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Is It Time For the US To Ditch the Dollar Bill?
coondoggie writes "It seems well past time that the U.S. ditch its $1 bill — considering such a move could save the country somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion. But there is much resistance, or perhaps a lack of real consideration of the issue from most people. Watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this week testified before a Congressional hearing on the topic, and said dollar coins could save $4.4 billion over 30 years (PDF), or an average of about $146 million per year."
Planet Money did a whole podcast on this. Don't see anyone linking to it, so here's the most current thing:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/11/29/166103071/no-killing-the-dollar-bill-would-not-save-the-government-money
The short is: switching to dollar coins is both less convenient and more expensive than sticking with bills. It's surprising, given the much longer lifetime of coins, but unambiguous.
That is so much crap. Within a few weeks of dollar coins being out vending machines would be updated. They are a business and need to be able to take your money. Canada converted to $1 coins and then $2 coins, lots of EU countries completely changed their currencies and things kept working etc. The gov might have to give incentives to help particular industries convert initially but over but the long term it will work out.
It's a small price to pay for a nice body and a healthy sex drive, though.
What I want to know is why the US has quarters instead of 20c coins.
I'll bet it's because the US dollar was modeled after the Spanish dollar, which was in turn worth 8 "reals" (aka "bits"), and was introduced centuries before decimalization came into vogue. That's why a quarter is still sometimes called "two bits".
This might be correct if the dollar coin were a new thing, but dollar coins have been in circulation since the Carter administration. Vending machines that take the Susan B. Anthony dollar should also take the newer Sacagewea dollars and Presidential dollars, because they were manufactured to be electrically compatible. So any vending machine that has been updated since the 80s should accept dollar coins.
The British (technically, English) £1 note was abandoned before I was born, but here's an article from the time: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/nov/13/pound-note-replaced-coin-1984
And here's another: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/12/newsid_2518000/2518637.stm
British coins are very easy to tell apart -- low-value (½p, discontinued), 1p and 2p are brown with plain edges, mid value coins are silver: 5p and 10p are thin and have milled edges, 20p and 50p are heptagonal with plain edges; £1 and £2 are gold-coloured and thick.
You say that, but here in the UK, we introduced £2 coins ($3.2USD - must admit, I find a note for around 60p crazy, our lowest note is £5, or $8USD) and while, yes, there was a small period in which it was a little awkward, fast forward a few years and it was all sorted. It really didn't take long.
There are a lot of calls here to scrap 1p/2p coins, actually, as everyone doesn't really value them, and there is literally nothing you buy for less than 5p any more.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Um, no. The vending machine industry (under the name Dollar Coin Alliance) doesn't want to keep the dollar bill; they're the primary lobby for getting rid of it. To quote them, "Jammed $1 bills in vending machines cost the industry hundreds of millions in annual repair costs and lost sales."