[QUOTE=Spoons]
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.
:
:
How is this is difficult or time-consuming?
[/QUOTE]
You haven’t tried this at a bank, have you. Casinos love coins, and they get a good return on all they circulate. Banks make a major fuss. Both large and small. Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Bank of America, I’ve tried them all.
I submit coins all the time, from vending machines. If it’s under $500 they count it in the branch, usually with a set of hand trays full of holes. and grumble a lot. And if you aren’t a big coin customer, but have a piggy bank, they will hand you wrappers and insist you do the counting, plus write your account number on each wrapper. Over $500, and they send a sealed plastic money bag to an outside company to count (at their expense) and you get the deposit applied about three days later. They have to spend several times the effort over taking the same deposit in bills.
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
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.
[/QUOTE]
They’re not, although they are about the size of a washing machine.
The post at which my remarks about coin counting/rolling machines was directed, however, implied that the reason that dollar coins were not popular was because banks didn’t want them due to the time and effort (“bother,” I think, was the term used) required to count and roll them. I was just pointing out that banks (not consumers) would likely use machines for this task. Perhaps I should have added, “because of the volume of coin involved.”
I don’t think anybody would expect you to have these machines at home. Not unless you have, say, $200,000 in quarters that must be rolled by noon, when the Brink’s truck is coming to get them.
Dollar coins are a horrible idea. It’s enough of a hassle dealing with change already. We should be making less change, not more. Get rid of pennies.
This seems to be happenning all on it’s own. The other day something cost $10.06 and I gave a $20. They handed me back 10. I would have been pissed if they didn't. .94 in change sucks to carry around.
I toss pennies in the trash, and I’m known to toss quarters and dimes also, especially if I’m on foot. Without a car or house or cubicle to put them in, it’s worth <$1 to me to not have the jingle in my pocket.
[QUOTE=Debaser]
This seems to be happenning all on it’s own. The other day something cost $10.06 and I gave a $20. They handed me back 10. I would have been pissed if they didn't. .94 in change sucks to carry around.
[/QUOTE]
So you would have been pissed if they didn’t give you more than you were entitled to?
What if it had cost $9.64? Would you still have preferred that they only give you a $10, keeping the $0.36 for themselves?
[QUOTE=Bearflag70]
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.
[/QUOTE]
IMHO the bottom line is that you shouldn’t have to “exchange coins for cash” whether you do it at a Coinstar machine or a bank. Coins ought to be actual usable cash in the context of real, everyday small transactions. Ideally, the only time you should have to deliberately change coins for cash is under unusual situations, such as being in charge of the church collection plate, or the local Girl Scount cookie sale, where you tend to accumulate a mass of small amounts in coin.
[QUOTE=According to Pliny]
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.
[/quote]
Or, they cold just stop printing the dollar bills. After a while, when they’re all gone, there will only be coins left, and banks will have to deal with it.
[QUOTE=According to Pliny]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Funny how so many other countries seem to manage. It seems to me that the only real justification for your scenario is the assumption that Americans are dumber than folks elsewhere. I’m willing to be convinced that this is true, but i’m not sure that it’s a contention that will stand up to close scrutiny.
[QUOTE=Debaser]
The other day something cost $10.06 and I gave a $20. They handed me back $10. I would have been pissed if they didn’t.
[/QUOTE]
Not me. If something cost $10.06 and I give $20, that means I don’t have any coins and want some. If I did have coins I’d give them $20.06, or $20.10, or possibly $20.25. That’s the whole point of coins, to keep some around and use them. If you do that, you never have to put extra coins in a jar, and you’d never have more than 10 coins or so in your wallet/purse.
[QUOTE=scr4]
That’s the whole point of coins, to keep some around and use them.
[/QUOTE]
But it’s better to have a system where coins weren’t needed in the first place for anything other than avoiding getting more useless coins. The only coins I really ever “use” for anything are quarters for parking meters and vending machines. The only real function of a nickel is to avoid getting another nickel.
[QUOTE=Bearflag70]
But it’s better to have a system where coins weren’t needed in the first place for anything other than avoiding getting more useless coins. The only coins I really ever “use” for anything are quarters for parking meters and vending machines. The only real function of a nickel is to avoid getting another nickel.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, well, here we get to the TRUE answer to many things. In another decade, you won’t USE coins or paper money for much of anything; everything will be automatically charged against your account linked to your RFID device that you just wave at the reader. Then, you won’t care about how much you hate dollar bills or dollar coins.
I assume that the delay is ensure that the recently deceased not return to life in some way and thus violate federal law. Two years is long enough for near-complete decomposition, preventing any possible presidential zombification scenario.
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately the common practice of embalming and then putting a coffin inside of a vault before burial confounds the natural rate of decomposition.
Perhaps we should make it standard practice that Presidents only be buried in 19th century style pine caskets, with no embalming process.
Or we can give Presidents the option to be cremated and thus waive the two-year waiting period.
[QUOTE=scr4]
I’ve noticed it’s common for people to have that type of stubbornness when things change, or when they move overseas. It doesn’t prove much. I’ve lived in the US for about 10 years total, including the past 2.5 years, and there are many things I refused to change just because of sheer bloody-mindedness (e.g. always backing into parking spaces).
[/QUOTE]
What’s worse is in some places you can actually get ticketed for backing in to parking spaces.
Like almost any place that either meters the spaces or requires a permit to park in them. It usually has to do with the methods used to make certain that the vehicle is following the rules; among the reasons are ease of seeing the permit, lack of license plates on the front end, or the marking of a specific tire in metered spaces to assure that the car does not overstay the limit by adding further coins to the meter.
Like almost any place that either meters the spaces or requires a permit to park in them. It usually has to do with the methods used to make certain that the vehicle is following the rules; among the reasons are ease of seeing the permit, lack of license plates on the front end, or the marking of a specific tire in metered spaces to assure that the car does not overstay the limit by adding further coins to the meter.
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy]
So you would have been pissed if they didn’t give you more than you were entitled to?
[/quote]
Yes, I would have been pissed if I had to break a ten just for six cents of change.
Yes. I regularly drop amounts like $.36 into the “take a penny, leave a penny” jar. If something costs $9.94 at a drive through, I would hand them a $10 and drive up to the next window. It’s not worth waiting for six cents.
