Sure, the US could do away with paper dollars. The question is, can we do away with paper dollars competently?
American consumers have shown about as much appetite for the $1 coin as kids do their spinach. They may not know what’s best for them either. Congressional auditors say doing away with dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins could save taxpayers some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years.
Vending machine operators have long championed the use of $1 coins because they don’t jam the machines, cutting down on repair costs and lost sales. But most people don’t seem to like carrying them. In the past five years, the U.S. Mint has produced 2.4 billion Presidential $1 coins. Most are stored by the Federal Reserve, and production was suspended about a year ago.
That might be because the US dollar coins look so much like a brassy quarter that they confuse people. The lack of precious metals in them makes them less interesting to collectors and investors. The mint’s design error has made sightings of dollar coins in the wild about as frequent as sightings of Bigfoot popping the hood of a parked UFO.
At any rate, the savings we would get from switching to dollar coins have already been offset by the waste of creating the stockpile 2.4 billion dollar coins that no one wants, right? I bet they could move a bunch of dollar coins if they put Obama’s face on them, though.
There’d be more demand for paper bills with Obama’s face, especially if they were soft, absorbent, and came in rolls.
Actually, it’d make far more sense (no pun intended) to stop minting the penny. Canada recently did that. They just round the prices.
Pennies aren’t worth enough to bother with. It costs too much money to mint them, to ship them, and to count and roll them. They’re heavy and take up too much space in one’s pocket or coin purse. Stop minting pennies and save a ton of money!
“I bet they could move a bunch of dollar coins if they put Obama’s face on them, though.”
Oh, indeed. We should, after all, render unto Casear what art Caesar’s….
Right now I have 5 $1 bills in my wallet, they fit in well with my $5 & $20 bills. 5 one dollar coins is just too bulky.
And besides, how do you tip a stripper with a dollar coin?
I’m sure you can imagine various ways if you put your mind to it, none of them printable here.
The industry may have to reconsider it’s policy on slam dunking the cookie jar – and tossing ones at the entertainment may now result in your forceable ejection from the premises…lol.
Just something else the government would Fluke up.
You tip with just $1? What a cheapskate! No lap dance for you!
LOL….this could get interesting down at the local gent’s club.
Does Sweet Thang’s attire head south due to the weight of coins, or does she argue that the $5 is the new $1? Has the government duly considered the inflationary aspects that would inevitably ensue?
Will thongs have to be redesigned to handle the greater weight of the coins, and if so where will the pocket be located?
Will Sisqo have to re-write his “Thong Song”?
How many $1 coins is a guy gonna walk around with in bulging pockets before he looks like a wannabe thug with his pants down to his crack?
Has Sandra Fluke been consulted yet on this?
Talk about the law of unintended consequences – is it December 21, 2012 yet as this has got to be yet another sign of the end of time!
In Canada they’ve been using $1 and $5 coins exclusively for over a decade. How have they dealt with that, uh, “problem”?
Any Canadians on here? Anyone? We are facing a serious crises here and could use the input!
Not Canadian, but a frequent visitor there. The government decreed the Loonie, then added the Toonie ($2 coin) about a decade later. All without much public input.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toonie
The coins are popular — and, yes, they do weigh down your pocket. (Their paper dollars are colored by denomination, which is useful.)
As a group, Canadians are a lot more passive in the face of government overreach than Americans are. This holds true in many, many more areas than national coinage.
I heard from a friend who visited the night entertainment in Montreal in the early ’90s that they used $2 bills, but they are out of print now.
@Rob Crawford,
They’d have to be on special paper that disintegrates when immersed. As the Zimbabweans recently found out, paper money clogs toilets.
I wish I were joking, but I’m not.
I’m sorry, but with the fantasyland-scale waste and graft going on at this very moment, the prospect of 4.4 billion in savings spread out over the next 30 years just doesn’t get the heart racing. If we’re projecting in a 30-year timeframe, I’m much more interested in what country we’ll belong to and what it’ll be called. And if I’ll be able to speak the language.
Well, if you’re south of the Mason-Dixon line, you need to work on your drawl….
:^)
That’s for sure!
I love how the new norm is to run all savings projections out for many years – usually 10 – but this one takes the cake for using 30 years! The original intent of using 10 year projections was to get a better handle on the future cost of proposed spending programs. Naturally, unintended consequences, and now it’s totally misused for political benefit – to obfuscate the real numbers. Just give me the yearly number or even next years numbers when we’re talking budgets. If its not next year, its not real.
“…not real.” — That’s for sure. If you’re not getting industrial standard positive returns after 2 years, you’re talking “real estate”, not ROI.
On the other hand, if the government were accounted like private enterprise, we would be … well, let’s not go there? — Oh, we’re there – already?
– 50 cent piece, just don’t put Cliton or Ubama on it. Make it Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell again.
“50 cent piece”….are you talking about Sandra Fluke again? That’s a different article.