Does the U.S. government STILL make $2 bills and if they do, why are they so hard to find?
Yes, but under 1% of bills printed are $2 bills:
They are not hard to find. If you go to a bank and ask for them, they will always have them. They will also always have golden dollars, Susan B’s, Eisenhower dollars and Kennedy half dollars. Just ask. 
Apparently they are still being printed–in lesser quantities than other bills–but since we tend to hoard them (many people think they’re worth more than $2 due to rarity), they don’t really circulate the way other bills do.
Some restaurant chains use them as a gimmick, giving them out as change when customers pay in cash. One example is Ted’s Montana Grill: http://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/.
I’m 36 and I think I’ve seen a $2 bill in actual circulation only once or twice in my life.
And, for no apparent reason, I’m “hoarding” a few myself… some were given to me be a relative who works in a bank. Actually, I think some of them are from my birth year… that may explain it.
Go overseas, you’ll find a LOT of them in circulation in the US military communities.
The government would LOVE for us to grow accustomed to their use, since the one dollar bills wear out so quickly. Susan B dollar coins were a horrible bust, because they were too similar to quarters. The gold Sacagawea dollar coins were also a disappointment to the public. The most recent attempt by the US Mint, the Presidential dollar coins, began with a campaign by “George Washington” asking the public for a “vacation.” The US Mint released Washington dollar coins, and will continue the series until all Presidents have been honored.
Personally, I find coins to be heavy and bulky, and best reserved for children’s piggy banks.
~VOW
Take a pile of Twos if you go to Cambodia, where American currency is in general use. I had several Twos when I visited there several years ago and they were appreciated as tips. I ran out of them and tried to buy them back for $3 each with no takers!
Thomas Jefferson, with his “All men are created equal …” is one of America’s most famous and respected Presidents overseas. I wonder if that’s part of it.
They were a disappointment because they weren’t ever really available to the public. Retailers refused to buy them to give out in change, vending machine operators refused to spend any money to accept them, and banks refused to stock them (and if they did, you’d still get Susan B. Anthony dollars in the rolls).
The real question is how did the $3 bills come to be associated with one’s sexual preferences?
The mint has reduced the number of presidential dollar coins being produced, however, due to overproduction resulting in a $1.4 billion backlog. They are no longer being produced for mass circulation and new dollar coins will only be available to collectors who are willing to pay $1.70 apiece.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-04-04/presidential-dollar-coins/54005900/1
I’d like to go on record in saying that I’d be fine if the smallest denomination bill was $5 and the smallest coin was 10c. I’m visiting New Zealand at the moment. This is the way their currency is arranged and it seems to work perfectly fine.
core dump:
Because it has a picture of Harvey Milk on it.
It does seem odd to an outsider that America has these supposedly circulating denominations of currency that in practice nobody seems to use: 50c coins, $1 coins, $2 bills. People seem happy to fiddle around with stacks of quarters and ratty old dollar bills instead.
the only reason dollar coins are a flop is because they won’t take the dollar bill out of circulation. The public’s “disappointment” is irrelevant.
Go to South Korea. Almost every one of my students there had a US $2 bill. Somehow the idea caught on in South Korea that particular note is a good luck charm.
Because a $3 bill is queer.
That does not match my experience at all. In the year or so after they were first issued I saw quite a lot of Sacagaweas in circulation - not nearly as many as dollar bills, but still significant. If you wanted to ride the Gold Line light rail from Pasadena to LA, you pretty much had to use Saccies to get a ticket from the machines. After a year or so, however, they seemed to fade away.
Yes. I do not know why the US Mint is so wussy about this issue. All they need to do is tell the banks “You want dollars? Here you are then.” (Of course it also does not help that they insist on making their dollar coins so similar in size to quarters. One can understand them making the mistake once, but they have done it repeatedly.)
Every time I got a dollar coin I’d throw it in my coin jar at home in disgust. I must have $20 in coins in there.
Yes, the Bureau of Engraving (NOT the US Mint) still prints them, I recently had someone hand me four of them at my register for a $7.50 purchase. Bit of a conundrum, as well, since there was a) no slot for them in the register drawer, and b) no section for them on the computer when I went to count in said register. One of the store managers likes them, however, so he swapped eight bucks for them.
I’m not sure if they were series 2004 or 2007, but were definitely made in this century.
Canada has $1 and $2 coins instead of bills. Currently they work pretty good; JZ has it right - the key to acceptance is to stop making the bills and force everyone to convert. (However, $2 were widely circulated bills in some areas of the country before the switch).
The USA has a bigger problem though - in Canada, they simply announced the small bills would no longer be accepted as money after a certain amount of time (IIRC, 2 years). As the bills arrived at banks, they were immediately withdrawn from circulation. The US currency is widely used and accepted overseas; suddenly announcing that the bills would become worthless might throw a monkey wrench into a lot of foreign economies that rely on a stable $1US to balance a useless local currency.
Plus, the advice I got about travelling in Egypt and that area - local banks would not change coins; so those dastardly Europeans had nothing smaller than 5-pound or 5-Euro notes, a heckuva lot of money for a minor tip.
More than once I’ve had cashiers reject my $2 bill, and each time it took 10 minutes of explanation and getting the manager to come out to tell the kid that it was real money.
And, of course, there is the famous story of a man who decided to mess with Best Buy (a US electronics chain store) by paying for installation of his car radio in $2 bills. He ended up getting arrested and held in the county lockup until the Secret Service could come out and verify the authenticity of the bills.