Plastic bills are cheap and durable. Best of all, they aren’t coins!
What about cellphones and rfid and all that crap? We’ll probably hardly need change at all ten years from now. And as soon as drug dealers start carrying card readers (the last bastion for cash), we’ll look back at these bills-vs-coins debates and think how short-sighted they were.
An ideal use for the Clinton, when they finally get to minting that one.
Ironicly, the main source for dollar coins is going away. The post office has decided to remove all the stamp machines from post offices.
The primary reason that the coins “never caught on” was that banks uniformly decided to resist them. A coins represent an unrecovered expense to them, because of the bother entailed in handling and counting and wrapping.
If the feds wanted to make the coins visible, they would require all banks to get some coins every time they ordered one dollar bills.
But, I think the current dollar coin would still fail. If it’s big like many previous ones, no one wants to carry them. If quarter-sized they create confusion. If they are smaller, like similar valued coins of other countries, they would be handy but subject to dumb size jokes.
Cheapskate. Get with the times man!.
The Susan B was the same size as the Loonie but silver coloured. Somehow Americans had a problem telling the Susan B and the quarter apart.
Perhaps Americans just can’t be bothered to look at their coins.
drops handful of change on counter
“Grunt. Me American. Here. Money pay thing. Take thing home now.”
The US has 4 basic coins. You can’t really expect Americans to learn how to use one more coin do you? It’s just far too hard.
I think it really comes down to Americans fearing change in general. yuk-yuk.
Of course I’m kidding. With the right training, starting at a young age, Americans can be trained to use 5 coins. (They’ve been working on learning the metric system for about 30 years… another 30 and they’ll have it.) The dollar coin will just take time. 
Only if we do the right thing and stop making new inches, feet, miles, etc.
Here’s my great currency plan:
Make lots of $1 coins, $2 bills, and half-dollar coins.
Abolish pennies, nickles, dimes, and $1 bills.
Round all transactions to the nearest quarter.
You now have just made room for your new $1 coins in your pockets by eliminating all the pesky other coins that many people pay good money to Coinstar to eliminate for them.
Of course they didn’t, that was just people spewing bullshit. If they could tell the difference between a nickel and a quarter, they could tell the difference between a quarter and a dollar.
It was just an excuse to reject the coin. People are stupid about that sort of thing.
According to Pliny:
There is one way, and one way only, to make a $1 coin accepted; stop making $1 bills. The coin would be fully accepted within twelve months.
No reason to force banks how to run their businesses. Just stop making bills.
I thought this was GD, not the Pit. Pretty rude, IMO. :mad:
What do I do with Loonies and Twoonies? I just dump them into the ashtray of the car to use in the car wash, or I dump them into a jar which I use to buy pizza when I accumulate enough. Sometimes it is a life saver when you need to pay the delivery guy and you don’t have the right amount of cash. Try counting out a huge bunch of quarters or dimes to pay for a $20 pizza. The delivery guy will strangle you. Grab a bunch of Loonies and Twoonies and it is easy.
Otherwise use your damn debit card and avoid change altogether. Geez, people get into the 21st Century.
This assertion really needs a cite, but I’ll just say this…
Machines count coins nowadays. At least, casinos use machines to count and wrap (ex-casino employee here, speaking from experience). I’m sure banks do the same thing with coins of all denominations.
It’s easy enough; you dump the coins in the hopper, make sure you have the machine loaded with the correct pre-printed wrap (saying, for example “$10 in 25c”), set the machine to what to count and wrap (quarters, say) and the machine counts and wraps, spitting out bank-ready rolls every few seconds and displaying the running total on a screen.
How is this is difficult or time-consuming?
I was just joking.
I thought it was rather amusing, actually. 
The funny thing is- if I understand correctly- that $20 and $50 notes are considered “large denomination” in the US.
Here in Australia, everyone has $20 and $50 notes. Even people on the freaking dole pay for things with $20 and $50 notes, as that’s what ATMs dispense.
Anyone who has a $100 note has either been to the bank or the casino, though.
Well, AUD50 = USD38.60, and AUD20 = USD15.45 (approximately, at the current exchange rates).
But it is partly what ATMs give out: mostly $20 in the US, so that $50 is uncommon, and oddly the $10 bill is significantly less common than either $5 or $20. In Australia, the $5, $10, $20 and $50 are pretty well equally common. (Remaining from my last visit to Australia, I have just one of each in my wallet).
One other thing is that people in the US use credit cards signifcantly more, so that they generally carry less cash around with them.
And a third thing is how sales tax is done versus the Goods and Services Tax in Australia (or VAT in the UK): in the US, it’s added on to the quoted prices, so that those who want to give exact change have to dig out the right coins after the cash register calculates the total. If you use the Australian or British system, it’s much asier to work out what small change you need in advance.
For me, adjust this a bit. We have Quarters, $1, $2, $5 coins, Bills are $10, $20, $50, $100. Nice and symmetrical.
People who don’t “like” coins get to have fewer coins, and those coins have purpose instead of being worthless annoyances. Today you can get stuck with 9 coins, (3Q, 2D, 4P) worth all of 99 cents without being able to consolidate, then you have all the little bills to deal with too. With my concept, you can get stuck with 6 (3Q, 2Twos, 1Five) worth $9.75. That’s actually money you can buy lunch with, not just a newspaper.
We’ve gone an outrageously long time without adjusting our currency. We’ve gotten used to the concept of coins being “change” instead of “money”. The only value coins have in a transaction is to prevent you from getting more coins back in change. That seems a singularly useless purpose, dont you think?
I submit that the only reason bills seem more convenient is that you always have to go to your wallet when you buy something. If you could buy coffee, a donut and a newspaper without having to open your wallet, you might start to see bills as being more cumbersome than the coins in your front pocket.
This is what I mean when I say the feds should be able to dictate. They dictate what notes the banks can pay out, they dictate all sorts of things regarding bank reserve regulations, fairness in lending, and other banking practices, so why not this as well? If the people who liked dollar coins could get them, then they would definitely circulate more, and maybe then they would catch on.
For the average Joe, how about the time it takes to go to the bank and wait in line before you can have somebody run the machine for you? I’m assuming these counting and wrapping machines are not common household appliances.
We don’t necessarily consider $20s large, it’s just that those are what the ATMs give us, and then a great many stores refuse anything bigger. $50s are relatively rare anyway since the banks tend to pay out large amounts mostly $100s and $20s plus whatever smaller bills are needed.
I’ll hold out for the Anna Nicole Smith 1989 DD coin. 