Sure. Send 'em my way. I’ll give them a good home. At the Casino.
Seriously though, if you guys want to get serious about $1 coins, you just have to say, “On 31/12/2012 (for example); $1 notes will cease to be legal tender. Until that time you can exchange $1 notes for $1 coins at pretty much anywhere; from 31/12/11 Banks will stop distributing $1 notes and instead substitute them with $1 coins.”
Sure, people will have a QQ about it, but at the end of the day people will get used to it an in a year or two they’ll stop bitching about it and realise that the rest of the civilised world might have actually had a point.
After that you can adopt the Metric system, and then we might let you into the Secret UN.
61 responses and only one admits to using it for his lighter? Wow - I figured that a: there would be more smokers here, and b: that’s what the pocket is for.
ETA: yes, I smoke - and that pocket is where I keep my lighter.
The government would never, ever invalidate an obligation of itself or of the central bank. It wouldn’t be necessary. All that would need to happen is for the Federal Reserve Banks to retire any outstanding $1 notes that come in. The old-fashioned twenty and ten dollar notes seemed to disappear almost overnight when the Treasury introduced the anti-counterfeiting enhanced replacements beginning in the late 1990s.
A lot of it is just people being used to the way things have gotten, and another big part of it is political. Senator Kennedy has been opposing any effort to stop the production of dollar bills because the factory that makes the paper is located in his state. Similarly, others in the Senate are beholden to the zinc industry, and they oppose the elimination of pennies.
(NB: unlike most countries, in the U.S. the Treasury Department handles the actual design and manufacture of paper currency)
Come to think of it, that would leave only $5 and $20 bills in common currency. $10s certainly still exist and aren’t super rare, like a $2 bill, but they have definitely become scarcer with the proliferation of ATMs that normally pay out only in twenties, and the tenspot is arguably not really needed, since it can be replaced with two fives. Five dollar bills generally are probably more useful for making change.
At least that’s what the invisible hand seems to have decided, not that there’s been a conscious decision by anyone in charge.
Apparently people here are becoming challenged in the number of denominations they can handle in paper, as well as coin.
Interesting. There’s still plenty of $10 notes here; and like the US, the ATMs here dispense $20s and $50s.
On the other hand, we have EFTPOS and its cash out feature, which is ideal for grabbing an extra $10 in case you need to get lunch or whatever, thus ensuring the $10 note still remains common.
Honestly, once you get rid of $1 notes and pennies and replace them with $1 coins and nothing respectively, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it years ago.
$1 coins really aren’t any more hassle to carry around than $1 notes. If anything, they’re less hassle, IME. Really, it looks “Foreign” to Americans but it works, and it will make people’s lives a lot easier for no real change in their lifestyles or habits- unlike say, adopting the Metric System which will make people’s lives easier in the long run but is complicated and annoying to Americans right now.
