Word: barter
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...best-selling novel The Crash of 79 described just such an avalanche. The result was a thumping destruction of all the foundations of industrial society as nations returned to barter economies. Financial experts tirelessly insist that in the nonfiction world such a collapse would be impossible. One reason is that well over half of foreign trade, including sales of oil, metals and grain, is billed in dollars...
...troubling shift in American attitudes" when people get fed up with inflation and high taxes? Barter is the most ancient of economic systems. If it is indeed an "underground economy," I hope it takes root and becomes the start of a moral and economic revolution...
...honor bright in paying their taxes. But hammering inflation and high levies have weakened their sense of morality. More and more, otherwise honest Americans are following the lead of underworld elements and dodging their tax obligations by exchanging goods and services for under-the-table payments of cash and barter...
While the economy is dipping into a recession, a much noticed but little recorded sector of American business activity is thriving as never before. It is the underground economy, an illicit system of cash and barter in exchange for goods and services. Because it operates beyond the statistician's reach and the tax collector's grasp, no one knows its exact size and scope. But various learned economists, who find this fast-growing sector to be a fertile field for academic investigation, estimate that it runs to hundreds of billions of dollars a year...
Flea markets are flourishing partly because they seldom charge taxes. Barter clubs are also springing up fast, particularly in the West. The clubs offer swap deals on a vast array of goods and issue checks" for services. A gynecologist, for example, may cash his "check" with a mortician. The members of the clubs claim that their transactions do not represent sales and thus are not subject to taxes...