Rodspeed, you think gift cards are barter that states are afraid will take off?

 Lately, states have gotten wind of laying claim to all that money
sitting in unused gift cards as a right, saying they are unclaimed
property and should be put in public coiffures. Do you think maybe,
just maybe, state governments are afraid of not only losing out on the
money grab with those dormant cards, but could see that people will
adapt bartering in the future more and need to put an end to that?
Gift cards supposedly equal a dollar amount of goods/services. They
can be traded, sold or redeemed maybe. People could create their own
barter gift cards in the years to come with the help of places like
Ebay , where as long as you can stay one step ahead of regulators, the
law and internet service providers, you can sell anything or auction
off anything. I have a theory that along with inflation, the
government needs to keep people from getting real gains on debts the
government issues by keeping them from finding marketplace values of
common things easily. I know it sounds crazy, but citizens could very
well figure out how to  barter or construct underground economies and
cut out the middle man government. How would we get groceries,
gasoline and health care and pay for road tolls? Those things would
eventually adapt the new currency methods that local economies or
banks exchange in. Well, eventually the politicians that instituted
all the laws and regulations in adherence with the revenue streams of
taxes and fees would be booted out as commerce and currency
revised.LOL. So, possibly, politicians do recognize that people can
wake up and vote them out into private world competing against those
underground, barter based markets.

  I'll add that some small towns in New England have utilized local
dollars as a means of pooling cooperation or stimulating growth. I
believe the IRS tries to keep an eye on that kind of barter. like I
have been reminded, all we have is our labor and materials from which
to build economies and societies.You can put a person in jail for
fixing some ones car for free or exchange for a good meal if the two
parties agree on a contractual basis for such, but the state sure can
oversee the tools and parts and place that the car repair happens
with. Oh yeah, the state can control licenses too.

 Copper_water_oxygen wrote:

    I think about that whenever a value added tax is discussed.
    By the way, many types of pre-paid products have breakage factored
in, meaning part of the product that is never redeemed.
   Phone cards have expiration dates (there is some legitimacy to this
as otherwise the unused time remains on the books as a debit) and if the
card has less money remaining than to cost of a one minute call the
customers loses unless the card can be recharged.
   Our local transit system ,BART, allows you to add fare to a card but
only from a single card so if you have two cards each with a dollar on
them you can only add time to one of them and have to put the other away
for another time.BART claims the technology does  not allow this but the
race tracks allow you to combine multiple vouchers for a single new one.

 
They probably are hedging their bets you will lose one of those cards.
Only a guess, but along with those rebates and extended warranties,
and breakage stats, our state and fed governments recognize that they
need to contain their expenditures or services with some easy control
methods like time expirations and wear and tear aspects to things. Can
you imagine if there are layoffs in government by the boatload in the
years to come? Government would not look like such a trough to feed
from by many points of view then.

 Copper_water_oxygen wrote:

    Lost and misplaced cards are factored into their projections.
   By the way, in most states the proceeds from uncased vouchers or
winning bets at race tracks revert to the state. On the other hand it id
very easy to cash them in CA as all tracks a simulcast facilities here
allow to you cash in tickets from any other facility in the state.