A friend once complained to me that people would sigh and roll their eyes when she used a credit card to pay for her $3 coffee. This was about a decade ago, and I admit, at the time I silently judged her. What kind of psychopath, I thought to myself, forces everyone in line to wait for their coffee while her credit card transaction is approved?

How times have changed, and I’m not talking about that $3 coffee. Today I feel that same impatience when someone ahead of me rummages through their wallet to find exact change to make a cash purchase. Electronic payments are much faster and have become the norm, even for small purchases.

Now it is cash that carries a social stigma — as this survey of Generation Z consumers makes clear. Conducted in September, it finds that 53% use physical cash only as a last resort, and 29% believe that people who pay with cash are “cringe.” I will ignore the generational insult and focus on the implications of this shift for both consumer behavior and public policy.

The first thing to note is that, while Cash App certainly has an interest in people using an app instead of cash, the survey results mirror trends tracked by the Federal Reserve. In 2024, only 17% of respondents to a survey said they preferred cash for in-person transactions, down from 27% in 2016.

Older and lower-income Americans are still more likely to use cash, but even for them it is becoming less common. Only about a quarter of transactions by people with income under $25,000 involve cash, and they amount to only 19% of transactions made by people over age 55.

With more phone-based payments and almost every merchant taking electronic payments (with the notable exception of several Italian restaurants in New York City, you know who you are), cash is destined to become even more obscure and old-fashioned. That means consumer spending patterns may change, as well as federal regulations.

The prevailing presumption is that people spend less when they use cash, because it makes them more aware of what things cost. It also puts a hard constraint on what they can buy, since they are limited to what fits in their wallet. The evidence in support of this view, however, is mixed, with some studies finding little impact on spending depending on means of payment. That may be because most day-to-day transactions are fairly small.

Credit card transactions, meanwhile, have explicit costs: swipe fees, the term for what banks charge merchants to accept cards (usually 2.5% to 3.5%). This cost is often passed on to customers.

Some members of Congress are taking aim at these fees, but new technology will probably do some of the work their proposed legislation aims to do. The passage of the Genius Act means that stablecoins may replace credit cards, especially for people who don’t have access to credit. But to make them viable, customers will either have to bear some risk on their accounts or pay fees that are at least comparable to credit or debit cards.

The data also show that lower income Americans are already using electronic payments for most of their transactions. A more viable option that could disrupt credit cards is digital currency issued by a central bank.

But it would be a mistake to overlook the drawbacks of cash — or the benefits of non-cash. Cash involves what economists call shoe-leather costs, basically the time and effort it takes to go to a bank. Cash also carries a greater risk of theft. And electronic payments make it easier to track spending, which brings the promise of much more accurate inflation data than current survey methods can produce (as well as the potential for more invasions of privacy).

The bottom line is that, cringe notwithstanding, cash will never totally disappear. Like gold, it satisfies some deep primal desire for security. We humans need cash just in case things go horribly wrong and the global economic system crashes — or the power grid is taken out and our credit cards are rendered useless. According to the Fed, on any given day, four out of five Americans still have some cash on them, and nine out of 10 have no plans to give it up. That is their right, just as it is mine to silently judge them when they are ahead of me in line at the coffee shop.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

President Donald Trump’s reelection stirred concern among many that constitutional protections, including the right to marry, could be put back on the table.

The Supreme Court put those fears to rest Monday when they decided to leave it well enough alone.

At issue was a petition from a former county clerk from Kentucky who had asked the court to revisit its landmark ruling on same-sex marriage.

Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in 2015 refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, denying residents in her county the ability to marry under civil law. She spent some time in jail for contempt before her office ultimately complied. She was also ordered to pay monetary damages.

If Davis believed the law conflicted with her personal convictions, the appropriate step was resignation, not obstructing couples’ access to a legal right. The issue was not Davis’ faith. The issue was that a public office cannot selectively withhold rights the Constitution guarantees.

Davis’ case now dead, Obergefell stands strong. The precedent remains intact. It’s nice to start off the week with some good news.

Civil law is not the same as religious law, and if you want the government to protect your right to live according to your faith, you must protect others’ rights to live according to theirs.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Obergefell, said, “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. … They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Yes. The Constitution requires treating people equally under the law, pure and simple.

We have long held that protections and privileges that same-sex couples take for granted — including tax breaks, property rights, child custody considerations, the ability to visit a partner in the hospital or participate in medical decisions — should not be denied by the state on the basis of sexual orientation.

Remember, that’s how it worked before Obergefell.

Dissenting justices in 2015 worried that the court was usurping states’ rights in determining their own rules. We wrote: “That may be true. But waiting for all of America to get on board is not what the Constitution demands. Our rights are not subject to majority rule.”

This time around, with the court declining to hear Davis’ challenge, no justices issued public dissent. The absence thereof is something for all freedom-loving Americans to cheer.

The court’s refusal to take up the case reinforces what the Constitution already demands: equal treatment under civil law.

— The Chicago Tribune

Construction crews have pulled a building permit to add a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility at Holman Field, St. Paul’s downtown municipal airport.

Construction contractor Shaw Lundquist Associates was issued a building permit for the $15.6 million project at 670 Bayfield St. on Nov. 4. The land, currently empty, sits between two 3M hangars and the administrative building that houses the Holman’s Table restaurant and bar on the north end of the airport property.

The facility, spanning 4,800 square feet, will process 100 to 150 international flights per year, for a total of about 200 operational hours annually, according to a permit application on file with the city’s Department of Safety Inspections. Customs and Border Protection staff will travel from Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to the facility for expected flight arrivals. Planning documents call for a LEED gold certified facility with a green roof.

In a written release last May concerning airport runway and construction projects statewide, the Metropolitan Airports Commission announced it was set to begin construction later in the year on a stand-alone U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in St. Paul “that will improve processing of international passengers and cargo.”

Jeff Lea, a spokesperson for the MAC, said Wednesday that the downtown St. Paul airport receives dozens of chartered international corporate flights, and the new general aviation facility will replace “an extremely small existing CBP location” currently located within the administration building.

In July, Finance and Commerce reported that the MAC had opened five construction bids, each of which came in above the estimated $12.24 million project cost.

Construction, which will be funded with federal and state grants and General Airport Revenue bonds, is expected to include pre-processing and post-processing waiting rooms, a passenger processing area, office space, utility rooms and restrooms.

The building will feature cast-in-place concrete, mass timber columns and beams, a structural wood ceiling and roof, and a 1,000 square foot intensive green roof system. Other sustainability features include geothermal heat pumps, air handlers and solar panels.

Related Articles

St. Paul City Council orders demolition of former CVS at Snelling-University

140-year-old rug cleaner/retailer to leave Minneapolis for St. Paul

St. Paul Port Authority celebrates end of East Side TIF district

St. Paul: Hearing officer recommends demolition of vacant Midway CVS

St. Paul Parks and Rec seeks name for 5-acre park at the Heights

“The building is designed to produce more energy than it uses,” Lea said.

The project also will include new utility connections, new sidewalks, native plantings, decorative metal fencing and additional landscape improvements.

The downtown airport, one of the state’s busiest airports for business aviation, closed its primary runway from June 2 through early August for pavement reconstruction and other airfield safety improvements. The mile-long section modifications included improved lighting and surface drainage in pavement first installed in the 1980s. The runway is the longest general aviation runway in MAC’s airport reliever system.

At age 18 and six months removed from her high school graduation, Jayden Lee Kline was trying to figure out what she wanted to do next with her life.

But she never got that chance, her mother said, because Fenan Abdurezak Uso “played out this act of murder as a result of what he could no longer get from Jayden.”

Uso, then 17, planned to kill Kline after she ended their relationship, prosecutors said last month during his jury trial in Anoka County District Court. He bought a stolen handgun the night before, told her he’d take her shopping and then shot her in his car outside her Fridley home.

Jurors agreed and found the 19-year-old guilty of first-degree murder for shooting Kline the afternoon of Dec. 21, 2023, rejecting his claim that she was shot accidentally.

Jayden Lee Kline (Courtesy of Curt Gray)

On Wednesday, Judge Jenny Walker Jasper handed down Uso’s mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. He will be eligible for parole in 15 years, under a 2023 state law regarding juveniles certified as adults and serving a life sentence.

“As a judge, I always sit and think of something that I can say that will have an impact on this to lighten the load of grief for the family and the community and friends,” Walker Jasper said. “But this case is just so senseless and violent and tragic and sad. All I can say to you folks is, I am so sorry.”

Uso, of Fridley, was charged by juvenile petition with second-degree murder five days after the killing. A jury indicted him on a charge of first-degree murder in July 2024, four months after he turned 18.

‘I look for her every day’

Kline’s mother and her two older brothers told the court how the family struggles every day with with the pain of her killing.

“My sister should have had the opportunity to leave her mark on the world,” her brother Tristan Kline said. “Because I know she would’ve helped change it.”

Brandon Kline said he always made sure that his sister was safe and taken care of, ever since they lost their father, David, in 2014, when she was 8.

“I owed that to my dad, who couldn’t take care of her anymore,” he wrote in a statement, which was read by Assistant Anoka County Attorney Brenda Sund.

Uso is “an incredibly selfish and greedy human being,” Kline wrote, adding that Uso “always had a problem with Jayden’s attention being on anyone but himself.”

Jennifer Kline said her daughter “completed our family in many ways” and had an outgoing, friendly personality. She was a 2023 graduate of Columbia Heights High School, where she competed on the swim and synchronized swimming teams, and loved to spend time with her friends, playing games, watching movies, making videos and just hanging out.

“I look for her every day,” she said, “waiting for her to come bouncing down the hall from her bedroom, usually being followed by her dog and cat.”

A gunshot rang out

According to charging documents, police and emergency workers were sent to the 4500 block of Third Street Northeast just before 4 p.m. Dec. 21, 2023, on a report of a hit-and-run crash that injured a pedestrian. Kline was found lying unresponsive in the street near her home’s driveway with a head wound. She was pronounced dead at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale.

Kline’s mother told police her daughter had been at the Roseville mall that afternoon.

Fenan Abdurezak Uso (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

Brandon Kline told police he heard a loud noise, looked out a window and saw his sister on the ground. He said he was told by a neighbor that a gold minivan sped away from the scene and that he assumed she had been struck.

He said his sister and Uso had dated on and off for about a year and that she had recently broken up with him because he lied to his family about the relationship.

A neighbor’s doorbell camera showed a gold minivan slowly approaching the home and stopping. A gunshot rang out, the front passenger door opened and Kline fell out and was not moving. Her brother confirmed to police that it was Uso’s minivan.

Investigators later determined she had been shot in the back of the head at close range.

Police tracked the location of Uso’s phone, learned he was in the Burnsville area and notified city police, who located the minivan at a gas station about 6:30 p.m. Officers saw a .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun in the minivan’s center console, and Uso was detained.

In an interview with investigators, Uso said he and Kline had broken up two weeks prior. He said they got into an argument at the mall. He said “he thought he pulled out the gun” when dropping her off at her house, “pointed it at her, pulled the trigger once and drove off fast,” the charges read.

Uso said he drove away quickly because “he realized he did something dumb” and “was shaking as he drove away and dropped the gun in the van.”

Uso went on to say he had obtained the handgun from “unknown persons” the day before. Police said the serial number matched a gun stolen in Marshalltown, Iowa.

‘Great big, beautiful smile’

Related Articles

Parents threaten to sue Stillwater school district after employee accused of producing AI child porn

Ex-wife of DOC commissioner sentenced to 3 years in prison for attempted murder of son

Judge dismisses case against man accused of lighting St. Paul apartment on fire

Noah Feldman: The Supreme Court’s conservatives may be the end of tariffs

Charges: Former treasurer of Lakeville gymnastics booster clubs stole $80K from groups’ accounts

Uso testified at his trial that he had been distraught after their breakup. He said Kline was shot accidentally when she grabbed the gun to try to stop him from killing himself.

But Uso knew what he did, Kline’s brother Brandon said Wednesday in his victim impact statement, “and sat on the stand, lying and being a coward again, saying he wanted to kill himself.”

Uso, when given the opportunity to address the court, said: “I just want to say I’m extremely sorry from the bottom of my heart for Jayden’s family.”

Judge Walker Jasper, before imposing the sentence, recalled a photo of Kline that was introduced as an exhibit during the trial, showing her “great big, beautiful smile that she had.”