Should the US Change Metal Coins? (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: It may be time for the United States to rethink how the smallest parts of its monetary system — the penny, nickel and dime – are made. According to a report this week from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office, since 2006 the prices of metals used in coins have risen so much that the total production unit costs of the penny and nickel exceed their face value resulting in financial losses to the U.S. Mint.

Comments

Penny

[itamblyn]

We got rid of the penny here in Canada. It was no big deal. I've hardly noticed the difference.

Re:Penny

[freeze128]

That's because all those Canadian pennies are circulating here in the U.S.

Re:Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a leader, not a follower, therefore it won't get rid of the penny like Canada did in 2013, no matter how good the idea is.

Re:Penny

[WegianWarrior]

Here in Norway we been removing less useful (meaning coins of little practical value) coins for years: - The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74 - The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84 - The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92 - The 50 øre coin was withdrawn May 1st 2012. So while I can still recall putting a 5øre coin in my piggy-bank, there is now no coins circulating that is worth less than 1 Norwegian krone... but you know what? The wast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow, and the prices has not changed with the smaller coins going away. If you pay by card, you pay the exact amount. If you pay cash, it is rounded up or down to the nearest coin-value.
For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner is rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner is rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed. Off course it helps that the VAT is already added to the price listed - what you see is what you pay, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work equally well in places this isn't done (something which always boggles me when I'm visiting the US btw).
The US penny today is worth much less than the half-penny was when it was removed from circulation... yet for some reason people oppose removing the penny.

Re:Penny

[fahrbot-bot]

seriously are you retarded? your argument for not doing it is that it would be doing something other sane countries have already done?

Slippery slope my friend. Lots of other sane countries have universal healthcare and gun control ...

Re:Penny

[Ramze]

Sorry... rational solutions to problems isn't our thing in the USA. I mean... first we'd stop making and circulating the penny, then we'd legalize medical marijuana, switch to the metric system, and finally embrace universal healthcare. That's just crazy talk!

Re:Penny

[PmanAce]

We have the least corruptible, highly lauded voting record and system, feel free to stay with your Diebold voting machines that are easily hackable.

Re:Penny

[c-A-d]

For that matter, how does Canada deal with it? Is it something like this or something else?

We round to then nearest nickel. 0.02 is 0.00 and 0.03 is 0.05.

Re:Penny

[DaHat]

Care to define 'gun control'?

The US has plenty of laws on the books at the local, state & federal level... none of which are apparently enough.

I'm still waiting for someone to specify exactly what sort of laws are enough with regards to firearms that they will be happy with that restricts the liberties of law abiding persons.

Re:Penny

[BronsCon]

It'll keep taking quarters like it already does. Multiple fucking quarters, as a matter of fact.

Re: Penny

[FlyHelicopters]

Or, you know, interpret the second amendment as written and require gun owners to be part of a well regulated militia.

Or, you know, you could learn what "well regulated militia" meant in the 1700s and you could then buy a clue...

It doesn't mean what your 2016 brain thinks it means, BTW...

Re:Penny

[sg_oneill]

We did the same here in Australia, maybe in the 80s or early 90s. Removed the 1 and 2 cent copper coins. Around the same time we moved 1 and 2 dollar notes to coins. Didn't have a lot of effect, other than making the minimum bag of lollies 5c instead of 2c (Hey, I was a kid at the time!).

Re: Penny

[meglon]

The militia, in 1770's was every able bodied men in a set age range (i've heard various, although 16 to 56 comes up most of the time), who were trained in drill and combat by the standards set by congress (that's the well regulated part), with officers appointed by the states. What it wasn't was a bunch of drunk, fat, inbred rednecks playing dress up in camouflage so they could run around with their hands on their dicks playing soldier in the woods because they to big of fucking cowardly pussies to actually enlist and serve this country.

Re:Penny

[stevelinton]

Since you ask I think the UK has it about right. No guns at all except for law enforcement when authorised by a senior officer, single shot target weapons kept at gun clubs, shotguns (licensed) for pest control and a few licensed rifles for specific kinds of hunting. And before you mention knives and illegal guns, our total homicide rate by all meand (per 100K people) is less than the US's gun homicide rate.

Re: Penny

[silentcoder]

If only wingnuts took the other amendments as seriously as they take the first one... oh and the pre-ammendmented constitution itself...

I've yet to meet one who could name more than one other amendment or had the slightest idea what the actual US constitution says. Like most foreigners, I know it better than you do... but then, since the Iranian prime minister last year proved he knew it better than the republicans in congress this is not surprising.

Without googling - which amendment bans slavery ? Which is the equality amendment ? Or even just - "are these the same amendment" ?

You see - the second does not supersede the others, it is limited by their very existence - like all rights are limited by the very existence of other rights since all rights end where other people's rights begin.

What I find most odd though is that everybody seems to read over the most important part of the second amendment. It states that a well organized militia is essential and this is the justification for a right to bear arms... but everybody flat out ignores the "well organized" bit.

You won't get "well organized" in anything done by a government (and the constitution is - by definition - a matter of government) without lots and lots of regulation.
The second amedment not only *allows* for gun regulation - it outright demands it but nobody every mentions that part or recognizes the significance of that qualifier. It's like you imagine the founding fathers you adore so much never meant to put that in there, like it was a typo before the invention of the typewriter.

Well organized equals regulated and controlled.

Re: Penny

[silentcoder]

Eliot's character in "Leverage" summed up those idiots better than anybody else, ever:

"The difference between you and a real soldier is that you are willing to kill for 'your rights'. A soldier is somebody who is willing to die to protect somebody else's rights".

Re:Penny

[silentcoder]

Living in a high crime country - we avoid cash like the plague. You never carry more than R50 if you can help it (about 3 Dollars). You use cards for everything - because having cash makes you a target for robbery. Since everybody stopped carrying cash - muggings have gone way down and now, if you do get mugged, they will almost certainly take your phone rather than your wallet because you almost certainly have only cards in the wallet and those are much harder to abuse (at least if you don't know the pin and don't have access to the technology to crack them) and can be easily cancelled with a single phone call.

Second hand phones have signficant resale value on the other hand.

Cash *does* make it easier for criminals because it's harder to trace and, more importantly, readily accepted everywhere without any checks to verify the legality of your obtaining it.
Cards are harder. By no means impossible but it makes the fruit just that little less low-hanging which makes other (less violent) crimes more attractive in terms of risk and reward and so has cut down hugely on our biggest crime problem.

These days the vast majority of muggings that *do* occur target tourist hotspots and specifically seek out American tourists - because unlike everybody else, they are the last group of people in the country likely to carry large amounts of cash.

Re:Penny

[wonkey_monkey]

Give it time. It's only Tuesday.

Re: Penny

[FlyHelicopters]

That's fine, so long as the military has to do the same.

Re: Penny

[FlyHelicopters]

who were trained in drill and combat by the standards set by congress (that's the well regulated part)

No, it isn't... Well regulated meant well equipped and skilled in the use...

You have to read it in the time it was written, not 2016...

Even the US Supreme Court agrees with that...

Re:Penny

[jblues]

The problem is how to avoid people melting coins and selling the metal for a profit. Because the people of the Philippines already did that after the peso was devalued so much that the metal was worth more. Hmmmmmmm. How to avoid following the Philippines, without following Canada?

Solution: Outlaw notes. Make all currency out of metal coins, thus causing a global commodity shortage and increasing the price of metals.

Re:Penny

[Rei]

The whole knives thing is just a red herring. Having a gun or not doesn't determine whether someone is more or less likely to want to kill someone else. But it does make them a lot more effective at it. Which is why they use them. Which is why guns were invented in the first place. They end a life much faster, much more reliably, with much less effort on the part of the attacker, than a knife.

To be more specific, the mortality rate for a treated gunshot wound to the heart is 24,5%, while for a stab wound to the heart it's 11.5%. Stab wounds to the chest that did not hit the heart in the study had a tiny 0.8% chance of death. There are lots of different studies from all over the world, this is just one example: knives are a very ineffective way to kill someone compared to guns. And it takes a lot more work and personal involvement. You're never going to see a situation where someone bursts into a crowded movie theater with a knife and stabs to death dozens of people

Even blunt objects used in assaults cause higher mortality rates than knives.

Re: Penny

[Xicor]

The reason we have the right to wield guns is not to defend ourselves against other people. It is to defend ourselves against the government. If only the government can have weapons, it quickly becomes impossible to fight for other rights being taken from you.

People say 'you don't need assault weapons to defend yourself', but in actuality, that is exactly what you need to defend yourself against the government.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

Militias were regularly called out for use in the early history of the United States. In no case was it just the president saying, "Hey, everyone with a gun who knows how to use it, come on down and help me out!" They were organized militias, like each state's own mini-army, run by the state's government.

Let's take the Whiskey Rebellion as an example. Washington needed an army to crush the rebellion. He put out a request to states for militia assistance (based on a new federal militia law) and received it from New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Most of the state militia ranks were small (few wanted to serve), so the states put out a draft to flush out the ranks of their militias. These drafts into the militias were enforced by armed soldiers - in the case of Hagerstown, Maryland, a whole 800 of them. Two people got killed resisting the draft into the militias. With the militias' numbers raised to the desired level, Washington then personally marched into "battle" at the head of the militias (each of which had their own state-organized command structure serving under him). After becoming confident that there would be little resistance, he turned command over to the Governor of Virginia (who was personally heading the Virginia militia at the time) to finish the operation.

This is what a "militia" was back in the days when the US was founded: a state-run army, to be called into active service in times of conflict. They still exist - the US National Guard is a direct descendent of the state militias, converted under the Dick Act. Also, obviously, over time the responsibility for provisioning weapons has shifted from the individual to the guard itself, since wars are no longer fought with hunting rifles.

That still doesn't make the US's second amendment unambiguous. But let's not pretend that a militia was something other than what it was. If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Pro-gun people should read that as "The founders wanted us to have the right to individually own weapons so that we can be trained to be good soldiers in times of emergency". Anti-gun people should read that as "The founders were trying to prevent any prohibition against state National Guard units from controlling their own weapon stocks."

The reality is that that statement it's a reflection of their world, a world in which the nature of threats and how they were faced was very different than it is today. I think it's pretty absurd to speculate about whether George Washington would have wanted John Doe to be able to own an AK-47 in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

Wait a minute, is your argument here that you want to have the ability to fight the US military?

Re:Penny

[vakuona]

The value of currency is not just it's face value. The value of a currency is that it allows people to exchange goods and services.

Ideally, the coins ought to cost more to make than their face value (to discourage counterfeiting), but the value of the metal ought to be less than their face value (to discourage people melting them down for the metal).

Obviously, for notes, it is unlikely that the cost of printing will exceed the face value, but it is a lot harder to forge notes, and we can rely more on counterfeit detection technology. If, on the other hand, someone makes counterfeit coins, those would be much harder to detect (unless we start making some sort of smart coins with built-in counterfeiting technology).

Re: Penny

[Major Blud]

The Supreme Court decided otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Penny

[drinkypoo]

You could also take the opinion that the concept of a firearm today is something the signatories to the second amendment could hardly imagine - in 1791,

...cannon were privately owned. And you're bitching about magazine lengths. The breech-loading rifle was the assault weapon of its day. It let you fire faster than the next guy, and nobody was talking about banning it.

The world has changed, why cant people accept that these laws need looking at again?

Because they don't. Those laws are working perfectly. It's the laws that keep people in poverty and which stigmatize mental health issues (by taking away rights) that are broken. People don't kill people because they are happy.

Re: Penny

[drinkypoo]

If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Except the whole fucking point of the 2A was to avoid a centralized, standing military! The National Guard is explicitly the kind of thing they were trying to avoid (it's part of the army, there is nothing state-run about it.)

Re: Penny

[DarkOx]

in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.

Except that is by far not all we do. As I recall it did not work all that great in Iraq. We defeated the regular military with those tools but still need quite a lot of infantry with small arms to really 'win' the fight.

ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.

Re:Penny

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

The tax at the checkout thing is because unlike VAT, our sales tax is a local thing, that varies by county, and city, and sometimes state. The politics of sales tax increases, and who gets a slice of them, is probably an industry unto itself, employing an unknown number of toadies and bureaucrats and enriching corrupt politicians across the country. Someone could probably make a great career out of studying this bizarre meta-economy really. That someone would have to be far more masochistic than I though...

Re: Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

you would be served by doing a little research on what those things ment when the Constitution was written...

for example well-regulated http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

and the militia was "composed of the body of the people" at least according to the man who wrote the Amendments, George Mason who also penned the "Virginia Declaration of Rights". The first document in American History to concretely outline a series of individual rights as they pertained to the greater good of government. The Virginia Declaration of Rights was the most influential State doctrine and the precursor for the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

National guard units are under dual state/federal control. And pretty much have been since the Militia Acts of 1792, although back then it also took a Supreme Court ruling to allow the federal government to call them up, and states were more assertive in controlling their use back then (though not always successful).

At present, national guard units may be activated by either the federal government or the state. Under SAD (State Active Duty) the governor is the acting commander in chief of the state's national guard units. They can use all of the hardware controlled by the state guard, so long as they reimburse the federal government for any consumables, and can use it for any purpose compliant with the state constitution not explicitly banned at the federal level (such as armed insurrection). Examples of state uses of the national guard are natural disasters, riots and terrorist attacks. The Posse Comitatus act restricting the ability of the federal government to use armed forces within the country does not limit state-controlled national guard deployments.

Re:Penny

[Dins]

I wasn't aware that I was supposed to blame Canada until after the South Park episode. But now I do blame Canada for everthing that's wrong in my life, and I'm happier for it! Thanks, Canada! Wait...

Re:Penny

[Rei]

8 people in an organized, planned out attack managed to kill 29 people, or an average of 3,6 per person. How many do you think they would have killed if they had access to assault rifles?

It's also worth adding that the Kunming attackers were subdued by a single policeman armed with an automatic weapon.

Re: Penny

[lowkeyknight]

Seriously? You think you can defend yourselves from your government if they wanted to get you? Do you know how big and well funded your military is? not even factoring in law enforcement. You think you have a measurably better chance with assault rifles and handguns over single shot rifles? Hell, your chances would be statistically similar if you only had muskets and sabers.

Re: Penny

[GLMDesigns]

Seriously - you do realize that the military, is made of people, most of whom care deeply about the Constitution. You must hold these men and women in utter contempt if think that they will automatically follow orders to gun down their brothers, fathers, children and cousins.

I guess you haven't heard of sheriff and police organizations who are publicly refusing to obey some of these laws. (This is a constitutional crisis that should be dealt with sooner rather than later).

Re:Penny

[wyHunter]

And yet your violent crime rate is higher than ours.

Re: Penny

[bigdavex]

The Supreme Court disagrees with you.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/su...

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER
. . .
  Held:

        1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2â"53.

                (a) The Amendmentâ(TM)s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clauseâ(TM)s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2â"22.

Re: Penny

[NoImNotNineVolt]

That still doesn't make the US's second amendment unambiguous. But let's not pretend that a militia was something other than what it was.

10 U.S. Code 311 - Militia: composition and classes

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Let's not pretend that the militia is something other than what it is.

Re:Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

and the accountant who was responsible for stocking and emptying the cash registers was busy making sure all the prices ended in 9 cents.

It's an anti-theft mechanism to prevent the employees from skimming the register. If you don't have to open the till drawer to give back change, it's easy to just simply pocket the cash. If you're required to count back the change, it becomes much more difficult, and it also gives you a way to fire shitty workers who can't do basic addition/subtraction when their till comes up short or long.

I pulled him over and asked him if he really wanted to deal with shuffling pennies back and forth between the various registers, as they collected too many or ran low. Because he needed to tally how much each station sold, he couldn't just move pennies from one register to another. He would have to count every single penny he transferred (e.g. trade 100 pennies for a $1 bill).

This is just plain stupid. It's obvious you have no cash handling experience at all.
First of all, you aren't going to accumulate pennies. Far more people will take the change rather than pay with exact change.
Second, pennies are rolled in $0.50 increments, not a dollar. So if you're going to buy pennies from another till, you either just grab 2 rolls for a buck or more likely just swap a couple of quarters.
Third, your clerks should not be buying/selling change between registers in the first place. You should have someone running a "bank", usually the person in control of the safe. If someone needs more pennies, bills, etc. they call that person over to swap the change, just like if they start getting too many large bills and need to exchange some of it for smaller ones.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

You're citing a law first from 1956 to define what the founders thought? Curious approach there.

The "unorganized militia" was created as a concept in 1903. Also called the "reserve militia", it's the pool from which people can be drafted.

There is absolutely no ambiguity in what the founders of the US thought "militia" was, because they summoned them and used them regularly. They were state-run military organizations. That's what they were called, and the term meant nothing else. The concept was in turn taken straight from the militias of Great Britain, which were the country's primary reserve troops. Established in 1757 (replacing earlier militia laws), it used a ballot system to draft 32 thousand men from England and Wales into its services, wherein they received military training and uniforms; they were intended as a home defense force (and could not be deployed overseas, but were used to make up for when the army was deployed). There was a heirarchial regime controlling the process, with the lowest levels at the town and on up to the national governments. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and indeed the UK's overseas colonies like the US had their own similar militia structures (the latter seen as important in fighting off attacks from natives). During the revolutionary war, their loyalties divided, and those who joined the rebellion formed the foundation for their states' postwar militias.

Re: Penny

[operagost]

Indeed. The National Guard can, by law, be DRAFTED by the US military. How is that a unit designed to defend the "security of a free state"? You can join the National Guard, then be told to impose martial law on your own neighbors.

Re: Penny

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Okay, you're conflating two issues here.

First, what the founders thought. The founders thought that it was important that the populace be armed for the purpose of being able to overthrow an oppressive government. This was relevant at the time, as the populace had just overthrown an oppressive government by taking up arms. If we apply this reasoning to today's world, it would follow that the populace must have access to surface-to-air missile batteries, electronic warfare devices, and nuclear arms. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether or not this is desirable, or whether developments in arms technology has escalated things to a point where the risk that results from an uninfringed-upon right to bear arms is greater than the risk that results from having a government that cannot be militarily challenged by its populace.

Next, what the law is today. Today, the second amendment refers to a militia (although, if you understand English grammar, it doesn't state that the right to bear arms is restricted to the militia). Today, the militia is defined as per the statute I referenced above. By today's laws (even abiding by your incorrect understanding of English grammar), all males between 17 and 44 years of age (inclusive), as well as female members of the National Guard, as members of the militia, have a right to bear arms as protected by the second amendment. This is the interpretation that is favored by those who wish to abandon the historical baggage that accompanies this issue, and simply reason about it in the context of the law as it is today.

You can't have it both ways. Either we're going with the intent of the founders, in which case everyone ought to have a SAM battery in their backyard, or we're going with the law as it stands today, in which case everyone has the right to bear arms. If we're going with some conflation of these viewpoints, we can falsely reason that only members of state militias have a right to bear arms, as you did, or that that women have no constitutionally-protected right to bear arms, as others might.

You seem like you have an interest in the history of this issue. Consequently, you may find the 1880 commentary of Judge Thomas Cooley on the subject of the second amendment interesting:

It might be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose.

Judge Thomas Cooley is described as "perhaps the most widely read constitutional scholar of the nineteenth century" on Wikipedia, if that counts for anything. So, since a sitting Judge from the 19th century seems to share my opinion that the second amendment is written in English, and not doublespeak, is there something you can cite that would suggest the opposite?

Re: Penny

[Kjella]

ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.

True, but then nobody denies the US government the right to draft, arm and train however many soldiers it needs, particularly not in a declared state of war. And those powers aren't listed in the Bill of Rights anyway. It's not about who you can give guns to, it's about whose guns you can't take away. And from what I understand of the early militia, they didn't have service weapons. So the only way to disarm the militia would be to take their personal arms away. And "they" in this context would be every free able-bodied white male 18-45, you didn't enroll or sign up. From what I can tell there were no degrees of militia, it's not like you had the well-regulated and unregulated militia which is a modern invention. So far the facts are pretty undisputed.

From this one interpretation of this is that guns are only protected in the context of the militia. If you're 46 years old, they're not protected. If you're a woman, they're not protected. If you're disabled (not able-bodied) they're not protected. If they're not usable in the militia, they're not protected. That the amendment grants only protects the right of the militia to keep and bear arms for the militia. The other is that the first half is simply a prominent reason for the last half, like if the first amendment read "A free exchange of information being necessary for democracy, the freedom of speech and the press shall not be infringed." If that doesn't abridge the freedom of speech, then neither does the militia abridge "the right of the people to keep and bear arms".

Re: Penny

[Whorhay]

I think the actual reason the 2nd amendment is actually there so that a militia can be raised in a time of need and some portion of them actually bring their own arms, and possibly know how to use them. This was written when the Federal Government wasn't supposed to be maintaining a standing army, so it was arguably more important then.

That said I believe the US military would be outmatched by far in the case of a popular civilian rebellion. US military bases tend not to be fortified in any meaningful manner. The garrisons are housed almost entirely within the local economy. The bases are mostly reliant on the local utilities for power, water, and fuels. The Army and Marines might be different but from what I've seen of other branches they don't keep nearly enough small arms and ammunition on hand to equip more than a couple percent of a garrison at any one time.

You don't have to look any further back than Iraq to see how punishingly hopeless fighting a guerrilla war can be. In Iraq we had the relative luxury of fighting thousands of miles from home where loved ones weren't likely to be put in danger. The enemy was equipped with relatively primitive weapons. Our entire logistics system was effectively beyond the reach of our enemies until the last hop in country. The population of Iraq was also only about a tenth of the US. Just look how worn down and thoroughly used up our military is/was after fighting in the Mideast for a few years. Now imagine what it'd be like when the soldiers couldn't just come home on rotation and instead were in the fight 24/7/365 until it was over.

More doller coins and add 2 doller coins

[Joe_Dragon]

More dollar coins and add 2 dollar coins with cutting the 1 and 2 bills.

Re:More doller coins and add 2 doller coins

[houstonbofh]

Strippers do. Trust me, never try to "make it rain" with dollar coins.

Lobbyists

[Anonymous Coward]

There are various copper and zinc related interests who lobby against changing this.

Nobody would actually miss the penny, though, I think, but enough lobbyists would make a fuss that it hasn't proven worth it yet.

Re:Lobbyists

[Rei]

First, you will never get a single vote from the State of Illinois (aka "the Land of Lincoln") to drop the penny because President Lincoln has been featured on the face since at least 1909. So that's 2 Senators and 18 Congressmen who will never vote to drop the 1 cent coin

Maybe they should just find some other currency to honor Lincoln?

Sort of funny how obsessed over Lincoln Illinois is, given that he never set foot there until he was 21. He was born in Kentucky to a family from Virginia, lived there until he was 7, then moved to Indiana where he lived until he was an adult.

Re:Lobbyists

[Rei]

Oh, and as for the nickel, Jefferson should replace Jackson on the $20. Jackson's presence there has long been controversial and that would be a good reason to remedy the situation.

Yes, it's time.

[FrankSchwab]

Kill the penny.
Kill the Nickel.
Keep the dime - the smallest coin will now have the smallest value.
Kill the quarter
Create a new $0.50 piece a bit bigger than a dime, maybe a bit smaller than a penny.
Create a new $1.00 piece about the size of a nickel, maybe slightly larger.
Create a new $5.00 piece about the size of a quarter.

To avoid confusion between new/old, change something mechanical - put a hole through the middle, or make them all octagonal or decagonal.

If you're worried about cost, make the dime and half out of Aluminum. We've given up the concept of any actual value in our currency, so it's time to give up the artificial weight that made them feel like silver.

Don't try to differentiate them by color. As the Sacajawea dollar taught us, after a few years in grubby fingers and rattling around in pockets, all coins start to have the same surface color.

We end up with rationally sized coins, getting bigger as the value gets bigger. We get rid of the small valued paper money, which is also expensive to print/replace.

Re:Yes, it's time.

[dryeo]

Resize all currency (bills) to make them easier for the blind to use

In Canada we just have brail on the notes, which are now made of plastic as another saving, they're supposed to last a longer though not as long as loonies ($1 coin named after the Loon on it) or toonies ($2 coin).

Re:Rework it all

[bondsbw]

I say get rid of pennies, nickels, and dimes. I volunteer at a coffee house whose prices (incl. tax) are all multiples of $0.25. Both customers and volunteers love it. (They accept lower denominations as payment, but don't keep them in the register.)

Ditch the small coins and ditch paper money

[Harlequin80]

First ditch the small coins and then get rid of $1 notes and replace with a coin and add a $2 coin.

Next swap over to plastic notes instead of paper notes. The plastic notes last much much longer and are much more difficult to forge.

Re:Lose them all

[lucm]

Just round all prices to the nearest quarter and be done with it.

ARE YOU CRAZY that would mean Flappy Birds and FartNoiseMaker apps would cost $1 instead of $0.99. That's a psychological barrier most people are not ready to cross. You sir are talking about destroying app stores.

The real slippery slope

[NotQuiteReal]

The real slippery slope is the whole concept of cash. There may come a day when you can't buy a stick of gum without there being a record of it.

Re:The real slippery slope

[niks42]

Wasn't money invented as a proxy to bartering anyway? We could return to fixing a computer problem for a bottle of whiskey or three chickens. The problem with bartering is finding a common, equitable thing to barter with. We could use bits of gold, or silver .. oh, wait ..

Re:Bring back eagles.

[HornWumpus]

Making change with a vagina is a skill. Few strippers in the first world bother learning for $.25. Hence I am in favor of large value coins being in common circulation. We cannot allow a vaginal coin handling gap...

Re:Plastic Money!

[dryeo]

Probably Australia as they invented polymer bills and have the experience.

Replace the 1 cent coin

[clickety6]

Just replace the 1 cent coin was replaced with a 99 cent coin. Then it's worth as much as the metal and it replaces 99.99% of the need for having a 1 cent coin in the first place. ;)

Other solution: Deflate currency value

[meadow]

Deflate the value of American currency by a factor of 100. Problem solved.

Not only would it solve the issue with low-denomination coins, it would make the entire spectrum of currency much more useful.

Think of it: If you had to pay for something expensive in cash, you wouldn't need a humungous wad of $100 bills. And the penny would be equivalent purchasing power to $1 now. You could go out for a walk with a few quarters in your pocket knowing that was all you needed to get lunch somewhere.

That is how currency was supposed to be anyhow!

Why does it matter?

[HideyoshiJP]

I'm curious why the face value being worth less than the face value is an issue. Doesn't the US Mint still own the metals? Doesn't it get used more than once? Can't they melt it down and make more pennies? Japan still makes a 1 yen coin, and doesn't have these issues. Maybe it's time to switch out copper for a less valuable metal.

Re:Why does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the materials are worth more than the coin itself, people will melt it down. Either switch to a cheaper material, or just ditch the coin completely. 1 and 2 cent coins aren't even made anymore in my (Euro) country. A tiny number are made for the collectors, but nobody uses them. Almost every payment is either creditcard or NFC these days. There's days that I don't even have cash on me.

Change is coming. Or rather, going. :)

Re:Why does it matter?

[Overzeetop]

1) Pennies are no longer made of copper; they're now copper plated zinc.

2) The US Mint does not have it's own recycling forges and processing equipment; they purchase materials on the open market like everyone else.

3) Yes, Japan still has yen, made of Aluminum. Everyone there hates them, too.

There's no good reason to go to two decimal places on physical prices anymore. Make a new 50c piece (because the current one is to large/expensive to produce to be practical), stop producing pennies, nickels, and quarters. About the only people that would piss off would be the parking meter folks, and I'm very much in favor of pissing those people off.

Re:Financial Loss

[Overzeetop]

We're not on the gold standard anymore. Making a penny adds 1c to the total currency in circulation. They "sell" those bags of pennies to the banks and that money is counted as revenue by the government. Except that it costs more to make them than they return. Quarters, on the other hand; well, this is from the WaPo from a while back:

"The quarter program has been a breakthrough for numismatists, or coin collectors, and a boon for the U.S. Treasury. A federal study estimates that 139 million Americans are collecting the quarters, producing a windfall of $6 billion to $8 billion as currency is in effect purchased from the government and taken out of circulation.

Before the first new quarters rolled out in January 1999, the U.S. Mint manufactured 1.5 billion to 2 billion quarters a year. Since 1999, the government has produced 4.4 billion, 6.5 billion and 4.8 billion each year. It costs only about a nickel to produce each quarter, so the program is basically minting 20 cents of profit for the treasury with every quarter."

You know what?

[ThatsNotPudding]

but you know what? The vast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow

You know what? The vast majority of Norwegians can be tracked in real time by their card purchases.

What an efficient cage.

Re:You know what?

[Kjella]

You know what? The vast majority of Norwegians can be tracked in real time by their card purchases. What an efficient cage.

Yes, but for ~98% of the adult population tracking the cell phone is much more efficient. Compared to that, paying my groceries by card is completely insignificant. The only time it matters if I don't like the purchase being linked to me, not the tracking aspect.

Make USEFUL Metal Currency!

[Irate Engineer]

Canada has one of the best physical currency systems I've seen. No frigging pennies, transactions rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Means at *worst* you'll have a few pieces of useful silver jangling in your pocket vs a pile of worthless pennies.

Dollar coins are actually useful in Canada. You can put dollar coins in meters, snack and soda machines, etc. vs trying to fold and iron a mangled paper bill to appease the finicky reader. You can actually USE dollar coins there to buy things without getting looked at like a asshole. You can walk into a bar and slap some coins down and buy a beer.

The U.S. would do well if they could actually implement usage of $1 coins in automated kiosks. Very few people use dollar coins because you can't do anything with them here. Machines won't take them. Hell, people often won't take them, legal tender or not, because they aren't familiar with them and think they're getting a wooden nickel or something. If you could use them in machines, more people would use them, more people would see them and realize that they are legit, and then they could be used for lots of small transactions.

And, as a an aside, plastic currency is awesome. Run your wallet through the washer accidentally, or fall out of the kayak on your trip? No problem. In the U.S., you can hold a legally acceptable but worn paper $5 in your hand and be unable to purchase anything from an automated kiosk because somebody ran it through the washer at some point and the reader can't make it out. I'd imagine it is harder to counterfit a plastic bill as well.

This isn't rocket surgery. For a society based on the success of commerce I don't understand why the U.S. makes small transactions so awkward.

Real Meaning of Second Amendment

[trout007]

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What people on both sides don't understand is the first part. What this means is that INSTEAD of having a standing Army which the colonists lived in fear of and was required to enforce tyranny, it was necessary to have a well regulated (armed and trained) militia. If you want to be free and secure this is the only option. If you have a standing Army you will be secure but not free. If the the citizens well armed and trained you won't have security.

The best example is the modern world is Switzerland. Everyone is well trained and armed. But the professional full timers in the army are only about 5% while the rest are the militia.

This view is backed up by the Powers of Congress which make a difference between the Navy (which was intended to be permanent) and the Army (which was only funded for 2 years at a time and only called up from the militia when needed).

Don't give power to the government

[DrYak]

It is to defend ourselves against the government.

Then don't put yourself in a situation where the government has that much power to begin with.

There's this thing called "direct democracy". You should research a bit about this.

If the general population has a final on anything and everything that the government does, then government's power a quite limited.