TIM NOAH: Ban The Benjamins! Hundred-dollar bills are for criminals and sociopaths. Why do we still print them? Actually, a lot of people use them. And when inflation takes off soon, we’ll be using them for Big Macs. We already quit making $500 bills for Noah’s reasons. But they make 500-Euro notes. And why is it the government’s business how we spend money?

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Maher writes: “I am a cashier at a supermarket. I see the $100 bill all the time. They are quite useful, actually, for families buying groceries. Two bags full of groceries and you’re almost at $100.00. We use the $20, $10, and $5 bills for change. It may be that some writers at Slate are so embedded in environmental chic that they see people who have children as criminals and sociopaths.” Or maybe they’re just big credit/debit card users. Not many Dave Ramsey cash-envelope budgeters at Slate, I’d guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails:

In monetary theory land, there’s a steady drumbeat of efforts to force all transactions into electronic form, for obvious surveillance and reporting reasons.

A cashless society would cut millions of people out of the economy…those who live the fringe, working “underground”. Folks like Noah will literally have blood on their hands if they get their way, and our poorest folks are simply severed from the economy.

They won’t be severed from the economy. They’ll be forced into dependence on the government. To the gentry class, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

MORE: Reader Jeff Brown notes another downside of a cashless economy:

For days, perhaps even a couple of weeks, after Katrina you couldn’t get make a charge purchase or get money from an ATM on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. It was cash on the barrel head if you wanted to buy plastic to cover exposed roofs, food, beer, etc. Unless of course, you just sat around and waited for the government man to come around and put you on the list for some help in a week or ten.

And from what I heard, if you banked at one of the local banks you were out of luck for quite a while since their processing centers were flooded.

Electronic money means you have to have the network, the bank and the transaction terminal all working at the moment of purchase. Cash requires the presses to work when the money is printed but after that it is asynchronous and fungible. Quite useful in a rough and tumble world.

I remember as a kid, when my grandmother would go to the bank only to be unable to make a withdrawal because the computers are down or having to go back in to reconcile her bank book with their computer for deposits.

Good point.