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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."
Dollar coins at the strip club sounds both dangerous and hilarious.
Not gonna happen; we still have pennies, for chrissakes!
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
With dollar coins?
Wait, they're saying we can save potentially billions of dollars, by simply changing our expectations and habits in a very slight and non-destructive fashion? Unless we can declare war on it as some kind of abstract ideological concept, nobody's going to go for that. This is America, dude, where we turn off the lights when we leave the bathroom to save the environment while we let petroleum producers dump thousands of tonnes of oil into the water because they half-assed the construction and bypassed most of the safety procedures. We come in peace, ignore the Predator drones.
The only sensible way to do this is to shove it down the average person's throat with them screaming bloody murder... only to find out a few years later that they actually like it better the new way. It's how things have always been done here. Don't ask me why, I don't know whether it's human nature, or there's something in the water that makes people this resistant to beneficial change, but will happily make useless changes to everything...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
That's all there is to this comment. I throw away pennies. The only coins I save are quarters, and I only do that out of frustration. I don't carry a coin pouch. Seriously.
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.
According to Wolfram Alpha, $1 in 1950 had the approximate purchasing power of $9.54 today. So the dollar is the new dime. Pop quiz: did it make sense to print ten-cent notes in 1950? (Hint: no) Then why retain the $1 bill today?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
We've tried several. The big problem is that the Treasury won't simply ditch the dollar bill in favor of coins. They try to issue the coins along with dollar bills, so of course people treat the coins as collectibles instead of currency and they never catch on.
The right way to do it is to just do it: issue the coins and stop issuing dollar bills. Bills would still be in circulation and accepted, but no new $1 bills would be issued to banks. If a bank orders $1s, it'd receive them in coins. Any dollar bills received by the Federal Reserve banks or the Treasury would be destroyed, and any replacement would be done with coins. I figure within a year we'd be on coins completely, most dollar bills would've been returned as worn and destroyed and with no new bills being issued coins would become so prevalent that they wouldn't be collectibles anymore.
I use them. Way easier to keep a bunch in the ash tray to pay tolls with.
People would use them if they stopped printing dollar bills.
It doesn't matter if anybody wants them or not, the solution is simple. Start making one dollar coins. Stop making one dollar bills. Very quickly, your entire economy has switched.
That's what happened in Canada. What, you think there wasn't resistance when we eliminated our one dollar bill or two dollar bill (which was far more commonly used than in the US)? Of course there was. And it didn't matter, because people didn't get a choice. The government decided they wanted to save money, so they did. It's not an election-level issue, so they could do that sort of thing.
The only reason that the dollar coin has not succeeded in the US is because the US government doesn't know how to do such transitions.
You have this backward. €1 and €2 are coins because of inflation, not the other way around. You shouldn't think twice about spending €1 on something because it isn't much money.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
We have a government where powerful politicians can openly claim that significant scientific theories are "lies from the pit of hell", and that came up with the TSA and Gitmo. They're inefficient and slow on purpose, do you really want these people to be able to take significant actions quickly and efficiently?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I once thought this way too. But it is possible. Instead of a $1 USD buying a loaf a bread, it might actually buy 4 loaves of bread. I wish I could find the post that pointed this out, but I'm too lazy. We would still have money, but it would be worth more in the long run.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Getting rid of $1 bills isn't despotism, it's pragmatism.
Should the US start printing 25-cent bills? 10-cent bills? More choice is better, right?
At a certain point, you have to realize that having unlimited choices is just silly. A $1 coin functions just as well in an economy as a $1 bill (and lasts longer, thus costing society less). If you don't like increasing amounts of change, do what most Americans do and use credit or debit cards.
As a side effect, use cash, save those increasing piles of change and you can put hundreds of dollars into your savings account every year just by rolling it all up.
For anyone wondering where all the Sacajawea dollars went to, they are mostly in Ecuador. Ecuador uses US dollars as the currency, and people there use dollar coins all the time. You can see some photos of dirty tarnished dollar coins that have obviously been used, which is unheard of in the US.
That must be why the Swiss franc is so weak. They have 1, 2 and 5 franc coins and have for decades. Their smallest paper bill is a 10 franc note.
No, wait... the franc isn't weak. Guess that means these things don't correlate. :)
Exactly. Here's some reading for you.
Link
But this isn't one of those decisions. Removing the $1 bill saves the people money. It doesn't particularly help the government at all. So how is this despotism?
Aside from the price!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So that's $146,000,000/yr.
No, no. That's not the right way to look at it. It's 4 BILLION being saved. What? Yes, that's over THIRTY years, but so what? Doesn't "4 BILLION" sound so much better than "1 BILLION" or even just "146 MILLION"?
Now we have the latest style of inflation: the number of years a small savings is multiplied by to produce the sensational amount to be reported by the media. With the budget, it's typically been 10 years (so they won't say "this cut to spending will save just 100 million", they report savings of "1 billion". Now it's 30 years. We've automatically saved three times as much as before!
if you hadn't noticed, there's a particularly loud virulent strain of "oppose all common sense progress as evil" in the USA
i know such stubborn blockheadedness isn't unique to the USA. but they seem more powerful here. how do other countries quash this loud ignorant sort?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The gold standard wasn't the problem. The problem is that people weren't bright enough realize it is easier to divide the dollar to further decimal places than to divide a piece of gold.
Actually it was a problem since it created an increasing barrier of entry to people who wanted to use any sort of resource to do anything. The golden rule was that whoever had the gold made the rules. In that sort of system "startups" are impossible without an old money patron. The shift away from such things over the last few centuries resulted in modern society instead of static feudalism.