Here's what I don't understand: As a merchant, credit card processing fees eat up between 2% and 3% of every transaction. It's effectively another tax - except that it's not paid back to the public as a benefit beyond the privilege of being able to spend your money. And when margins are tight, this is an extremely painful hit.

So why on Earth do merchants want to encourage the use of plastic?

And how did we, as a culture, decide it was appropriate to hand 3% of the gross national product over to credit card processing companies?