So we should spend a couple hundred million dollars extra per year,* year in and year out, just to cater to this preference?
By the way, the money already spent producing these stockpiled dollar coins isn’t wasted–as long as we do in fact stop making the dollar bills sometime and switch over. The money we lose every year by continuing the dollar bill, that is.
Dollar coins are wildly popular in Ecuador, which has used the USD as its official currency for some time now. It’s so difficult to get change for a large bill ($10 or larger) down there that dollar coins are prized. If they wanted to convert them, it’d be relatively easy to do it down there.
spark240 gives a good link. And we wouldn’t suddenly declare that dollar bills are not worth a dollar, they’d continue to be spendable. We’d just make them less and less available, as the old bills are removed from circulation. Can we really afford to keep catering to people’s habits? I don’t think so. We’re looking for ways to save money, and this is one way to do it.
Part of the reluctance to move to coins is the fact that many people will tend to not spend dollar coins that they get in change, because they are perceived as rare and possibly valuable. Look at the collection of state quarters, a lot of people bought those cardboard folders and filled them, and now think that the filled folders are worth more than the value of the coins, because it’s a complete set. Unless the coins are proof quality, though, they’re only worth face value, in or out of those folders.
No one’s mentioned that the 70 cents profit Treasury makes on each dollar coin is 70 cents that the Treasury no longer needs to borrow! The profit occurs even if consumers don’t want the coins, since the FRB accepts them! This debt-reduction by fiat is not the case with Fed Res paper money, which has a completely different legal status.
(The Treasury doesn’t mint coins fast enough to avert the debt ceiling, although it could, as a temporary measure, if it started minting coins of much higher denomination.)
But don’t most registers have two rows of slots, the back row being used for currency? We only have four commonly circulating denominations in this country–singles, fives, tens, and twenties–not to mention that the tenspot seems to be slowing disappearing. C-notes are hidden under the removable part of the drawer. So–you already have a fifth slot for coins, and if the one dollar note is discontinued, you’ll have two extra places in the back row.
Do you mean that cashiers still sometimes see old silver in circulation? Granted, they would the ones to do it if anyone does.
I call the front row of slots, the coin slots, bins. So yeah, there are two rows. While tens do seem to be less commonly used, they still circulate.
I haven’t been a cashier since 1989 or so, but I’d STILL see the occasional silver coin during those days, and that was almost a quarter of a century since the mint switched to clad coins…generally from people who were desperate for cigarettes or alcohol, or by kids who just see a big stash of cash without realizing that the silver coins or silver certificates were worth more as collectibles than their face value, as I said. When it’s adults spending the collectible money, they are quite frequently aware of the difference in value, but they’d rather have the nicotine and alcohol RIGHT NOW rather than save the money. I was talking to another convenience store clerk a few days ago, and he said that he still gets the silver and the oddball change. I think that it’s mostly just convenience and grocery stores who get the older coins and bills, because people do tend to use reserves of cash in those types of stores more often. A kid might very well use Grandpa’s coin collection to buy a hot new game, I guess.