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US Pennies To Be Worth Five Cents?
Z-MaxX writes to point out Reuters coverage following up on last month's news that the US Mint has made it illegal to melt or export US coins in bulk, since the value of their constituent metals — in the case of pennies and nickels — now exceeds their face value. The new story quotes Francois Velde, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who thinks the new rules will not be enough — he believes that determined speculators are already piling up pennies. Velde suggests "rebasing" the penny to be worth five cents. Quoting Velde: "These factors suggest that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin museums."
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore
Why not make ten bigger?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
and get rid of the useless penny! What we did was phase out our 1 and 2 cent coins and now just round up or round down to the nearest 5 cents. Works well.
Automated DNA sequencing software
Just stop making pennies and let the public melt them down - that way the Mint won't have to deal with disposing of them and they'll be put to some better use (recycle! or something) ... but that's just my 10 cents
Weird how you focus on this topsy-turvy.
The U.S. is suffering inflation. It's not that the cost of metal is increasing, it's that the value of your currency is falling. Fast.
This week it very, very, nearly reached £1 = $2 for the first time in my lifetime.
You REALLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THIS INFLATION, not the value of the metal in your coins.
A few similar stories...
About 15-odd years ago, South Africa replaced all their coinage (and paper currency too). One unexpected side effect was that the new 20 cent coin was a similar size to the old one cent coin. Some older badly calibrated vending machines, notably parking meters, were unable to tell them apart, so there was a sudden rush to aquire old one cent coins, and lots of people got away with very cheap parking for a while.
The problem was fairly short-lived, though -- all the old one-cent coins used this way went straight to the banks and were destroyed, so although it caused a short-term revenue issue for vending machines, it did a very effective job of removing all those old coins from circulation much quicker than they would otherwise have been.
Further back, the British decimalised their currency in the 1970s, but kept the same sizes of coin, so they were interchangable. The older silver coins (shilling, two shilling, etc) had previously been made with a pretty high content of actual silver metal, the older the coin, the more it contained. And since the coins were still in circulation, it was possible occasionally to get in your change a hundred year old coin worth a lot more than the ten pence (two shilling) face value. My grandparents kept a collection of the really old ones they got for years. I don't know what happened to it in the end, but it would probably be quite valuable. (The UK coin sizes were changed relatively recently, so you won't get the really old coins any more)
More recently, again in Britain, the news media carried excitable stories about the two pence coin being worth three pence for it's scrap copper value. It has been illegal to deface British currency for a long time, and you'd have to collect a vast number of two pence coins to make it worth the effort, so as far as I know, no-one has bothered actually trying to make any money from it, but in theory it is possible.
Getting rid of $1 and $5 bills is madness! Think of how it would affect the adult entertainment industry! You can't stuff a $1 coin in a G-string.
and if you say any cost is unacceptable, then you really aren't in mental acceptance of the obvious shortcomings of current us currency. any minimal cost involved in a changeover will be greatly overshadowed by the cost gains due to currency with a superior design: efficiency, ease of use, etc. but that you don't seem to give much weight to these factors brings me to point
#2. this argument baffles me. that the us currency must always look the way it does is a sort of mindset i can't comprehend. why is this so important to you? doesn't functionality and intelligent design trump sentimentality and nostalgia? it doesn't even make sense from a point of view of a traditionalist: look at how different us currency is from the 1800s. what did you say?: "There is a certain elegance and history to the look of the bills, which was established centuries ago." excuse me, what are you smoking? centuries ago? you need to familiarize yourself with the history of american currency to a level that a casual elementary school coin collector already grasps
you could be saying that the us needs to be conservative about its currency since its so important to the world economy. well that's completely wrong. #1: the euro has only been around for a few years and is already supplanting the dollar as the de facto currency for reserves/ exchange on the international market. so much for the value of tradition. and #2: counterfeiting, especially the extremely good north korean kind is an argument for a radical redesign in the interest of preserving the hegemony of the american dollar in international exchange. in other words, you have it completely backwards: international confidence in the dollar is served by radically changing its design, and is undermined by allowing it to stay the same, in its easily counterfeited form (for the excellent north korean forgers). recent changes to the $50, $20, and $10 in fact is exactly because of this kind of counterfeiting. too bad the us mint only considered counterfeiting, and not ease of use, in their recent redesigns (and so much for your vending machines can never change argument too right?)
i really don't understand sentimentality and nostalgia as the prime motivating factor when it comes to currency. frankly, who the f*** cares what the currency looks like? usability, a concept a website populated with techies should easily grasp, trumps all. or at least this concept should trump all, but it obviously doesn't with you. the concept that seems to trump all in your mind is inertia. i frankly don't understand how your thinking on the subject has any value. sentimentality and nostalgia are completely useless subjects on the topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to lay down a thick bed of sarcasm here, but instead I'll just ask you to consider the surveillance, privacy, economic, and tax implications of replacing a fungible, untraceable medium of exchange (cash) with one that's inextricably linked to your identity, records every transaction as an inherent part of the transaction, and can be watched in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
the equating of the look and the feel of the american dollar and its "heft" is just a subconcious connection that depends upon factors going on in your emotions, not in any intrinsic value to the actual design or look or feel of the bill. pick up a roman coin and you will think "gee, nice old coin" and thats it. but a germanic tribesman from roman times though would pick up the same coin and fell the "heft" you are talking about, because he equates that coin with the dominant military and economic machine of his time in his mind. same with you
you have no such equating going on in your mind about the roman coin. and that same germanic tribesman, upon seeing an american dollar, would not feel the "heft" you speak of either. he'd just think it was pretty paper, and probably wipe his ass with it. so the design of the dollar itself is not what gives you the feeling you get when you see it, it is your own mind. therefore, the design of the dollar can be changed, and 20-30 years from now, assuming the usa remains a strong country, a younger canadian tha yourself would feel the same "heft" you speak of, no matter what fruity colors a new radically different dollar would sport
i remember picking up a nazi coin in a friend's collection of coins when i was a teenager, and the thing had menace. i thought it was evil. it definitely had "heft" in my mind. but in actuality, it was quite worn and light weight and cheap looking, since the nazis needed all of their valuable metals for their war efforts. in essence, there was nothing intrinsic about the design of the nazi coin that gave it the "heft" i felt... in fact, it was quite cheap in design. my feeling about it was all psychological, and it all went on in my mind, and that feeling depended completely upon factors that had nothing whatsoever to do witht he actual look and feel of the coin itself. same with your feelings and the american dollar
in short, your canadian currency is superior to american currency. simply because its more usable than ours. and that concept completely trumps your weird psychological feeling of "heft" that you speak of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
Pi Ran Out
I said that it's completely legal for a group to decide amongst themselves to exchange two things for each other (I could wash your car if you fix my computer, if one of them happens to involve little IOU notes of some type so be it). What I said, is "If a city or state government attempted to force a business to accept something as legal tender, the Federal Gov't would shut them down". Flooz was completely legal. If the State of Arizona attempted to force business to accept flooz, or would only accept tax debts paid in flooz the Federal Gov't would take them to Federal Court and crush them with a fairly straightforward argument.
As far as what is or isn't legal tender, the $20 bill in my wallet says right on it, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". So I'm reasonable confident that printed bills are in fact legal tender. I'm also sure that any state that attempted to print such a thing on a piece of paper they printed would find themselves in a whole lot of trouble. It is one of the few rights the Federal gov't retained for itself.
What'd I screw up about the barter system? I'm fairly sure bartering is when folks agree to exchange things of value. Weather they be legal tender, things or services, it's bartering. I specifically mentioned that these local currencies are legal, but it's completely voluntary that anyone participate in it. If you have a debt to me, if you hand me "LETS Money.", I can laugh at you. If you hand me US Dollars, I have to accept them (assuming I'm in the US).
Kirby