{"id":71838,"date":"2024-01-29T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=71838"},"modified":"2024-01-25T16:28:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T21:28:03","slug":"monday-miscellany-2-29-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/01\/monday-miscellany-2-29-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Miscellany, 2\/29\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The primaries are over just as they have begun.\u00a0 No cash accepted.\u00a0 And are the Nones growing or shrinking?<\/p>\n

The Primaries Are Over Just as They Have Begun<\/h4>\n

Well, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary have crowned Donald Trump and Joe Biden to be their party\u2019s candidates for president.<\/p>\n

Even though the Democratic Party isn\u2019t accepting the results, blackballing those state\u2019s traditional first-in-the-nation status so as to give that distinction to South Carolina, which came through strongly for Biden in the last election.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange that these two early states should determine the outcome for the rest of the country, effectively taking away the chance for other states to weigh in.\u00a0 But Iowa and New Hampshire gave credence to the opinion polls, so all of Trump\u2019s opponents have withdrawn, except for Nikki Haley.<\/p>\n

\n

I think it\u2019s important that someone stay in the race, since we don\u2019t know what Trump\u2019s legal troubles will mean for the general election.\u00a0 And both of the candidates are really old and showing it.<\/p>\n

Here is my theory about the Democrats:\u00a0 Contrary to what many were expecting, I don\u2019t think the Democrats will pressure Biden to withdraw in favor of a younger and potentially more popular candidate.\u00a0 The progressive wing loves it that Biden is so old and will grow older through his term.\u00a0 If Biden should die in office, the presidency would go to a radically progressive black woman!\u00a0 That would fulfill the dream of\u00a0 the woke left, who could never get one of their number elected the regular way.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Cash Accepted\u201d<\/h4>\n

More and more businesses are no longer accepting cash.\u00a0 It\u2019s true that more and more customers are paying with credit cards for just about everything, and by only accepting credit cards, businesses can simplify their bookkeeping and avoid the hassle of cash registers, making change, hauling money to the bank, and risking theft.\u00a0 Credit cards charge a commission but that can easily be added on to the price paid by customers.<\/p>\n

Today we see \u201cno cash accepted\u201d signs mainly at coffee shops and the trendier stores.\u00a0 But something else is going on, as Jay L. Zagorsky reports in Study Finds<\/em> in an article entitled \u2018No cash accepted\u2019 signs are bad news for millions of Americans<\/a>.\u00a0 He writes,<\/p>\n

I am a business school professor\u00a0who researches society\u2019s transition\u00a0from cash to electronic payments. I\u00a0recently visited Seattle and was amazed\u00a0by the mixed signals I saw in many storefronts. Numerous shops had one sign proudly proclaiming how welcoming and inclusive they were \u2014 next to another sign saying \u201cNo cash accepted.\u201d This tells people without bank accounts that they aren\u2019t welcome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there are lots of those, some 6 million American households, with an average of 2.5 people per household, amounting to 15 million people.\u00a0 Whereas virtually everyone who earns $75,000 per year or more have bank accounts, one-quarter of those who earn $15,000 or less do not.\u00a0 And this doesn\u2019t include the homeless, the transient, and illegal immigrants.\u00a0 Since you can\u2019t get a bank account without a Social Security number and a verified address and since we\u2019ve had 2.5 million illegal immigrants in 2023 alone, the number of consumers without bank cards is high indeed.\u00a0 And from another source<\/a>, we find that 17% of Americans\u2013which would come to some 57 million\u2013do not have regular credit cards.<\/p>\n

One reason low income folks don\u2019t use banks is because they feel they can\u2019t make the minimum balance and can\u2019t afford the consequent fees.\u00a0 Yes, they could use debit cards, but those cost a lot too.<\/p>\n

Zagorsky concludes,<\/p>\n

The next time you see a sign in a shop or restaurant window stating \u201cNo cash accepted,\u201d you\u2019re really looking at a business excluding many unbanked and underbanked people. Insisting that all businesses accept cash is a simple way to ensure everyone is financially included in the modern economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jagorski\u2019s experience in hyper-liberal Seattle reminds us too of the gap between many affluent progressives and the disadvantage people they claim to help but are really oblivious to.<\/p>\n

Are the Nones Growing or Shrinking?<\/h4>\n

According to a headline from NPR, Religious \u2018Nones\u2019 are now the largest single group in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0 According to the story, Nones\u2013that is, people who say they have no religion\u2013constitute 28% of the American public.\u00a0 That is more than the percentage of Catholics (23%) and more than the percentage of evangelical Protestants (24%).<\/p>\n

But when you go to the new Pew study that NPR cites, the headline reads Has the rise of religious \u2018nones\u2019 come to an end in the U.S.?<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, Pew\u2019s latest numbers from 2023 have found that the percentage of Nones is 28%.\u00a0 But. . .<\/p>\n

That\u2019s marginally lower than our surveys indicated in 2022 and 2021, and identical to what we found in 2020 and 2019, which raises a question: After decades of sharp growth<\/a>, has the rise of these religious \u201cnones\u201d ended?. . . .<\/p>\n

In two of the last five years, we obtained readings above<\/em>\u00a028%. In 2022, our estimate of 31% was 3 percentage points higher, while the 29% we recorded in 2021 was just 1 point higher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The researchers say that it\u2019s too early to tell whether the Nones are growing or shrinking, that we need longer-range data.\u00a0 The NPR story wasn\u2019t wrong, but it was spun in a way that implied that Nones are undoubtedly ascendant and it left out an important facet of the study.<\/p>\n

That study did, however, ask the Nones some interesting questions and revealed some significant facts about them.\u00a0 We\u2019ll look at that in a later post.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The primaries are over just as they have begun.\u00a0 No cash accepted.\u00a0 And are the Nones growing or shrinking?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":65538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,36,39],"tags":[12691,3861,2507],"class_list":["post-71838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","category-religions","tag-2024-presidential-campaign","tag-eliminating-cash","tag-nones"],"yoast_head":"\nMonday Miscellany, 2\/29\/24<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The primaries are over just as they have begun.\u00a0 No cash accepted.\u00a0 And are the Nones growing or shrinking?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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