Point of View May 21, 2025 – Hour 2 : The Power of Cash

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, now Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:00:20] And welcome to Point of View, I'm Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today and you know when I stop at a convenience store, I'll pick up a few items, I go take it to the clerk, the attendant starts checking it out, scanning them and then when he or she's finished, he'll point to the machine to put my credit card or debit card in and he'll look up and he'll see,

[00:00:41] I have cash in my hands and sometimes they look confused, sometimes they look annoyed, but they most of the time will take my cash. But I do that as a matter of principle. In my family, we pay, we use cash for most standard purchases. My wife goes to the grocery store, she uses cash. When I go to the gasoline station, I use cash. If we're doing, if we're setting up reservations for airlines or something or a hotel, we use credit card.

[00:01:12] But for the most part, we use cash. But for the most part, we use cash. And over the years, I've thought there's several reasons why I do this because I feel like I'm sort of living alone in this world, but there's several reasons for it. And then I came across Professor Jay Zagorski's book, The Power of Cash. Why using paper money is good for you and your society. And I thought, I have found my hero. This is a man I idolize.

[00:01:41] Professor Jay Zagorski is an economist at Boston University's K-Storm School of Business. He has been, he's taught thousands of students there. He was also a researcher at Ohio State University for over 20 years, seeking to understand the causes and consequences of poverty and wealth. He's published widely and quoted widely. Dr. Zagorski, thank you for joining me. I'm going to read a second of your book here from the beginning.

[00:02:11] It says in 2015, about one fifth, that's 17.1 percent of the people said they were not carrying any paper money. By 2022, the figure was over a third, 34.6 percent. In less than a decade, the percentage of people walking around without any paper money doubled. If people don't carry cash, they cannot experience any of its benefits. And, you know, I suspect that that 34.6 is even higher now.

[00:02:40] Tell me what what inspired you to go to writing The Power of Cash? So let me say that a long time ago, I was not a cash user. As a matter of fact, I used my credit card for everything, and I was trying to accumulate as many points, as many miles on an airline as possible. And about two sabbaticals ago, I and my wife, we actually made it three-quarters of the way around the world on airplane points frequent flyer miles. And I was really excited about this.

[00:03:10] And the Federal Reserve in Boston, which is the central bank of the United States, they invited me in for a payments conference where people talked about, you know, how people are using money. The central bank is very interested in how people pay for things. And I was sitting there at lunch bragging to this man about how I had just traveled three-quarters of the way around the world, basically without paying any money at all. And he said, you do realize that somebody had to pay for that? And I sort of paused for a minute and went, right.

[00:03:39] I give lectures that there's no free lunch in the economy. And he goes, you know who pays for that? The poor. I went, what? And he then explained to me that basically people like myself have been taking money from poor people. And let me explain in simple terms how this happens. Stores and credit card companies, they all have to pay for these miles somehow. And airlines just don't give them away for free. It's not a marketing exercise.

[00:04:05] And what happens is stores, when you swipe your credit card, they get about 2% less. So in order to make up that money, they raise their prices by about 2%. Who gets money back? Well, if you get a cash-back card or something, you get your 2% back. If you use airplane miles, you get your 2% back. But poor people who don't tend to have credit cards, who don't have electronic means of payments, well, they're paying 2% more. So it's a reverse Robin Hood.

[00:04:33] Robin Hood in the Middle Ages was someone who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Well, these credit card reward programs are the exact opposite. They steal from the poor and give to the rich. And I went home that night and I looked at my wife and I was like, wait, we're donating all this money to charity to help poor people, yet I'm using my credit card and I'm making poor people worse off? Whoa, no, no. This is not okay. And then I started delving deeper and deeper and I came up with many, many, many more reasons why using cash is wonderful for society.

[00:05:02] Is cash disappearing? I mean, there's a few countries that have gone strictly to non-cash payments. Sweden is one and so is China, where basically it's very, very difficult to use cash in either of those countries. As a matter of fact, I was having lunch with someone from Sweden about a week or two weeks ago and she said if she wanted to get more cash than she could get out of an ATM, the ATMs have limits on how much cash to get out,

[00:05:29] she would have to make an appointment and wait two weeks to show up at her bank. She couldn't just walk into a bank and request some cash that was greater than the ATM limit. Hmm. Why did the countries decide to make that move? I would say about 15 or 20 years ago, cash was viewed as something that was dirty and not just, oh, people have germs all over it, but it was a way of, they thought of increasing criminality, that criminals use cash and if we could wipe cash off the board,

[00:05:59] then the amount of criminals in society, well, they'd be hampered and the amount of crime would go down. And what we've seen in places like Sweden is that crime didn't go down. Crime stayed the same except it shifted from one way to another. Quick example, in Sweden, almost no one has their pocketbook stolen. Very few people have their wallets picked, very few pickpockets, but there's been a massive increase in fraud, electronic fraud. People stealing your credit cards electronically.

[00:06:28] People hacking into your bank account electronically. So criminals, when cash started disappearing in these societies, they didn't go away. They just changed their modes of attack on regular people. You know, for me, one of my reasons for using cash is I just, I say it's simple. I just hand them, you know, $5, $2, $10, $20, whatever it is, and they make change for me. And sometimes I'm standing behind somebody who's trying to put the card in

[00:06:55] and then it doesn't work or then they have to redo it again and then they have to put their PIN number in. And it does not seem to me to be simple necessarily to use your card. It isn't necessarily simple to use your card. Everyone claims that cards are very convenient. And as you just said, if you're stuck behind somebody whose credit card was just declined, someone whose bank account was just put on hold, it's honestly convenient while everybody else is sort of fuming in line going, come on, let's go, especially if you have cash in your hand.

[00:07:25] But for those listeners who are, unfortunately, I'm going to drop off this radio show. I hope you stay for the whole time. I just have a very simple message for everyone who's listening, and that is use cash at least once a week. Just using cash once a week ensures that all the benefits we're going to talk about over the next few minutes are available to everybody in society. And by the way, if you want to be an overachiever and use it more than once a week, I'm perfectly happy with that. Me too, me too.

[00:07:53] My guest for this hour is Dr. Jay Zagorski. He is an economist and professor at Boston University. And we're talking about his new book, The Power of Cash, Why Using Paper Money is Good for You and Society. And I would encourage you to go to pointofview.net. We have a link to the book on our website. And I'd encourage you to get a copy of it or go to the library and get a copy of it. You're going to find out so many reasons why using cash is so much better

[00:08:22] than credit card or debit card. You're going to be amazed at some of the things. We're going to talk about some of those when we come back. And one of the reasons is using a card isn't simple. A lot of things are going on behind the scenes that you don't know about. Stay with us. We'll be back on Point of View.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Douglas Murray issues this warning in his new book on democracy and death cults. He says today the government most responsible for spreading the accusation that Israel is expansionist and colonialist is the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran, which has spent recent years assiduously expanding its colonies. He says what has Gaza become but a colony of Iran?

[00:09:24] He documents the many ways Iran has not only spread false information about Israel, but also has worked through its proxy forces like Hamas and Hezbollah to bring down Israel. He concludes that by the time Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Hezbollah had been engaged in a Syrian civil war and even established Lebanon essentially as a colony of Iran. He also reminds us of the bloodlust of groups like Hamas.

[00:09:50] He says Palestinian groups and their supporters encourage their youth to view death through martyrdom as the highest form of valor. But at the same time, they claim that the Jews are bloodthirsty child killers. He also laments that many Americans do not understand the threat from Iran and the threat to Israel. He points to a protest in Manhattan a month after the October 7th massacre. At the protest, the crowds chanted, From the river to the sea, Israel is a racist state

[00:10:17] and there is only one solution, Intifada revolution. Now the full title of his book is On Democracies and Death Cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization. He understands that our inability to see evil and terrorism clearly is a threat not only to Israel but to the future of our civilization. His book is a reminder of the threats we face today. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view.

[00:10:46] For a free booklet on a biblical view of Patriot Preachers, go to viewpoints.info slash Patriot Preachers. viewpoints.info slash Patriot Preachers. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And joining us by phone, Dr. Jay Zagorski. He is the author of The Power of Cash. He's also a professor of economics at Boston University. And, Doctor, when I came to the studio today,

[00:11:15] I stopped in the little deli downstairs and I was getting a package of candy and I looked on there and they have a little sign there that says, Minimum of $5 or more if you're going to use a card. And I thought to myself, you know, people think, people will say, well, using a card is just simple. It's just, I'd use the card and it's done. But there's all kinds of cash, money transactions, money transfers, and people taking, if I'm not going to say, maybe not a pound of flesh,

[00:11:44] but at least an ounce of flesh going on behind the scenes. A whole bunch of different things going on, but let's talk about that sign right there. And I want to switch to the conversation just for a minute and we'll come back to your original point about all the different things happening behind the scenes. I spend a lot of time traveling to Seattle. I happen to have two granddaughters there and my granddaughters live in a neighborhood that is very close to high-tech central. It's very close to Amazon. It's close to Google. Seattle headquarters,

[00:12:12] a whole bunch of other companies are out there. And many of the stores in that neighborhood have signs no cash accepted. Seattle, if you've ever been there, Merrill, also has a very large homeless population. And when you're homeless, you can't get a bank account because banks require, by federal law, something to know your customer. You need a valid form of ID. You need a permanent address so they can mail you things. All right? You need a couple of other things for a bank to accept you as a customer, which basically means

[00:12:41] homeless people, they can't get a debit card. They can't get a credit card. They really can't engage in anything besides the cash economy. And what the signs in Seattle and many of these stores say is if you're poor, don't bother walking in the door because if you don't have a debit card, you don't have a credit card, we won't let you make any purchases. And there's a man, when I go visit, I usually get a cup of coffee. You got candy. I tend to get coffee and a bagel at a local shop. And I know where he is and he's always saying, you have any spare change? And yeah, I carry cash

[00:13:11] so I have the ability to give him some money. But he can't walk into the store and buy a cup of coffee and a bagel at the place that I buy it because they refuse to allow non-cash transactions to happen. And I sit there and I go, wow, if you're poor in Seattle, you're excluded from many of these common businesses. You know, it's interesting because you talk about some of the stores that just simply don't take cash anymore. And we've gone to restaurants where they don't take cash. We've gone to the gym I go to

[00:13:40] and this town where I live, if you go in there, if I bring my granddaughter in, I have to pay $2 fee, but they don't take cash anymore. So I have to use my credit card to cover that $2 fee. And even though people will sometimes say, well, this is simple, it's not simple in the fact, I mean, I go back and I have to check those things online to see if all these charges are matched up to things I think we actually spent so that there's not fraud going on in there. There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes. A huge amount.

[00:14:10] Electronic transactions, well, they rest on three pillars. One, they rest on electricity. That's how they're called electronic transactions. Yes. Two, we need communication networks, right, that store that you went to that just charged you $2 for the health club. Somehow they have to transport your data to the central servers. And three, there's computers. Computers that have to process it, have to check your bank account, check who you are to make sure there's no fraud happening. And those three things don't always work.

[00:14:40] I don't know where you're physically located, but the show comes out of Texas. And Texas had a large number of tornadoes just in the last few days. Yes, and those tornadoes went all the way, all the way up to Kentucky. And during tornadoes, what happens is the telecommunication networks tend to fall down. The cell towers get blown away. Electricity lines tend to go down. Cash works all the time. Cash works during a tornado. It works during a hurricane, during a tsunami,

[00:15:10] any of these kind of things. But electronic payments, they fail in the very moment when people really need to spend money. You know, it's really interesting because you go through a list of things that are problems for using electronic payments and electricity disruptions. As you point out, we've had tornadoes here. Occasionally we have storms and the electricity goes down. We have ice storms and electricity goes down for thousands of people. And you can't, then you can't go online to pay for things. You may not be able to go into the store

[00:15:40] and use your card if there's one there where the electricity has gone down. So there can be real disruptions if you only use the credit or debit cards. And one of the reasons I said before the break to use cash at least once a week is that if you're using cash at least once a week in, say, that gas station or that convenience store or that supermarket, then the people there know how to handle cash for those moments when the disruption happens. Let me tell you a quick story. I went to my local supermarket a couple of weeks ago.

[00:16:09] I handed them some cash for a purchase and they were supposed to give me back 40 cents. And the lady handed me back four nickels which was actually 20 cents. I said, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. And she sort of looked at me blankly and the head cashier was two registers over and she saw what was going on. She walked over and she explained to the cashier the difference between nickels and dimes. And they were like, oh, I was supposed to give four dimes not four nickels. And the lady went, ah, I get it. But it was clear to me

[00:16:39] this cashier that she didn't have basically the skills for making change. And by using cash at least once a week we encourage people to have these kind of skills that they know what cash is. So then the moment when the power goes down and that grocery store says cash only, well, all their clerks are like, okay, we can do this. The manager knows how to get cash back to the bank. The manager knows how to get cash from the bank. There's a whole set of skills needed to go through society.

[00:17:09] Because if everyone switches to electronic means of payments, we lose a whole infrastructure. We lose banks. We lose ATMs. We lose even armored car companies. And I'm not trying to make a case for armored car companies and things like that, but we need this infrastructure to move cash around so that that moment when the tornado wipes things out for a week or two weeks in, say, North Texas, that it's possible, possible to keep living your life. You can go to the grocery store, you can buy the milk,

[00:17:39] you can buy food for your children, that you can fill up your car with gasoline. Another problem with our credit and debit cards is security. A little while back, I got a note from MasterCard saying, we don't think you actually just bought a ticket to a country in Africa. And so, we're checking this. If we're wrong, let us know, but we're getting ready to shut down this card. And they were absolutely correct. I did not buy a ticket to the country in Africa. Could have been a nice safari, you might have

[00:18:08] enjoyed it. I'd love to go to South Africa and go to safari, but that wasn't me. So, yes, people steal money from individuals who are holding cash. The data are a couple of years old because the FBI, which produces crime statistics, is not producing things every single month for the general public. But a couple of years ago, the most recent data showed that about $400 million in cash was stolen. Now, your listeners are going to be like, wow, $400 million, cash is not safe.

[00:18:37] But the same data set showed that over $20 billion were stolen from credit cards and debit cards. So, yes, thieves do steal money from people holding cash. But what happens is that electronic payments make you susceptible to thieves anywhere in the world. Cash, the thief has to be within basic striking distance, within a couple of miles of your house, your office, wherever you

[00:19:07] physically are. So, that basically opens you up to a wide, much wider range of people who have nefarious ideas about trying to take your money. See, it's important because we occasionally get texts. I got one last night from somebody said, Donald Trump wants to give you $5,000. You just need to go to this website and answer some questions. And of course, that would be a promise of $5,000 over the wire, but that, of course,

[00:19:37] is not what's going on. That may be somebody from Indonesia or Malaysia trying to get me to do something in order to be able to move me through something where they can steal my money, but they would be stealing it electronically. Now, the problem, Steve, when people say, you know, they take your credit card and they charge a ticket to Africa, is that a lot of people say, well, I just called up the credit card company and they reversed the charges. But we all end

[00:20:07] up paying for that theft, even though you don't think it actually cost you anything. So let's assume that it wasn't an airline, but it was a store. What happens is the credit card company goes to the store and says, you know, this item was purchased illegally, and the store then has to repay the money to the credit card company. The store then has to raise their prices because the theft actually happens. It's the same way as if somebody walked into the store and just stole, say, a TV set.

[00:20:37] So by stores raising prices, we all end up paying. my guest for this hour, Dr. Jay Zagorski. He is an economist and professor of economics in Boston University. We're talking about his book, The Power of Cash. When we come back, I want to ask him about, does cash sort of keep me from spending as much? Am I more likely to spend more money if I have a credit card and I'm not pulling money right out of my billfold? I know I feel that

[00:21:07] tension and I bet we find a lot of Americans feel that tension. If you want to find out more about him or get a link to his book, go to pointofview.net. We have a link there for you. We'll be back with Dr. Jay Zagorski. It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.

[00:21:37] They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics. Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up, but we can't, we shouldn't, we must not. As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, never give in, never give in, never, never,

[00:22:07] never, never, never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. And that's what we say to you today. This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos. We can't do it alone, but together with God's help, we will overcome the darkness. Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call

[00:22:35] 1-800-347-5151 pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151 pointofview.net will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not

[00:23:05] necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And welcome back to Point of View. My guest by phone, Dr. Jay Zagorski. We're talking about his book, The Power of Cash. If you have a question for him, you can give us a call 1-800-351-1212. We'll open up the lines 1-800-351-1212. And doctor, you mentioned in the book that we spend more with a

[00:23:35] credit card than we do with cash and I feel that myself. If I'm pulling out money out of my billfold, I just seem to be much stingier than if I'm looking at something online and I'm going to hit a button and it's going to be paid for and then I don't have to see that bill until later when the credit card bill comes in. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. And one of the reasons is something called the pain of paying. When you actually pull pieces of paper out of your billfold, out of your purse, out of your pocket, there's a little bit of moment of regret. Oh, there's a

[00:24:05] $20 bill going, drash, I'd like to keep it there. And with a credit card, when you tap, there's no pain of paying, you're just tapping an electronic card. But there's a couple of other reasons. If you happen to have money in your purse or your pocket or your wallet, you have a hard limit. Maybe you have $100 in there, maybe you have $50 in there, but you know you can only spend up to the number of pieces of paper you have there. With a debit card, you can spend everything in your bank account, and with a credit card, you can spend all the money in your bank account plus

[00:24:35] whatever your credit limit is. So you have far more opportunities to spend money using electronic means than you do with actual paper means. So we have that option, and then one of the things that you mentioned in the book, tipping, because so many places, and there was a restaurant that we went to, it recently closed down, that it only took credit cards or debit cards, and so once I put the card in there, then it wants to ask me if I want to leave a $10, $20, or some other amount of a tip. And this is one where

[00:25:04] you actually place the order at the front, and then you go sit down and pick it up when it's ready, so they're not actually doing any of the thing that you would think a waiter or waitress might be doing, but it sort of encourages this tipping too, and if I just go down and just tap that 10%, I'm still not pulling money out of my pocket. Yes, and one of the reasons why they encourage tipping, and that so many people are willing to tip with electronic means, is if you're using cash, the tip comes out of your pocket

[00:25:33] immediately, but if you're doing, say, a credit card, you don't see it for another 30 days, and we all tend to be very present-focused. We are all thinking about right now in 30 days, that's a long time from now, so it's okay to be more generous when you're paying something 30 days from now, instantaneously. Let's talk a bit about the benefits of cash, because you go through several chapters talking about some of those, and some of them you talk about the poor, you've mentioned that before. I was at a Walmart here recently, and I was coming out, and there was a

[00:26:03] man, I'd seen him before, he has sort of a ministry, and they sell popcorn that they make at this ministry, and they ask for donations, and if I didn't have any cash, I would have not been able to help him, but I did have cash, and I was able to give him something. I completely agree. I mean, cash basically gives you the ability if somebody's asking, for example, for spare change, or you happen to be in a church and they're passing around a collection basket. If someone's passing around a collection basket, I'm not going to take my phone

[00:26:33] and drop it in there and say, well, use mobile payments, I want my phone back, nor am I going to hopefully throw my credit card into the basket. So with cash, you have the ability when someone asks instantaneously for a handout or a little bit of help or to support their charity, you have the ability to do it right then in there. You know, we talked a bit about the ability to be able to use cash in a disaster where you may not be able to use your credit or debit card. Would you recommend

[00:27:02] that people keep a little bit of extra cash stuck in a drawer at home so that if that power is out for a week or two and you can't get to some place, I mean, you've got money that you can not just in your bill flow where you may not want to carry much, but you have some stuck back. So people ask me, should you keep cash at home? We'll call it stuffed under the mattress, though. Most mattresses, at least my mattress, is too heavy to actually pick up. The new ones are, yes. But I say have

[00:27:32] people think about how much they spend in a week. All right? And then I say keep about three weeks around as an emergency. Because when a tornado comes through and a hurricane happens, roughly in three weeks, the power comes back. Now, there are a number of people who might be listening in North Carolina who are going, whoa, no, it took us months. Or there might be some listeners in Puerto Rico who experienced Hurricane Maria and said much longer. But in general, when natural disasters happen, about three weeks is when

[00:28:01] everything's back to normal most of the time except for in extreme circumstances. You know, I am not a, well, I like to look at conspiracy theories. I'm not so much of a conspiracy theorist myself. But having said that, by using cash, if the government wants to go and track what I'm spending, it's going to have a harder time because that cash is not going through the bank account. And, you know, you see this with my wife and I like to watch law and old read runs of law and order. And they're frequently going, if

[00:28:31] they have a suspect here, they go and pull the numbers on the bank account. Oh, yeah, he got all this money here. He spent this money here. We think that makes him guilty. If the government wants to track you, they can if you're running this money through a bank account. If you're just spending cash, nobody can really track you. Yeah, spending cash gives you privacy. Let me say that again. Spending cash gives you privacy, both from the government, which is what you were talking about, but also individual privacy. I had a student come up to me the other day and she

[00:29:01] actually works for one of these electronic payment companies that we've been talking about. And she was trying to convince me why electronic payments is so wonderful. And I said, no, no, cash gives you privacy. And then she patted me on the shoulder and pulled out her purse and she said, yeah, I keep a couple of bills in here because whenever I go and spend a lot of money on cosmetics, I have to spend cash so my husband doesn't get upset. So it was a person who actually worked. And I don't want to name the company on a national radio show,

[00:29:31] but she was like, yes, I want privacy within the family. I love my husband. We talk about what we do, but he doesn't have to know everything I spend. We are moving in a time, especially with President Trump coming in his second term, of this growth in digital currency. In some cases, this is just Bitcoin and other private sector companies that have come up with this. In some cases, some of the governments are saying we want to create our own digital currency.

[00:30:00] What is your thoughts on these digital currencies that are coming up? I'm concerned about digital currencies for two reasons. One, as I mentioned, digital currencies have the exact same problem as a credit card or a debit card. They need electricity, they need computers, they need communication networks, all these kind of things. So when we have, for example, natural disasters or other things, digital currencies fail. The second problem is, do you really want the government controlling

[00:30:30] your digital wallet? And that's what a central bank digital currency is. A central bank is the central bank for the country. If they create their own currency, the digital wallet is controlled by the government. And not only can they track your purchases, but imagine the central bank doesn't like you or the president doesn't like you, and they shut off your ability to spend by saying, nope, you don't have access to your wallet anymore. And this, Merrill, actually happened. A couple of years ago during COVID in Canada,

[00:31:00] there were a number of long-distance truckers who decided to start protesting, and they were driving their trucks slowly around Parliament in Ottawa. Yes. And basically causing gridlock, and the Prime Minister Trudeau at the time was pretty upset about that, and he told all the policemen to go write down the truckers' license plate numbers. And with the license plate numbers, they knew who were driving the trucks, and they basically shut all their bank accounts down because they were committing public disorder, and then they arrested them, and these people couldn't post bail

[00:31:29] because they had no access to their own money. We talked about that. Yeah. This is a, we consider Canada a pretty liberal democracy, right? It's not run as a police state in any way, shape, or form. But even in Canada, you wanted a protest? Well, when things got a little bit out of hand, the government shut the bank accounts down. So is the, is, do autocratic governments then, you mentioned China earlier, are they sort of pushing this direction so that they

[00:31:59] can control and monitor what their citizens are doing? Mm-hmm. I think that's one of the reasons why the government of China is very much interested in having an all-electronic payment society. If you sort of get out of line, well, they can prevent you from spending money. And the easiest way to stifle dissent is when people can't buy food, they can't buy medicine, they can't buy something to drink. You mentioned some of the things that we should be in bringing back cash, even being bringing back large

[00:32:28] nominated, large bills. I remember my father was a banker and I think I remember, if I remember, if I remember correctly, he would bring home a $500 bill, maybe even a thousand dollar bill when I was very young. Those have, I think all you can do right now is a hundred dollar bill. Maybe there's others, but I haven't seen them, but some other countries have tried to get rid of the larger denominations. They actually have. And one of the reasons for getting rid of the large denomination bills, besides

[00:32:58] not being used very often by many people, is that this was an idea to get rid of either crime or reduce terrorism. And what I talk about in the book is that, yes, these large bills have all been killed off, but we see just as much crime. And the thought experiment I ask your listeners to think about is, if we eliminated all cash, if we eliminated all cash, do you think drug cartels would suddenly go, oh, we're out of business, there's no more cash in society? Do you think mafias would

[00:33:28] suddenly say, nope, we don't want to continue doing what we're doing? What we've seen is as large bills disappear, people use other forms. We'll come back with our final segment with Dr. Jay Zgorski in just a minute. You're listening to Point

[00:33:57] of View. Your listener-supported source for truth. And we're back with our final segment with Dr. Jay Zgorski talking about his book, The Power of Cash. I'm going to hold it up here for those of you viewing online so that you can see a copy of it. We have a link to the book on our website, pointofview.net, so you can go there and click. You'd have to buy it electronically. So if you want to be in the spirit of the book, go to the local bookstore, buy the book, and pay cash for it.

[00:34:27] Let me say, Merrill, that I actually did that when it came out, and it gave me the greatest joy. I walked in, and I said, do you have my book? And they're like, oh, yes, it's over here. And I pulled out some money, and I put it down on the counter, and they were like, okay, I get why he's paying cash. You're living your dream. I did, I did. You know, we've talked a bit about governments that are wanting to move to a cashless society, but a lot of tech companies are engaged in this, and even President Trump.

[00:34:56] So what do the tech companies see in this? So the whole idea of the tech companies is basically impulse control. If you go to a website for some major retailer on the web, they want you to just click buy. Hopefully, you've already stored all your payment details, like your credit card or your debit card or your bank account there, and they want to make it as seamless, as seamless as possible, right? So there's, you know, as fast as experience. You see something, you click buy, and it shows up at your

[00:35:25] doorstep a few hours or a few days later. And by doing that, it reduces our ability to control our impulses because many of us, we see things, we just want to buy it. And if it makes it so easy, we end up basically over-consuming. And what I like about cash is it prevents me from over-consuming. If I walk into a store, there might be a whole bunch of things I see, oh, I'd love that, I'd love that. And I say, oh, I only have about $80 in my pocket. Can't buy that and hold off.

[00:35:55] Now, you teach students. You have thousands. I've had thousands of students go through your classes. I guess you have classes these days, or do you have classes currently running? I do. Two classes this week. Do you talk to your students about this? And this is going to be younger people for the most part. How do they respond to that? They're my biggest skeptics. I think I can convince older people to go back to using cash at least once a week. But my students who are, you

[00:36:25] know, 22, 23 years old or so, 19, they just sort of look at me like I am speaking a foreign language. You know, they're expecting English and I'm like, use cash? And they're like, what? And many of them have never used cash in their life. And that's one of the things that I think is a problem. And I encourage your listeners, if you have small children, give them cash. Why? Because it improves their math skills. It's very hard to learn math without actually having

[00:36:55] something you can manipulate. And trying to explain something like fractions with quarters, it's really easy. You know, when we had young children, I would, especially one of the oldest one, I'd pull out change. When she was just five or six, we'd put a bunch of change out there and let her identify what's a dime, what's a penny, what's a quarter, what's a, I even put a few half dollars in there so she could see that. But it taught her to sort of add that as in, if I have two of these quarters, what does that make? And it forced them to think

[00:37:25] about that. And at the very beginning of the show, I said that I didn't use cash. And what I actually found was my math skills were deteriorating, right? Because when I was walking through a store, I wasn't adding things up in my head of how much I was spending. I just, whatever it was, it is. At the very end, I was going to pull out my credit card and pay for it. But now that I use cash a lot more, I'm like, oh yeah, I have to remember how to do addition and subtraction and multiplication if I'm doing multiple products. You know, I'm buying three of these kind of things.

[00:37:55] And it's actually helped me a great deal to remember my basic math skills. What kind of reception are you getting for your book? We were talking a little bit about students, but what kind of reception are you getting for it? Well, I'm very happy to be on shows like this. A lot of people listen and they go, oh, that's nice. But what I'm up against is a very large advertising campaign. Banks and financial institutions, last year they spent a billion

[00:38:24] dollars pushing convenience of credit cards. And it's just sort of me and one book and a number of radio shows and TV shows talking about the power of cash. So it's one person against a multi-billion dollar advertising campaign. And it's tough to compete against that because that billion dollar advertising campaign shows you get money back. Wow, spend money, earn money. That's a very seductive message, even though it's not really true. You know, I don't take a Bernie Sanders sort of

[00:38:54] criticism of the banks for making money, but they do. I mean, they do make money off these things. They do. And let me say that I teach in a business school. I teach in the Questrom School of Business. I believe strongly in capitalism. All right. It's just that my goal is to ensure that cash doesn't die, that we don't have electronic payments completely taking over, that both cash and electronic payments are available. Because sometimes, as you mentioned at the top of the hour, it's useful buying plane tickets,

[00:39:23] buying hotels, really useful to pull out a credit card. But in day-to-day life, using cash also, at the same time as using electronic payments, gives us some great benefits. We talked about helping the poor, controlling your impulses, ensuring you have privacy, and a whole host of other things I mention in the book. You will remember Bob Dole, former senator, former majority leader for a while in the 1990s, and a presidential candidate. I read a story about him years ago. I had met him a few times,

[00:39:52] but I read a story about him that he paid everything in cash. When he went to the hotel, he paid cash. When he stopped by and bought a car, he paid cash. He liked using cash, so he carried around a lot of money. But if you're a major senator with a couple of staff around you, you're probably okay. I'm not suggesting you carry a thick wad of bills at all times and making yourself a target of crime. I'm just suggesting using cash by keeping it in circulation gives everyone benefits. And even if you don't get

[00:40:22] benefits, that poor person who then walks into a store and wants to use cash, the store knows how to handle it and is able to accept it. So you're actually helping others, even if you don't think you're helping yourself. Dr. Guzagorski, thank you so much for joining us. I love your book. As I said, you're one of my heroes now because you're, you know, I'm old school and I like cash and I don't know that we will win this battle. But, you know, if there's a major outage in the country, if there is something that

[00:40:51] happens, if China or Russia are able, or North Korea are able to hack our power line somehow or the other and shut us down in a lot of ways, people may find again the value of cash. And I hope it's not too late, but by keeping it around so that we have things like ATMs and we have banks, then if that does happen, we have a chance. But if we go all electronic and that happens, then it's going to be very, very hard to go back and rebuild the systems that handle cash in the country. Thank you so much for

[00:41:21] joining us. Thank you for having me on the show. It was a pleasure this morning. Well, I enjoyed having him. As I mentioned, if you want to find a link to his book, you can go to pointofview.net. While you're there, we also have a take action alert for Defend Parental Rights in America. We want to encourage you to go there and do that. You can click on to that and you'll find out about legislation out there, which we're supporting, that we think you should be supporting as well. So you can go through that. Hit the

[00:41:51] Take Action button. Defend Parental Rights in America. We're talking about the Parental Rights Legislation Act, and I encourage you to go take a look at that and reach out to your senators. We encourage you to do that, and we mentioned it there. We also mentioned some of the other things you can find, and I would also encourage you when you're at pointofview.net to hit the Donate button and help point of view. We exist because of your donation. So it's a good time to do that, and I encourage you to do it, and you can do that

[00:42:21] electronically. But if you're going to buy Dr. Zagorsi's book, go to the bookstore and use cash. It'll be fun, and people will catch the drift of it as they did when he bought his book and paid cash for it. They'll find it strange, but they'll also find it amusing. I want to thank Megan for doing the engineering today. I want to thank Steve for doing the producing on the show, and I want to thank you for listening. I believe Penna is going to be back tomorrow, and Penna and I will be back on Friday

[00:42:51] for the weekend edition. So many things happening this week. You'll want to tune in for those programs, and thank you for joining us here on Point of View. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas.

[00:43:20] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world, economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth.

[00:43:49] It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup. Every weekday in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free, so visit pointofview.net

[00:44:19] slash signup right now. Pointofview.net Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.