Public toilets?

Howard Law

What do you do

  • Hover

    Votes: 3 12.5%

  • Wipe and sit

    Votes: 10 41.7%

  • Birdnest

    Votes: 5 20.8%

  • eww, i'm to uppidy to use a public tiolet

    Votes: 6 25.0%
  • Total voters
    24
G

Grunk

Why leave anything here?
Kalash Klub
Lifetime Supporter
Aug 31, 2018
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Zip code
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Jeddak said:
@Grunk
Thinking about the coin shortage today.
Currency replacementis coming. Either currency devaluation or switch to digital only.
Negative interest rates mean that you will be charged for keeping money in the bank and spending it. When Japan did that, peoole took cash out and sat on it. Feds are trying to prevent it. Start with the coins, then paper bills.
Your thoughts?
Click to expand...

@Jeddak, apologies for the lengthy post. (TLDR version, I think Jeddak is on the right thought train, the only question is how fast)

Well, the Fed says that the coin shortage is because the supply chain that coins usually flow through has been interrupted during the pandemic. Banks and businesses have closed or changed the way they operate, so there are fewer coins reaching the public. The places where you go to give your coins & folding money have not been working. So the whole system has kind of come to a stop.

Now that I've gotten the official mumbo jumbo out of the way here are some of my thoughts:

I think you're correct that the Fed & probably much more of the government want a currency replacement. I think they want to switch to digital only. Income taxes would be harder to fudge, all tax collection (sales, property, income, etc.) could be automated by linking to a person's digital account & spending behavior & travel would be easier to track & analyze. All things governments have tried to do more & more of. And you're right, it hamstrings people when negative interest rates arrive. The recent stimulus heavily favored digital transactions. Those on government benefits got the money added to their benefit debit cards electronically. People with a direct deposit arrangement with the IRS or SSA got theirs that way. I'm not sure if everyone who qualified but needed a paper check (i.e. no digital link to the government money system) have gotten their money yet.

The Fed has been complaining for close to a decade that material, manufacturing. & transportation costs of producing & distributing coins exceed the value. (Last I remember reading, it cost between 5 & 6 cents to produce a penny.) I don't know if that is an accurate analysis, but it indicates a desire to get rid of coins. I don't know if there was an active plan to try to get rid of coins in this time frame or if they are just taking advantage of the "pandemic" to do so. If they are successful, it is only a matter of time till paper money is gone.

I used to think negative interest rates would be avoided at all cost. Now, not so much. In addition to Japan, Britain sold a government bond with a negative yield for the 1st time in May of this year. Trump has supposedly pushed the Fed to consider them. The big scare has been what that does to many insurance companies & pension plans that are required to use bonds to honor income guarantees to the retirees. falling rates of the past decade have already made defined benefit plans unaffordable for employers seeking to provide decent retirement income to their employees. They have shrunk the income from bond portfolios traditionally used to fund regular payouts just when member demographics have been forcing pension plans to de-risk their portfolios by loading up on bonds. The traditional way out of this trap is to convert defined benefit pension plans to some payout based on contributions.

Politicians, in my opinion, may see it as an opportunity. When negative interest rates hit & pension plans are pushing to go to contribution based payouts, the government swoops in & "nationalizes" these pensions promising to pay more than the companies can to retirees. Of course, like all government promises, it's meaningless but it provides a politicians with a chance to do away with private pensions, 401k plans, etc. & thereby control more money & to require everybody to participate in the gov's plan since benefits are paid out of tax revenue.

In my mind, the only question is how fast they can make this happen. And the infighting & incompetence may be what saves us. I personally think it is not an accident that neither party can hold the White House & both houses of Congress for very long. I think a lot of people know at a gut level that the gridlock from infighting slows the destruction.
 
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Miles

Miles

Ninja
Site Supporter
Kalash Klub
Jul 20, 2016
8,384
46,778
113
NW GA
Grunk said:
@Jeddak, apologies for the lengthy post. (TLDR version, I think Jeddak is on the right thought train, the only question is how fast)

Well, the Fed says that the coin shortage is because the supply chain that coins usually flow through has been interrupted during the pandemic. Banks and businesses have closed or changed the way they operate, so there are fewer coins reaching the public. The places where you go to give your coins & folding money have not been working. So the whole system has kind of come to a stop.

Now that I've gotten the official mumbo jumbo out of the way here are some of my thoughts:

I think you're correct that the Fed & probably much more of the government want a currency replacement. I think they want to switch to digital only. Income taxes would be harder to fudge, all tax collection (sales, property, income, etc.) could be automated by linking to a person's digital account & spending behavior & travel would be easier to track & analyze. All things governments have tried to do more & more of. And you're right, it hamstrings people when negative interest rates arrive. The recent stimulus heavily favored digital transactions. Those on government benefits got the money added to their benefit debit cards electronically. People with a direct deposit arrangement with the IRS or SSA got theirs that way. I'm not sure if everyone who qualified but needed a paper check (i.e. no digital link to the government money system) have gotten their money yet.

The Fed has been complaining for close to a decade that material, manufacturing. & transportation costs of producing & distributing coins exceed the value. (Last I remember reading, it cost between 5 & 6 cents to produce a penny.) I don't know if that is an accurate analysis, but it indicates a desire to get rid of coins. I don't know if there was an active plan to try to get rid of coins in this time frame or if they are just taking advantage of the "pandemic" to do so. If they are successful, it is only a matter of time till paper money is gone.

I used to think negative interest rates would be avoided at all cost. Now, not so much. In addition to Japan, Britain sold a government bond with a negative yield for the 1st time in May of this year. Trump has supposedly pushed the Fed to consider them. The big scare has been what that does to many insurance companies & pension plans that are required to use bonds to honor income guarantees to the retirees. falling rates of the past decade have already made defined benefit plans unaffordable for employers seeking to provide decent retirement income to their employees. They have shrunk the income from bond portfolios traditionally used to fund regular payouts just when member demographics have been forcing pension plans to de-risk their portfolios by loading up on bonds. The traditional way out of this trap is to convert defined benefit pension plans to some payout based on contributions.

Politicians, in my opinion, may see it as an opportunity. When negative interest rates hit & pension plans are pushing to go to contribution based payouts, the government swoops in & "nationalizes" these pensions promising to pay more than the companies can to retirees. Of course, like all government promises, it's meaningless but it provides a politicians with a chance to do away with private pensions, 401k plans, etc. & thereby control more money & to require everybody to participate in the gov's plan since benefits are paid out of tax revenue.

In my mind, the only question is how fast they can make this happen. And the infighting & incompetence may be what saves us. I personally think it is not an accident that neither party can hold the White House & both houses of Congress for very long. I think a lot of people know at a gut level that the gridlock from infighting slows the destruction.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Long posts from you are good. I would love to hang out and talk with you for a while sometime.
 
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G

Grunk

Why leave anything here?
Kalash Klub
Lifetime Supporter
Aug 31, 2018
4,152
24,672
113
xkbn;zdfbmzd
Zip code
44444
Jeddak said:
Thank you. Long posts from you are good. I would love to hang out and talk with you for a while sometime.
Click to expand...
Love to get together with you. Let's seriously start trying to figure out a time & place.

On a darker note, power is now out in our area. At least it's not during the middle of the afternoon.
 
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