by Kevin Coupe
Pew Research is out with a year-end report on what it calls its most striking research findings of 2022 - and one of them was that "roughly four-in-ten Americans (41%) say none of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash, a July survey found. This is up from 29% in 2018 and 24% in 2015.
"Meanwhile, the portion of Americans who say that all or almost all of their purchases are paid for with cash in a typical week has declined from 24% in 2015 to 18% in 2018 to 14% today.
"While growing shares of Americans across income groups are relying less on cash than in the past, this is especially the case among the highest earners. Roughly six-in-ten adults whose annual household income is $100,000 or more (59%) say they make none of their typical weekly purchases using cash, up sharply from 43% in 2018 and 36% in 2015."
Now, that's an Eye-Opener.
BTW … among the other "most striking" findings of 2022 were that "if recent trends continue, Christians could make up a minority of Americans by 2070," because " large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular'" … "a third of adults who use TikTok say they regularly get news there, up from 22% two years ago" … "most Americans who have experienced extreme weather in the past year – including majorities in both political parties – see climate change as a factor" … and "about 5% of Americans younger than 30 are transgender or nonbinary – that is, their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth, according to a survey conducted in May. By comparison, 1.6% of those ages 30 to 49 and 0.3% of those 50 and older say that their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth. Overall, 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary – that is, someone who is neither a man nor a woman or isn’t strictly one or the other."
All Eye-Openers. In fact, I'd argue that one of the worst things that we can do - whether speaking as an individual, a business, or a culture - is to close our eyes to the forces that are shifting all around us. We have to open our minds and, when appropriate, our hearts, to people who no longer fall into the neat definitions of the past, no longer act predictably or fit into traditional slots.
George Bernard Shaw once said that "“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” I don 't know about you, but for me this whole exercise - this whole conversation that we've been having for 21+ years - has been about trying to understand and appreciate change and, when possible, use MNB's soapbox to encourage change.
