from 63 percent just four years before. More than a third never used cash at all, or only once or twice a year. Signs in the windows of retail stores cautioning potential customers, “We Don’t Accept Cash” are common. Australian merchants’ cash receivables plummeted by 46 percent between 2010 and 2016, prompting one publication to ask, “Will Australia Go Cashless by 2022?” In Belgium 93 percent of consumer transactions are now cashless. In China 40 percent of the population carries around less than 100 RMB ($15). Even in the United States, which lags far behind China or Europe in adopting contactless payments, nearly half of Americans carry less than $20 in cash. About 10 percent have entirely stopped carrying cash. Read more...
Is Britain’s Long Love Affair With Privatization Ending in Divorce?
On May 4, 1979 Maggie Thatcher became Britain’s Prime Minster. A two-decade orgy of privatization ensued. On January 15, 2018, the liquidation of one of the UK’s largest private contractors may be bringing an end to the country’s long love affair with privatization.
In one turbulent decade, the Tories sold off most of Britain’s public utilities: water systems in England and Wales in 1989; electricity utilities in 1990; the natural gas network in 1995; British Rail in 1996.
They also dramatically replaced public employees with private contractors. In 1997, when Tony Blair and the Labour Party regained power, they embraced outsourcing with surprising ardor. Blair has no regrets. Indeed, in 2015 he warned the Labour Party not to regress. “So let me make my position clear: I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”
Both Tory and Labour insisted that virtually anything the public sector could do, the private sector could do better. Competition would drive the private sector to improve services while competition and economies of scale reduced their prices. Read more...
Half of all private businesses do not offer their employees retirement plans, leaving as many as 78 million workers without plans. And less than 10 percent of workers without plans end up contributing to an outside savings vehicle. This contributes to the distressing fact that over 40 percent of people retire with less than $10,000 in savings. One in seven of those have no savings at all.
When he first took office, Barack Obama proposed to address the problem head on by requiring all employers to automatically enroll their workers in a plan in which they would automatically deposit a small percentage of their paycheck, unless the worker opted out.
Republicans balked at the proposal, despite the fact that it had an impeccable pedigree: A joint proposal by J. Mark Iwry of the liberal Brookings Institution and David C. John of the conservative Heritage Foundation and endorsed by both the New York Times and the National Review.Read more...
I loved the final of the World Cup. I’m happy multiracial France won.
But in my heart of hearts I wanted Uruguay to win. It certainly had the wherewithal. Its national team has won over 99 international titles. In 2010 it had reached the World Cup semifinals in 2010. This year it lost to France.
I wanted Uruguay to win because more of us would learn its remarkable story, how a little country wedged between Argentina and Brazil with a population about that of Chicago and Houston has achieved one of the world’s most democratic, egalitarian, least corrupt and socially progressive societies.
Uruguay’s has a long history, but it was under the Presidency of José Batlle y Ordóñez (1903-1907, 1911, 1915) that its modern ethos was fashioned. Batlle created state enterprises to wrest economic control from foreign investors and implemented policies to reduce inequality and improve the lot of the majority. In a series of commentaries Batlle laid out his philosophy and his program. For Batlle, one strategy for reducing inequality and improving the lot of the many was to make “the rich less rich so that the poor become less poor.” Read more...
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