#im literally thinking about how the federal income tax came from the civil war

[hermesserpent-stuff]

so total derailment of this that is aimed at USA people specifically, but there's this fun thing called the Legal Tender act of 1863 where 'greenbacks' (our paper notes of today) were declared legal tender.

Theres a lot of history to be talked about that Im not gonna deal with but basically the USA was running out of coins at the time and really needed a cash system

Legal tender, now what does that mean? (preface im not an economist or a lawyer so no quoting me. i am the man on the street corner screaming)

Legal tender is a technical term !~~ and it should be on all the paper money Americans have. It is defined as: coins or banknotes that must be accepted if offered in payment of a debt. It especially means that the government is declaring that this money, is money!! despite not being backed by gold/silver coinage. And it has to be accepted for all debts private or public aside from imports but shushhh I'm focusing here. (depicted below, my main man George Washington and the legal tender note circled on his left))

so technically if someone says, Hi! this ice cream is 5 dollars. and you offer them a five dollar bill for that debt, legally speaking, they have to take it as the currency you are paying with. They cannot insist that you pay with gold equivalent to that amount. There were a few legal cases about payouts where it was reinforced that greenbacks are legal tender (and a scuffle with the supreme court that was resolved later but also shush)

Now where my brain is angy. the places that insist you have to pay with card. I hate them. Sorry a bit biased here. I like cash. it feels more real to spend and also it will always work. No possibility of a chip malfunction or your account being over-drafted with my nice crisp 5 dollar bill!~

And Im talking a brick-and-mortar sort of place for this. and yes I understand the pandemic shifted a lot of stuff. But also. My money should still hold value. The government has it written as legal tender, and thus able to cover my debt. so I'm not sure how these places are getting away with saying it cannot cover my debt. and if they cannot handle cash at their business, I'm gonna be a little mean and say maybe they cannot handle business.

It puts so many problems out there to have all money only be digital. that I'm not going into because, derailment, and also my personal finance course I took a while back will force me to reread stuff. Back to the original point!

Im not sure if anyone has taken these businesses to task over their card only policies. and if they did, its prolly still in the court system nowish. I personally think that the stores should lose for refusing to let the debt be resolved using legal tender. (@ me if there is a legal case, I'm bad with modern news)

But hey! I might be wrong about everything and legal tender means nothing!

(side note, a lot of modern us economics was shaped around 1863ish and again during and post ww1 and ww2, funny how wars do that ey? Also also I'm sorry for my rant. hope it helped someone~

...

I should not late night post.

having cash is like having secret money. like whos gonna find out i’m buying tacos with this crisp $20 bill??? not my bank account, that’s for sure