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Senior Member
I received an email that contains a lot of things that I have been saying for a long time (I wish I had written it first). I won't go over everthing that was in the email but some things I have talked about that are changing now and will be complete in the not too distant future:
1. CASH MONEY will be gone within 20 or so years. All monitary transactions will be electronic or plastic. The banks, financial institutions and every place that bills you for money are trying to get everyone to do it on-line or with automatic deductions. As the older generation dies off, it won't be long before it will be mandatory. Paper checks will no longer be used or accepted. The only reason it hasn't happened by now is that the government doesn't want to deal with the trillions of dollors in pennies that will get turned in.
2. The Post Office will go out of business. It is already loosing money and as more and more people start doing everything from emails, greeting cards to all financial transactions on-line, including advertisements, there won't be anything left to deliver.
3. Paper Newspapers and books, along with music, videos, movies and other entertainment. Like bill paying, the younger generation is used to doing everything on-line, including gettihg news, streaming videos, movies, etc. and these things will go by the wayside.
4. Landline Telphones are being used less and less all the time. The last time I saw something about this, it said that less then half of the homes in American have landline telephones and those were for "older people". The younger people are used to instant communication and want to use their cellphones for everything.
By the way, I am not blaming or knocking the "younger generation", I am just saying that they don't need many of the things that the "older generations" are used to and as the older people die off, so will the things I mentioned.
Grumpy
Senior Member
The cell phone doing everything is something I have been doing for 6-7 years. It makes financial sense instead of having both. I did try the insight cable phone for a few months so I could reach my daughter when her cell died but I couldn't continue to pay the bill....just didn't make sense to me. I guess the thing I lose is the 911 feature of knowing where I am at the time of the call....if I call and can't communicate.
Senior Member
No surprises on this list for me.
1. I don't use cash unless I absolutely have to. It's debit card all the way for me. I don't see the point of cash and wish it would go away sooner rather than later.
2. I use the post office less than 10 times per year. It is so mismanaged and such a pain to deal with them if you ever have to. This will take longer to come about, but won't surprise me when it happens.
3. I haven't bought a newspaper or magazine for years. I don't see why anyone would. I will confess that I like to read actual books and will be a late adopter to the e-book readers.
4. I haven't used a landline in at least 8 years or more. I'm not sure why anyone would at this point unless you don't have any cell service where you live. I give landlines about 5 more years.
Senior Member
That's what most people do any more but what happens when the computer system crashes for 4 or 5 hours or a virus infects and crashes the system for even longer? In the last 2 weeks there have been 2 instances where the credit card machines have been malfunctioning (2 separate places) and the lines were backed up out the door because nobody (except me) was paying with cash. What's the back up plan for something like that - do we go on the "honor system".Originally Posted by know1
I don't like the idea of EVERY SINGLE THING being done on-line. You know somebody, somewhere out there has some sort of virus created that could seriously wreak havoc. I've always thought that it won't be a nuclear war or some big event that causes worldly demise - it will be some petty thing that has to do with computers that nobody saw coming.......
Maybe one day I'll be 70 and look back at this post and laugh. We'll see.
Senior Member
I do see your point, but then again I've only seen that sort of thing happen when I was paying just a couple of times.
I think cash has just as many issues. For example, it's much easier to lose, misplace, damage, etc, this physical thing called cash that you can hold in your hand. If you accidentally drop your wallet coming out of a store, you're likely not going to get that cash back, but if you discover it quickly enough, you can cancel the card and there's not much harm done. Plus, in theory they should have to show ID or know your address if they use your card although I'm rarely asked for ID.
It just seems to me that having money be tied to a physical piece of paper or a coin just doesn't make sense.
Senior Member
You have physical control over the currency. If you drop your wallet, yeah everything's gone. But everybody would have to drop their wallets at the exact same time to duplicate a computer crash. The currency is physical proof that you indeed have the funds. In an electronic system there's no "proof". Bigtime crash - no exchange of goods and services for anybody.
Plus the strip bars don't take debit cards for lap dances...........
Senior Member
I buy them because I'm afraid I might drop my expensive piece of electronics down the toilet on accident.Plus if there is no toilet paper you can't really wipe with a IPAD, cell phone...........
Senior Member
Makes sense, though I'm also partial to paper books. I even still go to the library. Do you think it will be electronic one day? I guess it will. HOWEVER, I haven't seen a movement away from office phones yet. Households are dumping landlines, but businesses aren't unless you travel for work. I know plenty of folks with a work cell phone, but they all also have a landline in their offices. Now, fax machines might as well be gone already since scanners are so prevalent.
Oh, and you can pay for lap dances with your debit card, Prowler!
Senior Member
Yea, you can, but you DON'T wanna know where to insert the card.......
OK.......let the hate mail begin.
Later,
Geo
Senior Member
Really? I haven't been in a good while. Should've known
Senior Member
I don't like to use my debit card for much. I will use it when filling up the gas tank so that I can do the pay at the pump, but I like paying cash whenever possible.
As far as newspapers and magazines, most of their online versions don't allow you to read each story, I think they will hold on longer than most think.
I agree about the landline, but I need mine. I only use it when doing interviews for magazine articles and that is because I have a hook up for my digital voice recorder and it only works on a landline. If they ever make a quality hook up that works for cell phones, I will do away with my land line.
I use the post office each month. I will send out copies of magazine articles to hunters and anglers that I used as sources for my articles. The post office is more convenient for me to ship them this way.
Senior Member
I agree that all 4 things listed are diminishing, but I really think it's an overstatement to say they'll all be gone completely. The email contains a couple factual errors, also.
1. CASH MONEY - It's been true for a long time that the majority of American money doesn't exist as cash, and most of what does isn't in America.
http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-m...-the-world.htm
But until all the WORLD's transactions are computerized, there will be a need for cash money, and I wouldn't say that will EVER happen. And there aren't "trillions of dollars" worth of pennies in existence, in fact not even a trillion dollars worth of American money exists as cash, in total. One trillion dollars in pennies would be over $3,300.00, or 330,000 pennies, for every man, woman and child in America.
2. "The Post Office will go out of business" - This one might happen, or it might just cease to exist in its present form. But there will always be a need for snail mail. If the USPS isn't delivering it, then maybe UPS or some other private carrier will.
3. "Paper Newspapers and books, along with music, videos, movies and other entertainment. Like bill paying, the younger generation is used to doing everything on-line, including gettihg news, streaming videos, movies, etc. and these things will go by the wayside."
I don't think all of these should be lumped together. Paper newspapers? Yes they're disappearing, more's the pity. A lot of them have gone out of business, and just look how emaciated the Courier-Journal looks these days. But then to go on and say, "music, videos, movies and other entertainment." are going to by the wayside? OK you may not see CD's and DVD's, just like you don't see 75's and daguerreotypes today, but people are always going to want to have their own collections of music, videos, movies, etc, that they can access at will, which means there will always be a demand for some kind of durable media to save stuff on. It'll just look different than it does today.
4. "Landline Telphones are being used less and less all the time. The last time I saw something about this, it said that less then half of the homes in American have landline telephones and those were for "older people". The younger people are used to instant communication and want to use their cellphones for everything."
True, they're being used less and less, but it's about a quarter of homes that DON'T have landlines, not less than half that DO. And there will always be areas that you just can't get cell phone service, unless they all go satellite. Plus businesses need to keep them around for when they're VOIP systems go down. Landlines aren't going way completely any time soon. It was only a few years ago that the last place in America even got push-button phones!
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