As others said, we need to quit printing dollar bills ASAP. Let the old bills circulate until they get tattered, when the banks will pull them out as usual and send them to be destroyed. The DEFAULT change procedure will start to be that tellers and cashiers give out dollar coins unless someone asks specifically for bills.
It’s too late, really, to change the size of dollar coins…but we can somewhat rectify this mistake, as we make $5 and $10 coins, which are the size of the old Kennedy half dollars and Ike silver (or “silver”) dollars, respectively. I’m not sure that we really need to start printing $500 bills in quantity. How many times do you really NEED to carry around multiple hundreds of dollars, in going about your lawful business? If you are engaged in illegal activities, then yes, you probably do want large denomination bills. But most people use only small amounts of cash, and use plastic or checks or EFTs for larger transactions.
Part of the reason I don’t need a smart phone is because its common functions are scattered between several other gadgets I have. So yeah, not as convenient as having one item that does phone, music, photographs, PDA, GPS, etc. On the other hand, I already have all the other things at no monthly cost, and I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of putting all my eggs (digital or otherwise) in one basket.
Hm. Okay then, how about we tell the bank execs, directers, loan officers, etc to take their salary in dollar coins until all the coins are in circulation?
That should do the trick. It worked just fine here - “We’re using dollar coins now. Have a nice day.”
It strikes me as funny that a nation who are content with having all their bills looking the same at a glance are having a fit over their quarters and their dollar coins looking too similar.
take the damned dollar bill out of circulation already. I mean cripes, Japan doesn’t use bills smaller than ¥1000 (roughly 10 USD.) Vending machines might be an issue but I don’t think I’ve encountered any reasonably modern one that doesn’t accept dollar coins. The most recent version of the dollar coin is dimensionally identical to the Susan B. so there should be no issue there.
Oh yeah, the vending machine issue is a red herring - it is not that hard to change over vending machines. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if there is a will to do it, it gets done.
I think it is a great idea, it can go along with eliminating the penny, that way there would be tray space for the dollar coin. All the change would move one slot to the right. That would also free up the old paper dollar slot to hold checks and coupons instead of sliding them under the tray.
We could shift up and lose the penny and the paper dollar fairly easily - just do the round up or down thing [to 0 or 5] in the base price of everything, which would totally kill the .*9 pricing that is stupid [except for marketing practice].
Crap on a stick, all the vending machines where I used to work took plastic and you could set up a drawing account and deposit money on it and use a thumbprint to access it. I also hear that my friends kid at college has a ID/cash card thing that works at all the chow halls, book shops, stores in the student union and all the vending machines on campus … it will develop that you can shove your plastic in any vending machine and not need any cash at all pretty damned soon.
Back in the late 80s, the copy machines at the community college took plastic cards. Yeah, you had to buy and load a card, but you could reload the cards, too. This meant that you didn’t have to fiddle around with hauling a gazillion nickels and dimes all over the place. What college student needs to make only ONE copy at a time? I usually had a stack of books, with little slips of paper marking the pages that I needed copies of.
I’m sure that the vending machine companies can easily adjust to either cards or larger denomination coins. I know that some, if not most, machines will take bills, if the bills are in decent condition. Coins would not get battered so easily.
I would regret the demise of the penny, because I like elongated coins, and most of the machines use pennies as their base. But it’s harder and harder to find penny squishing machines. And you have to use the older pennies for the best result, the clad pennies don’t make such great elongated coins.
The tellers where I work will sometimes try to hand out dollar coins just for fun. Probably 75% of the time the customer gives the coins back and asks for bills instead. We used to have a customer who would come in about once a month or so and ask for a couple of rolls of “metal dollars” as he called them. Don’t know what he did with them, maybe he ate them for all we know. He died about a year ago, and the same box of dollar coins is still sitting in the vault.
I have no problem with getting rid of the $1 bill and making everyone use the coins. We always get way more $1 bills in from customers (lots of waitresses and a couple strippers) than we ever give out. The bills take up a lot of room in the vault.
Heck, a month ago, they announced, “We’ll be issuing plastic banknotes with transparent windows starting in November. Have a nice day.” It made headlines in the news one day, then people got distracted by celebrities or passing breezes or something and forgot about it. I expect a similar reaction when the new notes start reaching our hands.
For general day to day purchases, it’s a big “meh.” Bills or coins, I don’t care. However I do like the coins for use in vending machines, but it’s a huge hassle to get to the bank to pick some up.
Wait now, maybe I’m missing something. If we have all these dollar coins sitting in vaults because nobody wants them, why would we stop printing paper dollars and force the coins into circulation? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just stop making the dang dollar coins?
Make it hail, baby!
I, for one, hate dollar coins. Not because I confuse them with quarters but because I loathe having change in my pockets. The moment I get home I empty them out because it annoys me.
I think I have 7 dollar bills in my wallet right now. I’d hate to have to carry 7 dollar coins.
We have the coins in the vault because when stores and banks order one dollar units, they order bills, and bills are the default. The tills in cash registers generally have bins for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and an “oddball” slot. The oddball slot is currently used to hold foreign coins and the half dollar and dollar coins. The cashier often will put real silver quarters and dimes and wheat and steel pennies in the oddball slot, so that s/he can buy them out of the register at the end of his/her shift. And if some joker has been clever and slipped a few washers into a roll of coins, and the cashier opens that roll, s/he puts the washers into the oddball slot, and bitches about it at the shift’s end. Tills also have slots for bills, and there’s enough slots for singles, fives, tens, and twenties, again with an oddball slot. The oddball slot for bills is used for two dollar bills, silver certificates, coupons, and checks. Back when food stamps were actually slips of paper, that’s where they went. And whatever else is paper and needs to go in the register. Cashiers need those oddball slots and bins, because they usually will receive a few items during each shift that need to go in them.
In order for dollar coins to become widely circulated, we have to have store cashiers handing them out. Most people get most of their singles in change from purchases, they don’t go to a bank or credit union and get a bunch of ones or dollar coins. Cashiers aren’t going to hand out dollar coins unless they have plenty of them, in a regular bin. And stores routinely order one dollar bills from the bank for change, they don’t order dollar coins, because they don’t have a designated slot.
Cash drawers can be removed from the register, and frequently cashiers remove and lock their drawers when they go on break or for lunch. Drawers MUST conform to certain dimensions, in order to fit the registers that are already in service. So we can’t add another slot or bin. The only solution is to remove one dollar bills AND pennies (to open up that extra coin slot) from circulation. The average lifespan of a dollar bill is 18 months…which is why they are relatively expensive. So, if we quit printing singles, most of them would be removed from circulation in about three years. If we don’t print them, but instead only offer dollar coins, then people WILL use the coins. Some people will grumble, some will love the coins, most people will adjust to the new order. There will still be the occasional single bill or penny floating around, because people will use the bills as bookmarks and squirrel them away in sock drawers, and the pennies will be put into coffee cans, but every now and then someone will get desperate for cigarettes or beer, and use the money for the next fix. Also kids will get into stashes, and spend Grandpa’s collection of real silver money for face value.
I probably should have looked upthread to see if this has already been covered. At any rate, the dollar coin isn’t going to be widely used unless stores start giving it out in change. And they’re not going to do that unless they have no choice.
They go into my “Hookers and Blow” jar until the jar’s full or I desperately need to do a load of laundry and dig for any remaining quarters. Oh, and loose change also goes into a cupholder in my car. But I never carry them with me.
I can’t do that with dollar coins because I actually use dollar bills. I’m fine walking around with dollar bills because I often use them, coins’ll just be put in a jar until I cash the entire thing.
Ok, the stuff about the slots was something I’d never thought of, so thanks, but it still doesn’t address the idea that people don’t want to switch to coins. Given that, it seems the better way to save money would be to stop making the coins.
