With a booming black economy and the highest number of small businesses in Europe, cash is still very much king in Italy and Giorgia Meloni’s new right-wing coalition wants to keep it that way.
While the rest of Europe hurtles towards a cashless society, cash-dependent Italy is stubbornly resisting.
Meloni’s newly installed government has put forward proposals to help the country’s backbone of small businesses by prolonging the lifespan of cash. In the process, she is locking horns with the EU and her own central bank, who complain high cash usage is fuelling the black economy and enabling tax dodging.
The economy’s the economy, whether white, grey (tax dodging) or black (illegal). It’s the accumulation of what tens of million of people do, wish to do and how they do it and wish to.
Demanding that it all be white so that the bureaucracy can take its vigorish off the top is to put the interests of the bureaucracy above those of the people.
How fun that we’ve the far-right neo-fascists arguing for the people, the EU for the bureaucrats.
Quite right too. I just paid my roofer in cash, but had to make two trips to the bank to do withdraw enough on my card.
The EU is just about the bureaucrats. They are the only people who benefit from it ( and failed politicians like Kinnock who become bureaucrats ).
Too late for our newly installed far Right neo-fascist government to stop, all small businesses here have had to install POS terminals. No doubt the young will take to them with enthusiasm: they love their plastic, and will thus make tax mitigation a little harder to do.
However,as long as cash survives, all should be well.
Like Otto, I recently withdrew some cash. Cashiers seem to be trained to ask for one’s reason for doing this sometimes point blank and sometimes more circuitously, as in “going somewhere nice on holiday?” to which one might be tempted to ask if they do haircuts too.
My standard reply now, in a Hight STreet where two out of four bank branches have closed, is to answer that I’m doing my bit to keep branch banking alive.
Tell ’em it’s a ransom payment. You’re paying in installments and wii get your kids back in 20 years.
We want cash in our pockets because, candidly, our masters have sworn to rob us blind and already steal more than half your income.
The other reason is because our enemy the British government would very much like to micromanage what you’re allowed to spend your money on, and who you’re permitted to spend it with. Anybody who has been alive and conscious for the past 3 years knows the score. Social Credit is already here in the West.
We know you’re going to be debanked if they don’t like the cut of your jib (in fact, the State often needs do nothing, big finance and big tech are just as eager to take away the civil rights of “transphobes”, “climate deniers” and “antivaxxers” as the public sector is).
So don’t make it easier for your enemies to hurt you. I got a lion in my pocket, and baby… he’s ready to roar.
The EU is all about paying failed politicians loads of wedge. So cash is evil and unpatriotic and probably racist as well. Its only benefit is that its mostly untraceable, but this is offset by the fact that, by failed politicians standards, it’s way too damn heavy.
Do they have to actually work? Or will an inert lump of plastic, a shrug, and a “Can’t make the damn thing work” to the compliance inspector be enough?
Do they have to actually work? Or will an inert lump of plastic, a shrug, and a “Can’t make the damn thing work” to the compliance inspector be enough?
Well, it is the law to have POS terminals in every business here too…. Amazingly many of the expat community think that it is outrageous that some places still only accept cash… It is more likely to be them that fit the establishment up than the compliance inspector… *rolls eyes*
https://www.paphoslife.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18056
Murphy gets a boner at the idea of banning cash and the recent proposal for all bank transactions to be through accounts held with HMRC who deduct their cut first.
In answer to the headline question: Not You.
I’d guess tIBiI is self selecting his demographics as BiC indicates. Never seen any reluctance on the part of the yoof to participate in the black economy. A great deal of their lifestyle choices depend on it.
EU fonctionnaires love cash. That’s why they have €500 notes, so that brown envelopes fit easily into an inside pocket.
“Too late for our newly installed far Right neo-fascist government to stop, all small businesses here have had to install POS terminals.”
They’ve had to use state-approved tills for ages, but it hasn’t stopped “business as usual”. Thank goopdness.