Kenneth Rogoff is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a chess grand master. He came out with an article this week in the Wall Street Journal that details the various reasons that he thinks we need to immediately dump the use of cash in our society.
see: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sinister-side-of-cash-1472137692
His main points in the essay titled 'The Sinister Side of Cash':
- cash facilitates crime (money laundering etc)
- cash is implicated in tax evasion
- cash is the core problem of illegal immigration
In other words, cash is anti-state because it facilitates unchecked human exchanges. Throughout the essay, Rogoff lays out the argument that removing cash from society would allow for MORE STATE CONTROL . To be fair though, he did specify that he was advocating for a "less-cash" society an not an entirely cash-free society.. apparently.
And just how should we go about getting rid of cash? Well, Rogoff's got a few ideas, to start with he says that we should begin to phase out bills; by phasing out large bills it will make it harder for people to store large amounts of cash. Also when it comes to the possibility of people turning to cryptocurrency to try and seek anonymous exchanges, Rogoff insists that the government will be able to prevent people from using alternatives for too long (by using their traditional methods of force).
Rogoff also warns that the decline in cash will be a sort of insurance against the fallout from negative interest rates. Rogoff says that by cutting interest rates that might worry folks (for good reason) who have a lot in their bank account and they might rush to take out their money rather than watch it slowly decline. Negative rates punish savers. And He says that if too many people try to do this and take out their funds then that would make it too difficult for the banks to make other loans. But we know that banks have been making loans for many decades without being required to have the proper funds available in their vaults to cover them; so that fact shouldn't change their ability to act as usual in giving out loans.
He also suggests for fees to be used on any deposits or withdrawals of paper currency. And that by getting rid of the cash and penalizing those who still hold it, then the central banks "would be free to drive rates as deep into negative territory as they needed." Rogoff says that he thinks the time has already come to start phasing out the $20 American bill and others.