Walking down the crumbly yet quaint streets of Santa Cruz, a unique, flower themed clothing store catches my eye. I browse through the options, finding a light pink dress I would like to buy. I walk up to the cashier, hand over a couple twenty dollar bills—figuring that would cover the cost of the dress—and shockingly hear: “sorry, we only accept digital payment here.” This instance is only one of the very many experiences I have had with stores refusing cash payments, and after being refused time and time again, I have begun to question: is cash losing its value?
While I would like to say that cash would never become worthless, given the increasing tendency of stores only accepting digital payments, as well as recent changes within the government, I have to admit that there could be a real possibility of cash fading into obscurity. One change in the government in particular that I believe will affect, and in fact has already affected, the value of cash is the recent inauguration of President Donald Trump.
As most people know, Trump’s actions and motivations are primarily rooted in money, to the point where his presidential campaign centered around economics. Therefore, no one should hold any surprise at Trump’s decision to halt the production of pennies. According to Trump, “the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.” Given that Trump was able to halt the production of pennies with a simple command, it’s not a far stretch to assume that, if he so wanted, Trump could potentially completely stop the production of all physical currency in the United States, including cash.
So, while cash remains valuable to this day, in the coming years of Trump’s presidency, who can say if Trump will eradicate physical currency. Combined with the growing conversion of stores to digital payments, the future of cash doesn’t look too bright.
For more information about the halted penny production, click here.