Towards a cashless economy

Australia is close to passing laws that would make it impossible to pay for anything with cash above $A10,000.

What’s interesting is who’s objecting: the Housing Association (cash for property innocently, really?); farmers (maybe this is about barter and/or tax avoidance), dentists (??), and big retail (hmm, sounds like high end products such as jewelry might be the issue here). Retailers are quoted as saying “customers like to save cash to make big payments” which sounds rather implausible.

One of the things that works against stamping out money laundering is that it means stamping out the black, and most of the grey, economy. The pushback from these parts of the economy is presumaby something between loss of perks and a feeling that the tax bite is too big.