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Have you seen the commercial showing the entire world of people, flowers and animals merrily skipping about until one person writes a check for their purchase? The whole world comes to a dead stop waiting for the consumer to write out a check. The audacity of the consumer to actually slow things down by writing a check. How shocking!

That use to be me as I stood in line with my debit card in hand. Then I saw that commercial and something within me snapped. I realized we are becoming an automated cashless society. So now I sing praise to the poor soul slowing things down as he/she uses a check. And I sing even great praise to those paying with cash. Why?

Years ago we paid for things with greenback almost exclusively. There is a certain degree of pain when a greenback gets broken to lower denominations or worse yet leaves your hands entirely. Checks often times replaced cash and the pain is a whole lot less but we as a society have had it ingrained within us that there had to be cash in the bank to cover the check.

But then strange phenomena occurred in the 80's. It was the inundation of the credit card - you didn't need any money in the bank at all. It was completely painless until the statement came. And for those rare individuals who balked at the idea of credit cards, there was the debit card. It works just like a check only it is more distant than a check and the most amazing part is, it looks just like a credit card. Imagine that! The point of the dry humor above is this. With each step away from cash and towards plastic, the associated emotional pain of handing over money becomes less and less. Like Scarlet in Gone With The Wind, we can "think about it tomorrow."

But most importantly we not only tend to loose sight of the greenback, but of the greenback's value as well. This may be all well and good for the advertisers and merchandisers, but not necessarily for the consumer when the bills come due and he/she has not a clue how this struggling debt came about.

Many would have you believe that increased spending is good for the economy. That maybe true for political economists. And if so, do we ever do a good job. But what is even better for the economy is increase savings and we as consumers have never done a worse job. Bankruptcies continue to increase which cannot be good for the consumer or merchandiser. Prices continue to rise and we are so grateful with an increased minimum wage but price increase precedes increase wages- not sometimes but always! The national

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