sounds cool to me
Or why not make it one metal in the center, with a ring of another metal around it, like Canada’s toonie?
Or…we could just quit trying to solve a “problem” that doesn’t exist. “Because Canada does it” isn’t a valid reasonfor anything, much less totally restructuring the US Currency system. More and more transactions are electronic every day. Why add chaos to the mix?
Hey! I resemble that remark!
(Actually, CAD 1 = USD 0.87. A couple of years ago, it was USD 0.61. The way things are going, what with no Canadian federal budget deficit for the past seven years, us selling you all that oil, etc, eventually the two currencies will be even again. See http://www.xe.com for conversions. )
The problem is wasting money on manufacturing inefficent forms of currency. Reform isn’t chaos. I don’t picture people running madly through the streets in mass pandemonium and hysteria because we take some coins out of circulation and re-program machines to round transactions off.
We shouldn’t do anything just because someone else does it. However, if someone else does it better in a way that makes more sense, we should emulate it.
I agree mostly, but would keep the dime and round to the nearest $0.10. The dime still has its uses–parking meters and such–and is not so awkwardly large as to be out of proportion with its use for such things. IMO even $2 is too small for a bill, though, but we probably shouldn’t even bother with a coin in that amount because the $1 coin and $5 bill would be adequate without it.
In any event, the link suggests that these new coins are intended for promotional and collecting purposes, not to replace the dollar bill or the Sacajawea dollar. Indeed, the article says the Mint hopes it will revive the Sackie. Yeah, that’s likely to happen. The Mint shoots itself in the foot again.
Rounding-off transactions is a recipe for chaos and theft. Interest is figured in fractions of a cent. Do we round those off as well? What about gasoline purchases? What about any other commodity that can be, and is, dealt with in small fractions of a dollar?
Keep the interest rates and fraction prices the same. Do the multiplication. Round the result to the nearest $0.25.
Hypo:
Gasoline = $2.039 per gallon x 10 gallons = $20.39 = $20.50 paid
Gasoline = $2.029 per gallon x 10 gallons = $20.29 = $20.25 paid
[QUOTE=Diceman]
There are three groups of people that like dollar coins:
[ol][li]Coin enthusiasts, such as yourself,[/li][li]the vending machine industry, and[/li][li]the Mint[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
I’m now a “coin enthusiast”? 
It’s really just a matter of convenience. It might not be true for most people, but I end up making a lot of small purchases during the day. A buck here, a buck fifty there - it’s easier not to have to pull out the wallet and go through the folding money to do that. I like being able to just grab a small handful of change and pull a couple coins out. For me at least, it’s just far more convenient.
On the other hand, I fucking loathe the penny. Your time has come, penny!
I’m only judging these things in terms of convenience for me, and I’m sure the verdict would be different for everyone else. But since I generally have pockets full of quarters for parking anyway, a few dollar coins wouldn’t cause me any problems. I still suspect many Americans are just knee-jerk opponents of any such change to our change. There’s no good reason to keep the penny around, fercrissakes.
You’re right! In fact, we better start minting tenth-of-a-cent coins! Otherwise, we’re getting ripped off at the gas pump!
Calculations can easily still be done to arbitrary accuracy. Your bank account will not change. With ordinary rounding procedures, you’ll break even in the end. For comparison, think about when we first minted coins. The penny was worth far more back then; it’s only due to peculiar historical circumstances that we end up now with a coin worth so little it’s not worth bending over to grab it from the sidewalk.
A lot of people collected the state quarters (and not just kids), and it’s profitable for the government when people choose to do that. So I’m all for the presidential dollar coins. I just hope they look attractive. How much would it cost to electroplate them in real gold? And would they keep a nice shiny appearance, or would they get tarnished or grimy anyhow?
If you assume it takes 2 seconds to pick up a penny, then picking up pennies pays at the rate of $18.00 an hour (1¢ per 2 sec = 30¢ per minute = $18 per hour). There are lots of people in this world who would like to make $18 an hour. It’s still worth it to pick up pennies, from my perspective.
My suggestion? Don’t solve a problem by forcing people to do things; they resent it.
If it’s advantageous to the country to have $1 coins, or even $2 coins, in preference to the bills, make them useful. Require the vending machine industry to retool their coin devices to accept dollar coins (and $2 coins if you go that route). People buying a pack of cigarettes or the Sunday paper from a vending machine are going to want dollar coins rather than a fistful of quarters. People buying a soda from a vending machine will want to drop in a $1 coin and get small change rather than trying to put together $0.85 from small change.
Once there’s a valid reason for people to want to use them, they’ll begin using them, and they’ll become popular with the public.
Then you can talk about phasing out the expensive-to-make and less-used small bills.
It wasn’t meant to be a literal economic truth; more a bit of hyperbole, really. Still, it takes longer than two seconds to pick up a penny.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaah. Spain is just falling apart, isn’t it?
If the pennies came down the sidewalk on a conveyor one right after the other and you kept up that paceevery minute of every hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, then maybe it’d be worth it to you. But as far as I’m concerned, at that hellish pace, it’s a pretty shitty job for just $18/hr.
Actually, I thought I was being generous with the 2 second timeframe; picking up a coin can be very quick business, if you don’t dawdle. Of course, I was counting only the actual time it takes to do the stoop and yoink–it will be longer if you count from the moment you spot the penny and include time for a reasoned debate on whether or not to pick it up. Still, even if you bounce it up to 4 seconds–and seconds are really longer than people think they are–that still comes to $9 per hour–substantially better than minimum wage.
Flippant or not, I still say pick up any coins you see.
And I’m not really sure why this argument keeps being framed in terms of “people don’t want dollar coins.” There’s lots of stuff the general public doesn’t like–paying taxes (income, sales, etc.), for example–but we still do it because government policy says we must (for the sake of the greater good, according to theory). Given what’s been stated above, about the savings to the government (that is, the American taxpayers) by using dollar coins vs. paper dollars, folks should really consider overcoming their personal preference for the sake of something smarter.
My 2¢, which took me slightly longer than 4 seconds to type.
Keep the 50-cent pieces! What else would you use when the dealer gives you blackjack?
Also, I just adore how the article linked in the OP insinuates that the dollar coin wasn’t popular simple because it has Sacagawea on it, and that a dead presidents series will have a better shot. Maybe it’s dollar coins that don’t catch on, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re Eisenhowers, Susan B. Anthonies, Sackies or whatever.
If we round everything to the nearest $0.25, then $0.50 coin may become useful.
Not so fast there, Leo. Cecil says 5 seconds per penny.
That argument was put forward here too when we ditched our $1 and $2 notes for coins. I never really found it very convincing. I think it’s just the case that the general public prefers what it’s used to. Once the change was made everyone adapted very quickly.
Hardly a recipe for chaos. We got rid of the 1 and 2 cent coins ages ago and all cash transactions here are rounded to the nearer 5 cents. Electronic transactions, like interest calculations, are still done in exact dollars and cents.