What irony? I hate all coins, period. If I could carry $.25 bills, I would. 90% of what I buy these days is electronic debit. What change I get goes into a bucket to be redeemed at the supermarket about twice a year. I won’t carry coins any longer than I have to. Total electronic commerce can’t come soon enough for me.
As I have said for years, high value coins are stupid.
It’s not “fanboys” that have anything whatsoever to do with the decision to go with a dollar coin over a paper bill.
It is monetary savings. Full Stop. A dollar coin will save your country money. A lot of money. That’s it. That’s the reason to change your habits. That’s all. Nobody wants a dollar coin because “that would be neat”, or “coins are cool, buddy”. Nobody.
I still don’t get it , apparently.
What do you have against saving money? Sometimes the government has to step in, and tell the whiney tittie babies that THIS is how it will be, because we’re saving money.
Who said anything about hating change? (Well, I did, but for a different meaning of the word. 
) The people have spoken. Repeatedly. Coins have been rejected down the line by virtually everybody involved. Yet the coin fanboys keep hammering away for their idiotic dollar and two dollar coins, like prices will be lower because you can buy a Vente with a couple of coins. Big whoop.
ETA: As for monetary savings - get real. Figure out the total amount saved over 30 years by switching to dollar coins. Then compare that to how much the Defense Dept. spends in 5 minutes.
Somewhere (hell, it’s probably in this thread) I posted a link from a guy who was involved in the creation of the Sacagawea coins, and he said the public really had nothing to do with the last coins failing, since they couldn’t reject a coin when nearly all retailers refused to buy them from banks to hand them out in change.
We need “like” buttons on the SDMB.
I might go for it if they made them of a decent size to fit in my pocket. I couldn’t carry five or six large coins. I hate having a pocket full of quarters.
It’s an argument for higher-value coins.
Honestly, the bill looks like a fairly straightforward and practical approach. I would support it. Of course, I’d support nearly anything straightforward and practical out of Congress about now, just for the change of pace. I hope it passes. (Then we can ask the mods to move this to the Pit, where we can watch silenus rant about it properly. :D)
Not if the coins came with serial numbers… or RFID chips. 
I’m puzzled by this logic. It seems to be “why bother having the government save money?”
I’m also puzzled by the strong preference of bills over coins. Could someone explain it to me without resorting to hyperbole? It seems like the weight would be negligible for any adult who isn’t in the last stages of some terminal illness: you’d never have more than four unless you’re inexplicably lazy at the cash register, and four coins × .26 troy ounces = just over one ounce. One ounce! (One and one seventh, technically.)
So, clearly, it’s not the weight. Most men’s wallets are poorly designed for coins, I know, but again, four largish and relatively light coins, at most. What gives? For sentiment to be this strong, there must be a real reason, but I can’t figure it out.
I have six dollar bills in my wallet.
There isn’t room in my pocket for change, a cell phone, pocket knife, all the keys I have to carry at work and six Sacajaweas (sp).
Have you ever seen the coins in question? You make them sound like those stones on Yap.
I call hyperbole. Six sacagaweas is 1.1 cc or about 2/3 in³. If you can stuff a pocket knife, bunch of keys, and a cell phone in there, you have room for the coins, you just don’t want them. Which is fine, I’m just trying to figure out the real reason. “No room” isn’t it.
Edit: I’m getting the mass and dimensions from the wikipedia article. If my math is off, by all means call me on it.
Like a few others, I hate coins in general. Obviously, they don’t fit in my wallet. And they don’t go in my left pocket with my phone, since I don’t want them scuffing the phone. So they go in my right pocket with my keys and other durables, where they immediately fall to the very bottom, and it’s virtually impossible to dig them out from under the other stuff. They also jingle constantly.
So I never, ever, ever use coins (except for the ones in a bin in my car), and any coins I collect go in a jar at the end of the day and sit there for months until I can be motivated to go to a CoinStar or whatever.
A dollar coin means that the jar is now gaining about $5 a day, which is a bit much. But not so much that I’m willing to use the coins if the US does end up getting rid of $1 bills. Plainly, I’ll have to start drinking a lot more coffee (Starbucks cards are one of a handful of ways to use CoinStar without fees).
I’ve got several Prez coins, on two different occasions, when I put a $10 bill in the machine at the parking garage, and got nine dollar coins in return.
I mentioned Sacajaweas. (sp)
Coins are heavier than bills. Coins are noisier than bills. Coins fall out of your pocket when you sit down. Coins can’t be tucked into a card, or into a g-string.
As for “saving government money” - why mess with the piddly shit? Stop invading other countries and see how fast the economy recovers! Dollar coins are to saving government money like recycling newspapers is to a household economy. Meaningless.
This sort of paralysis always disappointed me about US politics. Rather than just making a reasonable change that we know is effective, hands must be wrung over false issues, false claims must be made, and lobbies must be created both for and against. It keeps guys like Frank “Death Tax” Luntz employed to get voters to rally against their own interests by appealing solely to emotions. The interests of exotic dancers must be heard! The question of whether or not vending machines can be altered to accept the new coins must be considered!* What about the symbolism? Is this a slippery slope leading to bigger pockets? IT’S MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN TO BITCH AND WASTE MONEY, DAMMIT.
*Duh.
I really don’t understand the irrational hatred of dollar coins. I’ve always liked them as a concept; wish we had $2 coins, as well. I hate having to play tug-of-war with vending machines because my dollar is too old, too new, too crinkled in the wrong place, too god-knows-what. When I briefly lived in England, I loved the fact that loose change in my pocket could actually buy me a beer and quite possibly a meal. I just like my change being worth something. Nix the penny. Hell, I’d be fine with nixing the nickel, but give me a dollar and two dollar coin.
THAT SAID, I do think the ship has sailed on this one. More and more machines are accepting cashless transactions, so I don’t have the same issues mentioned above. Still, I don’t understand the irrational opposition to higher denomination coins. As said before, it would have been logical to keep up with introducing a dollar coin and then a two dollar coin as inflation required it.
Still, I hate having to pump a newspaper machine with eight fucking quarters to get the Sunday edition when one or two coins would do. (Yeah, yeah, I still occasionally buy a physical newspaper from an actual newspaper box.)
Yes, that’s why I’m confused about the discussion of “large coins” that will strain a pocket to the point of bursting.
I don’t like coins. I don’t like paper money. I want to carry a single device that allows me to pay for anything and everything.
Oh, look! That exists!