socializing credit cards

Here is something I have been thinking about lately. The government is the only one authorized to print currency and mint coins. These days using debt cards is a ubiquitous as using cash was years ago. Plastic in the form of debt and credit cards is the de facto currency to many people. Should the government start issuing currency in the same way?

The government doesn’t charge you fees for handling cash, nor does it burden you with private agreements on how you can use such currency. That is handled by the tax system, US government as a whole. So you would rather private banks continue to dominate control over our currency by issuing such instruments of commerce?

I’m not advocating the removal of cash, it has abundant uses. However, in order to do participate in electronic commerce, which is increasing every day, you are pretty much limited to credit or debit cards, both monetary systems regulated, but not controlled by the government.

Visa and MasterCard could still exist. This in no way would replace debt services. This would be a cash replacement. It’s just that our forms of currency are not keeping up with the way people use them. We don’t necessarily swap goods in person anymore and the monetary system should reflect that.

As it is a cash system you would bear no interest on your funds. You could transfer your money to a private (interest bearing) account if desired. It could help cut down on welfare fraud and such since you would use this as the deposit point for all such services.

Simply require that all businesses in the US that take Visa or other forms of credit/debit also accept this system. I say this would fall very nicely under interstate commerce laws. If you need to go outside the US transfer to another private account if necessary, but I’m sure the rest of the world would eventually adopt similar systems. Same with using your cash internationally, you may need to convert it at some point.