GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
from the that'll-upset-some-folks dept
While not the first time it's done so, the GAO has once again urged the federal government to get rid of dollar bills and replace them with dollar coins. It says that this single move could save the government $5.5 billion over 30 years. That's chump change to the government, but it's still $5.5 billion. The report notes that Canada and the UK have done similar moves, and it has worked despite initial public resistance. Still, I'd imagine that US public resistance can be stronger than elsewhere on issues that are fundamentally meaningless, but to which people apply a sentimental value. And let's not even get started on the question of whether or not it's finally time to ditch the penny...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Other Mints
But I'm in favor of ditching the paper dollar and replacing it with a coin. Keep the penny, though.
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Re: Other Mints
This I don't know for sure, but to me it made more sense than trying to reach 74c with quarters, dimes and nickels.
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But maybe it's more efficient then, in comparison to other groupings? (I don't want to denounce it as plain arbitrary just yet :P)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
of course, at this point, almost everyone uses debit cards for most stuff, which renders the whole issue irrelivant, but there's still plenty of contexts where it makes sense. (on the other hand, the 5 and 10 dollar notes don't seem to get used for much of anything beyond making change anymore, really.)
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Silver Dollar?
A silver dollar is worth almost $40 USD. Plus, any 1964 and prior years for the half dollar, quarter, and dime, are 90% silver, which is STILL worth 20 times the face value.
*shamless plug*
http://silverINVESTr.com/
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A reason nonetheless...
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Re: A reason nonetheless...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
Thus that scene in Mad Men where Don Draper points out that the VW Beetle ads aren't "genius" - 99c was genius
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(well, unless you live somewhere like NZ, where it's 2$, 50c, no coin smaller than a 10c so rounding eats your change if you pay with cash for anything with a price ending in 5,6,7,8 or 9 cents, anyway.)
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so, yeah, you can do it with two coins. hand over the $1 and get a 1c back. done.
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
I give you two .50s', you give me a .01 back.
I am down one coin. :)
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Re: Re: Other Mints
$0.99
.50 + .20 + .20 + .5 + .2 + .2
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
.25+ .25+ .25+ .10+ .10+ .1+ .1+ .1+ .1 =0.99
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
hand over a $1 coin, get a 1c coin back. two coins, all done.
or, more likely, hand over a $1 coin, get nothing back because the penny analog is so utterly worthless that they don't make it any more and round to the nearest 5 instead. only one coin required.
(of course, these days it's the nearest 10c, here abouts, but whatever)
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... The one who makes the unnecessary bad binary joke, and the 15 others who laugh at the author's lack of hexadecimal wizardry.
:-P
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Re: Re: Other Mints
Um, $0.79?
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
or, again, if you actually have dollar coins: hand over a dollar and 1, get a 20 and 10 back. (my mum does the equivalent of this all the time. i don't really see the point actually, but still.)
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
Um, $0.79?
.50 + .20 + .10 + "Keep the change" = .79
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Re: Re: Other Mints
1 50
2 20
1 5
2 2
6 Coins...
While better than the US current coin system it will never change. Could you imagine the outcry from the vending machine companies???
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
the entire transaction requires only four coins, total, if you have 1c,2c,5c,10c,20c,50c, $1 and $2 coins (though a 1 or 2$ note probably works just as well, but defeats the point in the exercise.) and Include the other party's ability to make change.
(or at least this holds true of all the 'uh... no you can't' answers so far)
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Re: Re: Re: Other Mints
50 + 25 + 20 + 2 + 2.
Most people forget that the U.K. has a 25p coin (and a £5 coin too).
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Re: Re: Other Mints
thats actually a compromise, because some people airnt good with adding powers of 2
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Yeah, how to count to five. ;-)
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It's about the Cost over time. A printed dollar costs 'x' and lasts maybe 2 years. A minted coin costs 3x but lasts around 60 years. If you calculate cost/day for minted versus printed money, the long-term cost of coins is much lower.
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polymer extends the useful life of notes quite a bit. (you have to actually Cut or Burn them to do any damage... though once you cut the edge at all it's pretty much guaranteed to come completely in two)
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Vending machines love coins
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Re: Vending machines love coins
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Re: Vending machines love coins
Ditch the paper dollar already, please. While you're at it please have gas prices priced to the whole penny as well. There are absolutely zero good reasons a gallon of gas should be priced with 9/10 of a cent, which I couldn't get change on if I wanted. This has to be the single most ridiculous pricing scheme I have ever seen in my life!
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Re: Re: Vending machines love coins
our fuel prices regularly go out to the 100th of a cent per liter. and our cents are worth a fair bit less than a US penny. (and I'm pretty sure a liter is smaller than a gallon, but i can't be bothered looking it up).
of course, it's all rather irrelevant when the system is set up so you can go 'i have $20. give me $20 worth of fuel.' just means you get some weird fraction of a liter at the end. most people either do that or just fill the tank.. and when you're already spending 20-50 dollars or so on fuel, fractions of cents are so utterly irrelevant that the fact that they're there for what are essentially tax and truth-in-advertising purposes doesn't matter at all.
(seriously, i think you'd have to be fueling a ship or something before those numbers matter...)
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Re: Re: Re: Vending machines love coins
No, because the price always ends with .9 cents.
(seriously, i think you'd have to be fueling a ship or something before those numbers matter...)
Or operating a gas station.
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Re: Re: Vending machines love coins
I always forget to bring mine and end up putting a twenty into the machine for a $3 ticket. Who need seventeen bucks in dollar coins!
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I have for years, been trading in my cash, at the begining of the week, for rolls of dollar coins.
Why?
So I can feel my pocket getting lighter with every dollar I spend. When I had a bunch of bills in my wallet, be they 1's or 20's, it was just harder to get a feel for how much you have, and have spent. I dunno about you, but my logic was never "oh crap, Ive got to spend these coins because they are here," it was more "oh crap, my pocket is damn light, I better skip the coffee today."
Make any sense?
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Re: Re:
Plus it's not "my / whoever's" logic, it's a proven study. But as always, lots of techdirt readers like to make up their own facts and ignore that's publicly out there.
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/sarc
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Oh, wait. You meant LEGAL drugs. Okay, then, yeah, those are metric. Let's not forget two of the most important things. Liquor is sold in metric volumes and Coke and other soft drinks have come in 2 liter bottles forever and now they also sell liter and .5 liter sizes. Of course, you still have 12 oz and 20 oz sizes too so, eh.
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Why?
(hint the answer is always 10!)
And we continue to appear as a coutnry of idiots..
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Every non-American knows that there are 10 meters in a kilometer. No, wait, I guess the answer isn't always 10.
I kid, I kid.
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Technically it goes millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, meter, decameter, centameter(? not sure on that one) kilo meter. likewise with liters. i dunno what's up with grams (the kilo-gram seems to fill the slot of meters and liters, and then you get up to tonnes (tons? which ever one the imperial measurement isn't) which are like kilo-kilograms...)
most people get by fine with just grams, kilograms, meters, centimeters (millimeters as required) liters, and milliliters, though. (apparently deciliters are quite a common unit in parts of Europe, but here we'd just label the thing in round hundreds of milliliters)
but yeah, the name contains the number of the base unit. standard base ten prefixing.
(also, pure water at sea level gives you something like 1 cubic centimeter = 1 gram = ten milliliters, if i remember rightly. basically lots of ratios work with nice round numbers in metric. that said, it's a heck of a lot easier to make rough estimates by eye with imperial units... at least for distance. there's a reason why most people here still give someone's height in feet (whether they then use fractions of feet or actual inches varies a lot though, and official records and anything involving mathematics will still have it in cm.))
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We'll get around to it one of these days.
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I was in 2nd grade about then too. I was constantly taught the metric system throughout my school years in advance of the change over that was forthcoming. Some where along the line it sort of fizzled out and the change never came.
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***looks at stripped 3/8" socket*** I dunno.
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Ooof. Hate that kind off stuff. Even worse, I currently own a vehicle that I have to disconnect the steering column to reach one of the spark plugs. The engineer who thought that one up should be hung from their toenails until common sense returns to their head.
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the distance from the tip of the middle finger to the bone you can feel in your elbow when your arm's bent, if i remember rightly. it's less variable than the size of a foot etc.
that said, the system used in egypt was to define a 'cubit' at the beginning of a project, by actually measuring the arm of the architect or person who wanted the project built, then making a bunch of standard length rods that size. i think, but am not entirely sure as i don't rightly remember, that the temple (and tabernacle), were built to a set size, given in cubits, and the standard size a cubit would then be defined based on that... but honestly i'm guessing there. (a reasonable guess though, when the temple's exact size is listed in your scriptures, and the building's Right There in your capital)
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Re:
Really, I'm with you. The metric system makes way more sense and I'm all for it. I've done some mechanical engineering, all using the metric system. It always amazes me when a machine shop gets a metric drawing (that is labeled as metric) and then interprets it in inches.
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the teaspoon's the right size, and nothing stays stuck in it.
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Metric
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Re: Metric
Kinda like reporting temperatures in F so it sounds hotter!
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Re: Metric
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Metric is too mainstream.
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As for the nay-sayers, I will only say this:
The exotic dancers will get used to it.
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Ouch!
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In Japan, the smallest bill is 1000 yen, roughly ten dollars (more like 12 today, with swings in exchange rate). They throw around 10,000 yen bills so often, while we can't trust our clerks with anything bigger than a twenty. They have a heavily cash-oriented society, and 100 yen / dollar coins would fill your pockets quickly if it weren't for the THOUSANDS of vending machines in every coin-throwing direction. They have a Sacagawea-colored 500 yen coin with a sort of holographic feature, not a laser process, but just a delicate result of the way they're stamped. The 1 yen coin is a frail little aluminum-like thing, much like taking the copper off our copper-plated zinc pennies.
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gold coins
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Watch out Dev!
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Re: Watch out Dev!
http://restoretherepublic.com/top-stories/ron-paul-subpoenaed-for-money-trial.html
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Re: gold coins
If you want to eliminate the dollar bill, design a coin holder that doesn't require you to pry the change out with two fingers while delicately raising your pinky.
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Re: gold coins
(i will never understand why they put dividers in it though. the coins never stay in the damn sub-pockets and ... let's just say it'd be a heck of a lot more practical to not bother)
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It's easier than you make it out to be
Just use the dollar coin and get a penny back..jeesh.
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Re: It's easier than you make it out to be
There's got to be a better way.
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Re: Re: It's easier than you make it out to be
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They cost more to make initially, but they live for a very long time, are difficult to counterfeit (the cost makes it prohibitive to even try), and they allow for a much wider universe of vending / toll / charge options on automated systems.
It is a no brainer, and would even allow the US to have a 2 dollar coin (without Susan B Anthony on it) that would be actually useful.
Pennies you still need, unless you are going to legislate rules for "up or down" on prices. One option is to "up" the price as a federal sales tax, so if you get to 51 cents, the price becomes 55 with a 4 cent to the fed tax.
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> rules for "up or down" on prices.
There are already "up or down" rules on prices. Sales taxes doesn't result in prices in whole pennies.
Pennies are a sentimental tax the old people put on the young. Give it 30 years, and we won't have hard currency anymore.
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of course, they recently put it up to ... i think it was 15%?
a lot of shops just ate the difference on a lot of their products. those that didn't shunted things up to the next round number. life went on.
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Sales tax always results in prices that are not in whole pennies. The point I was making is prices are rounded all the time, to the nearest penny. Get rid of the penny and they will be round to the nearest nickel.
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and have a fixed time after which the banks will stop Taking the bills, too (except the relevant central one) to discourage people from just hording the things anyway and make it impractical for shops to keep accepting the bills as well. (without essentually stealing their money).
interesting bit of terminology: here abouts a bill is what you get telling you how much you owe. a cheque (check, for the Americans reading this) is as in chequebook. a paper precursor to debit cards, essentially. the cash is a note.
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I have my reservations about going to a completely electronic financial system. Just look at the recent stories concerning PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Amazon and WikiLeaks to see where that would end up.
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If wish to have my transaction at the adult bookstore kept private, how would I?
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Let's get rid of bacteria-ridden, loss-prone physical money already.
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See? Now we're thinking!
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A line like that makes me think Mike has never been to England.
I swear to you that there is no public anywhere in the world to resists rational change more than them.
This is a country where the legislature cannot sit, unless a man brings a special mace into parliament.
A people who resisted changing their money for a rational system
"Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and one Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated." - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
A country where metrication was proposed by an English man in 1668, was discussed regularly in parliament from 1818, which eventually started a formal process of metrication in 1965, which led to starting to actually use metric weights in 1980 in a process that completed in 2000 but still causes outrage and who have no road signs or official measures of distance in metric after what you might view as 440 years, 190 years, or 45 years of trying, in fact in 2006 they actually abandoned long standing plans of putting roadsigns with metric distances .
England is a country in which petrol is sold in litres,
but fuel consumption is quoted in miles per gallon.
They do also give temperatures in Centigrade, unless its hot in which case they use Fahrenheit because it sounds so much higher than the metric equivalent.
If anyone wants to claim that the people of any other country are more pointlessly stubborn, the English have set the bar and some considerable evidence would be needed to justify the claim to be more resistant to any kind of change than they are.
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Mint makes money on coins
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Think of the...
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Re: Think of the...
assuming your system is sane enough to actually HAVE $5 notes.
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your wallet (like 'pocket edition' books and an awful lot of paperbacks) goes in the ones on the side that your parents constantly told you not to put your hands in.
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See how the dealers cope with carrying that lot around :D
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approx 1 gram for the linen/cotten $1 bill vs. approx 8.1 grams for the coins. 8x the weight. You do the math. Not only the weight, but the bulkiness of coins compared to the value carried is ridiculous.
Good thing I use my debit card more than I carry cash.
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Re:
and there's no real need to get coins out of the bank, you get a nice stash of 'em just from getting change when you buy stuff with notes.
also: debit cards.
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also, i am aware that an NZ dollar is worth less than a US dollar... so replace all those values in my above post with the next one down if necessary
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Inflation...
Seriously, why can't these stupid government reports just do the per year savings/cost?
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Re: Inflation...
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Ditch Pennies
Coins up to $20 would be nice. At least do $1 and $5.
I don't like the trend of making everything plastic. Cash is nice and fast. We don't have to make every transaction go through banks.
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Re: Ditch Pennies
Surely such a system could never work.
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Make dollar coin so that it doesn't look like a quarter
You will also find that dollar coins are very common in US cities that have transit systems based on dollar coins. People can adapt pretty easily if the market is flooded with the coins and there is a practical use for them.
After I come home from one of those cities I usually have several days of amusement as I unload the dollar coins on unsuspecting clerks in my hometown who are using the extra bin in their cash register to hold keys or paperclips or something other than dollar coins.
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Re: Make dollar coin so that it doesn't look like a quarter
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Re: Make dollar coin so that it doesn't look like a quarter
(actually, originally they had the same picture on them and everything. difference was colour, and not much else to the casual observer. weight, edging, and actual value on the coin were always different, of course.
oh, added bonus? if you ever track down an old NZ florin... you can still turn it into the bank for it's face value... of 20c. (it had the same picture on it too.)
(apparently when the change over was made, the new dollar was worth a half pound, rendering the florin=20c conversion near perfect.)
more amusing is the NZ/Aus dollar coin issue. basically for some weird reason Australian two dollar coins are about the size of NZ one dollar coins (the NZ dollar being worth less than the Aus dollar aside).
so, you can actually stick NZ$1 coins in Australian vending machines (well, older ones at least) and they'll treat it as an Australian $2 coin.
also, Australian 50c coins are not round.
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Hang onto your singles boys!
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Re: Hang onto your singles boys!
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I shudder to think what that would have weighed if it had been dollar coins.
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on the third hand if your friend is paying you that much:
a; why the hell did he have that many dollar notes? seriously, go to the bank some time! ask for change in more reasonable units. actually USE them instead of constantly paying in large notes and getting change back and then not doing anything with it.
b; why on Earth did he pay you in single dollar notes rather than 20s or something?
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If stopping the printing of one dollar bills saves this much...
I can't even recall the last time I had cash on hand.
(so don't ask me for change)
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The US tried to introduce a $2 bill on more than one occasion. The problem was that there is some sort of superstition that says if you rip the corner off a $2 bill it will bring you good luck. Our $2 bills kept getting smaller from the corners inward.
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Re:
Actually, according to a couple different sources, $2 bills are still in use. However, because of their unpopularity, banks and businesses don't usually give them as change unless they're specifically asked for. They're also printed in much lower volumes than other denominations.
The problem with $1 coins is that the old ones are too big and heavy and the newer ones are too similar to the quarter.
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Their unpopularity is due to the same superstition, I believe. (I'm recalling this off the top of my head here and might not have been 100% correct in my earlier comment).
If I am remembering correctly now, the superstition was that if someone gave you a $2 bill it was unlucky for you and to counteract that bad luck you were supposed to tear off a corner of the bill.
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dollar coin solutions
There's a fairly easy fix for that. Make dollar coins a different shape. I know that it would be odd to have a square coin, and triangular coins might be plain dangerous, but a hexagonal, even octagonal coin would have a different enough handfeel to differentiate it.
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Re: dollar coin solutions
or punch a hole in the middle like some places do... then, hey, don't even need a wallet. a bit of string'll do the job!
seriously, they don't have to be That different to tell them apart. (also note: the other way to make the weight difference more obvious is to issue new coins for the lower values as well, which are Lighter. NZ did this recently. this lets you make your dollars lighter as well while still being noticeably heavier than your cents. not that NZ did that bit. our dollar coins aren't that heavy to begin with.)
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Say wha?
Wow, way to tick of the Americans. Oh wait, I am one. You are probably right, I am sure all 6+ billion other people in the world never get upset over meaningless stuff.
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Re: Say wha?
from where i'm sitting anyway.
might be a side effect of being completely divorced from all capacity to be heard on the meaningful issues though...
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As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
In my view, the Aussies got it right. Their bills are plastic, so they're nearly impossible to tear, are immune to inadvertent laundering, (of the soapy kind), and still fit into a wallet.
I advise Americans to fight to the death to keep their dollar bills. If I could substitute folding money for Loonies and Twonies, I would do so in a heartbeat.
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Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
mind you, if they're proposing dollar coins that actually ARE impractically large, then whoever's proposing it needs a quick whack around the head and to be replaced for their trouble.
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Re: Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
what you'll find tends to happen is that people very quickly get in the habit of actually Using their change rather than hording it. (mind you, here abouts if one got dollar notes at the rate one gets dollar coins... let's just say it's fairly common for people to walk around with a couple of hundred dollars in $20 notes in their wallets. that's a Full Wallet. add in all the ones and twos one would have that are in coin form in a separate section of one's wallet (and don't have to Bend!) and it starts getting quite ridiculous.
of course there's also plenty of people who walk around with no cash on them at all and just their debit card.
a mixture is more likely, mind you.
only time i see the sort of numbers of coins people are complaining about here is in a shop's till. no one Actually carries that many (or pays someone in single dollars when a stack of 20s and 50s makes more sense.)
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Re: Re: Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
I'd like to see plastic folding money, (not as long-lasting as coins but much more durable than paper), with the cost difference being made up by eliminating the annoying and useless penny.
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Re: Re: As a Canadian... the size of the coin
As for the old 50-cent pieces, at least in Canada these were MUCH less common that one- and two-dollar coins are today.
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reasons for 99 cent price.
The people who hang on to the imperial measurement and the paper money are sure that the 1890's are coming back. We will all ride in horse and buggy and earn out living with our hands, working in the fields while wearing sandals and singing folk songs.
The 1890's are not coming back, and there are electronic systems to monitor our honesty. Price things at 1,2,5,10,20 and 50 and the idea of coins makes complete sense.
I remember that the excuse for not changing to the metric system in the 70's was that industry would have to re-tool and lose profit. Well industry has re-tooled at least 10 times since the 1970's and we still buy the same excuses.
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I hate change.
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Get rid of the $1 bill, the penny and the nickel.
I was recently in New Zealand where that technique is in use and it works wonderfully. They have $0.10, $0.20, $0.50, $1 and $2 coins.
In our case, it would be easy to go for $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1 and add in a new $2 coin.
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Re: Get rid of the $1 bill, the penny and the nickel.
(oh: it kinda helps that our central reserve bank is an actual government entity, not independent. it's separate, so far as i can tell, in the same way the judiciary is separate, but it's still a government entity. 'course, the coins are still minted in canada these days.)
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wow 99 comments
We have been using the coin for 1 and $2 in Canada for a long time. No one is calling for the return to the paper bill.
The removal of the penny is a different story and will take more time.
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Stop circulating the Susan B.
They are a mix of golden dollars and Susan B. Anthony dollars.. and while the golden dollars are easy to distinguish, the Susan B. dollars are far to similar to quarters for use by the general public.
Stop circulating the Susan B. and the acceptance rate of dollar coins will increase.
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Screw it...
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For the record, highest value note is 5000 rubles. (~$177)
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Non tipping friendly@
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How do they know they'll save over time?
We also lose money on the other metal coins too. Perhaps we should stop trying to create a currency backed by nothing.
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Re: How do they know they'll save over time?
(the main reason anyone makes a 'profit' on silver, by the by, is massive inflation of the 'currency' used to buy and sell it. the rest is increasing demand for it's practical applications.)
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I automatically assume any coinage I receive is disposable, simply because it tends to fall out of my pockets when I sit down, and almost never carry it when I can carry bills instead.
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or has some bit of madness lead to wallets with No Coin Compartment?
if so, there's a nice niche market for someone to exploit. just... don't do the standard thing of putting divisions and such in the coin section... all it does is cause them to get stuck or end up down the sides and falling out when you open it. (usually a side effect of the zip starting somewhere on the bottom, going all the way up the side, over the top, back down the other side, and under the bottom edge again, leading to a need to have something to stop the thing just hinging open completely and dumping all your coins on the ground. there's gotta be a better design than this though.)
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A $.99 item plus an 8% sales tax would be $1.07, a $1.00 item plus the same tax would be $1.08.
It's A) not much of a difference once tax is counted in, and B) prices wouldn't even be coming to even dollar ammounts anyways.
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it's probably nothing of the sort, but it sure seems like it given the tendency of customers to just hand over 20 dollar notes and not get change unless they bought a whole bunch of little things. even then it's not unusual to get a 'buy three and get a dollar off' deal to end up with round numbers again.
of course, y can't be too large compared to the actual value of the item, so you do still get oddly priced things... but they're typically things you wouldn't just buy individually, and the total gets rounded to the nearest 10c if you pay cash anyway... and people tend to use debit cards for buying expensive stuff (as opposed to lots of less expensive things)...
all of which comes down to 'yeah, most of the time your change is going to be in coins worth less than a dollar, especially as you'll tend to pay for things where it otherwise might not be using the dollars in the first place'
of course, again, the fact that the NZ dollar is worth less than the US dollar plays a part here.
(i kinda wondered why, when they ditched the 5c coin here, they didn't just revalue everything so our old 10c became a 1c, $1 became 10c, and $10 became $1. they replaced everything but the 1 and 2 dollar coins over the course of a couple of years Anyway, all sorts of things track fractions of cents electronically already even if transactions beyond tax, interest, oil, and exchange rates don't tend to Use them... so why not? would make more sense.
probably would have been a bigger deal to make the changeover if they had though... and odds are good that we'll end up losing the 10c to inflation within the next 30 years (if the loss of the smaller coins is anything to go by)... meh *shrugs*
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Eliminate them all
Please just eliminate all paper and coin money already. Put the mint out of business.
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There is a trial going on about an alternative currency fiasco. Theres over 100 names subpoenaed for this including Ron Paul.
The full story you can get here. I also suggest checking out the Alternative Currency organization(which will be out of business if we ever kill the FED)business on a barter(grain,ounce,ect silver) with over thousands of businesses already in the system.
Two links the first is the story, the second is a bit of satire on the FED and your money in reality, enough that a 4 year old can grasp the concept.
http://restoretherepublic.com/top-stories/ron-paul-subpoenaed-for-money-trial.html
&a mp;
http://www.americandreamthemovie.com/americandream.html
Suggest you check out it out. Oh and Mike feel free to cover the trial I'm curious on what you can highlight out of it considering this article.
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http://www.theamericandreamfilm.com/
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but what about tips?
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