Full stop. Credit cards provide a service and that service isn't free. It gets factored into prices.

https://www.merchantmaverick.com/the-complete-guide-to-credi...

I'll add that Visa charges 1.43% - 2.4% of the transaction. I'd be curious to know what the cost of a cash transaction is as a percentage of the transaction. I doubt it climbs that high.

Also, better hope your cashiers never make a mistake or accept a forged bill.

I can't resist an aside. A buddy of mine was in a well known cash business. You can imagine. Anyways, hanging out with him, we'd be driving around and he'd need gas. He'd pull out 2 or 3 $20s, hand them to the attendant pump gas and go. Some gas stations gave a cash discount.

It seemed to me that credit cards were supposed to be fast and convenient, but if you're choreographed for cash, it ain't so.

This is very apparent in (many parts of) Europe. Cash is so much faster there than in America, for a few reasons. The primary cause, I think, is the fact that the prices are generally round numbers, with tax included. This means that you can, in most cases, pay with a small number of coins or bills. In the USA you'd be wrestling with pennies.

But it's so much cheaper than handling credit cards that many small stores in Germany won't accept any cards at all.

The cost is much lower on a debit card transaction.

Mostly because their fees are even 10 times lower than MasterCard's debit card fees.

The fees for the German Girocard system (which is what colloquially is still called EC) are lower than MasterCard's fees but not by that much anymore nowadays. MasterCard debit should not be 50% more expensive than Girocard considering all fees (which of course still is more) if you shop around a bit. Even Aldi takes them now and they try to save money wherever they can.

Well, Aldi only takes some type of MasterCard debit - only the Chip + PIN edition Maestro cards, not any of the actual MasterCard network, nor mixed credit/debit cards.

Things have changed considerably in the last two years and whatever one knows about cards, acceptance, and fees from before 2015 can safely be forgotten.

Re your last point: it's probably a similar risk for us as charge-backs.

Customers offer to pay cash thinking it saves us money, they're wrong.

This makes sense.

> Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores.

This does not. You've transitioned to talking about averages for some reason.

Come to Tokyo, you'll see how well things work with effectively no parking in general.

Add to that America has a systemic car culture (there is a reason cars are all bigger in the US, and why it is pretty much the only market for pickup trucks) and you will never be in a position politically to transition elsewhere without destroying your favorability.

I was in Thailand recently and I found it's cities incredibly difficult to walk around. Roads often don't have sidewalks, often have many lanes, and pedestrian crossings are just marked on the road - without traffic lights - and are ignored by the traffic. The level of traffic makes the roads extremely difficult to cross.

Everyone in Thailand, even the very poor, seems to have a moped. If they don't have a moped they have a pickup truck. Tourists are forced to take taxis - the locals think you are weird for wanting to walk even 200 metres to a shop.

I thought, huh? 'cuz where I live it's pickup trucks as far as the eye can see. Turns out that my country has the highest per capita ownership of pickup trucks [1]

[1] http://wardsauto.com/industry/pickup-trucks-reign-thailand

We're discussing a law that forces people to provide excess parking whether they want to or not, and your counter example is banning cars?

There's a universe of options in between those two extremes.

So are places with excess parking. Do you _enjoy_ sauntering through your local big-box shopping center's acres upon acres of parking?

Also, if parking is so valuable why is it free? Charge market rate for the land and let people build parking on it if the market will pay. If the market doesn't pay, maybe they don't want the parking that bad after all.

You'd typically park in one of the closest open spots, so you don't need to walk through the excess spots.

Obviously having a decent transit option available is a prerequisite, but at least in that one case, it worked wonderfully.

Donald Trump does bring up a legitimate point: The train can be operated by a corrupt entity. With a car, you have options. With a train, you are stuck.

However, I prefer to arrange my life so I can use bicycle.

Yes, and if demand on public parking exceeds supply, you just do the obvious: charge for it until you hit equilibrium.

> If you've ever been to an area with insufficient parking, it's pretty horrible.

It's actually not, you're just thinking with a very American mindset, assuming that everyone will drive everywhere, all the time. I recently moved to Munich, a place that, by American standards, has relatively little parking. It's fantastic, because you can actually walk and bike and take transit places, and it's comfortable and convenient.

Now I know what you're thinking: what does that have to do with offering parking? But the thing is, land use is mostly zero sum. Forcing everywhere to have huge streets and parking lots means that everything is spaced further out; not a big deal when you're in a car, but a very big deal for walking, biking, and transit. Requiring parking helps cars at the expense of other modes.

Under the modern American consensus, regulations on residential/commercial development are acceptable but public spending on housing is "socialism".

Public housing is all downsides but the costs of urban sprawl are distributed among the community and commercial development costs primarily affects developers (and it's a lot cheaper to build parking lots than subway service at a reasonable density per unit area).

Does the government force businesses to accept credit cards?

> Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores.

Does the government require this?

> I'm sure what this article is arguing for.

Leaving parking mostly up to the market, because there's no compelling public interest in forcing businesses or individuals to subsidize driving.