Interesting info about the various mineral lobbies. In Canada, the coins are now made from plated steel, except for the loonie and toonie, so such considerations wouldn’t have as much of an effect on a Canadian decision to eliminate the penny.
(That is, they “were”, until yesterday’s decision.)
I’d abolish the cent as a unit of account for consumers completely. Change the quarter to a 20 cent coin* and price everything in dollars and dimes. The cent would still exist in some circumstances (like the mill), but it’s so worthless now that it’s meaningless to consumers.
*Somewhere I read, and I have no idea where, that currency with a 1-2-5-10 pattern is the most efficient. The quarter is the only thing keeping all US currency from fitting somewhere into that pattern.
Big zinc even has a propaganda website to stoke peoples’ innumeracy.
I’d actually guess that money laundering concerns will end the $100 before that happens.
Not a bad plan, except I’d argue if you’re going to change them eventually, go ahead and replace the $2 bill with a coin now, before these get into frequent circulation and people’s expectations.
I think jumping to the quarter is just too big a step for Americans to take now. I can see killing the penny, maybe the nickel. But if you kill the nickel, you have that annoying quarter problem. With the right ad campaign emphasizing the irrelevance of the value at a penny, and how they are treated by many as throw away items (give a penny, take a penny jars, etc), you might be able to convince people that they are no longer worth the hassle and expense to the country. Do it for America! But ditching nickels and dimes now would probably be too much to take. Once the loss of the penny becomes more comfortable and the price adjustments settle and people see how harmless it is, then an argument could be made to do more.
Replacing quarters with a 20 cent coin runs into problems stated before about phasing out coins, and coin machines sized to handle quarters. There’s a big economic impact to that, vs just stopping use of a coin.
And yes, I realize adding a $2 coin has the same problem.
Interesting, I was unaware they continued the Sackies when they started the Presidents.
And what is with the US system of making all sorts of design changes, anyway? It’s almost like they want to make it easier to counterfeit. All I have to do is knock off some halfway decent looking approximation and I’m sure I could convince someone it’s a real coin or bill.
I mean, Millard Fillmore, for pete’s sake. I could probably pass a $3 bill with Donald Trump on it. Maybe not Donald Duck.
Last time I went there, I took a dozen rolls of quarters, figuring that I’d need lots of small coins to make transactions. That was smart, but I should have taken dollar coins instead; I ran out of quarters too quickly.
So make the dollar coin out of zinc. It’s a twofer-- kill the penny and the one dollar bill at the same time without pissing off the minerals industry. The paper industry, well, they may just have to suck it up.
That’s ok, I don’t mind! As long as the boobies are out its all good. I reluctantly volunteer for inspection of these pictures to see if they are good or not. 
My apologies to Canadians and Mexicans, I should have said “The USA”. From this distance, the entire North American continent is a fairly small pointing-target, which is what I meant to imply. I’m in Melbourne, at the southern end of the Australian mainland.
I had a look at the article about the new Canadian notes that you (I think) posted in a thread about them. They look good, and in a couple of years a lot of United Statesers are going to be saying “Canadians can do it, why can’t we?” Obviously Australians have been doing it a lot longer, but we’re on the other side of the planet and you’re next door, which makes it a lot more “real” to a lot of people.
Rounding.
As I mentioned earlier, the smallest-value Australian coin is now the 5c.
In supermarkets etc. things are still priced $1.92c (or whatever odd number) and the rounding happens when the final bill is calculated at the register.
Say the total comes to $12.56c - it’ll be rounded down to $12.55c. If the total price is $12.54c it’ll be rounded up to $12.55c. My understanding is that prices ending in 1, 2, 3, or 6c are rounded DOWN and prices ending in 4, 7, 8, or 9c are rounded UP.
…or something like that, anyway. I’m not 100% certain and, like the vast majority of Australians, I DON’T CARE!
19 years after we got rid of 1c and 2c coins, you know how many people miss them? None. You know how many people have hissy fits about the petrol station or the supermarket “stealing” one or two cents from them? None. No one cares. There was some minor grumbling for a couple of months, then we all got on with our lives.
OpalCat, Yog Sosoth, could you both please drop this hijack? Start a new thread if you must.
Thanks,
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
If the coins in your pocket have meaningful values you tend to use them more for small purchases and save the notes for the big stuff. That way the coins don’t accumulate as quickly. I’m surprised that Hbns found that the European metal money accumulated on his person just as American coinage does. I can’t quite grasp how if I had a few 1- and 2-Euro coins in my pocket, I wouldn’t rather use some of them to buy a magazine or a cup of coffee than go to my wallet and break another bill. If you break a bill for everything you’re left with a massive pile of change at the end of the week and a bank account with more ATM withdrawals than you’d like…
If the $1 coin replaced the $1 bill, I’d still do what I do with all my coins which is to dump them out of my pocket at the end of the day and never spend them. Maybe after 10 years I have enough change saved to make it worth visiting the bank.
I wonder if the coins-are-cheaper camp accounts for this. For people like me at least, coins are going to spend a huge percentage of their lives out of effective circulation. Sure, they aren’t wearing out, but still the mint is going to have to strike more of them to get the same degree of monetary “lubrication”.
I say get rid of all bills below $2 (and make the remainder from plastic), and all coins except the 50¢. Make that one about the size of the dime. What I loathe most about coins is their weight and their inability to stay sorted in my pocket. Having exactly one coin denomination eliminates this problem.
They get their dollar whether you use the coin or not. The one who experiences the loss is the obstinate person with a bucket full of coins. Raising production a little bit to fill the buckets of people rich enough to have that much money sitting around the house unused wouldn’t cost a lot, and it would ultimately raise revenue proportionally, as the hoarders would have to pay the government $1 each (through whatever chain the coin took from the mint to the pocket) for the privilege of keeping them in buckets.
How do you light your cigars?
I didn’t see anyone mention this yet, but I thought the “political” reasons against dropping the paper dollar had something to do with cotton growers. Something about how cotton fiber was used in the paper for dollar bills, and they had a strong lobby that pressured certain members of congress to block any efforts to get rid of the dollar bill.
Maybe for a brief time around the changeover.
When countries change their money design, it’s usually because someone has already cracked the old one and is putting out counterfeits that pass well in the real world. A brief period where a few small-time counterfeiters can pass some fakes because people haven’t learned about the new bills is a much lower threat than an extended period in which sophisticated well-financed criminals (such as, say, North Korea) can pump out high-volume high-quality counterfeits.
That’s entirely a matter of habit. I paid cash for all purchases less than about $30 until a couple years ago. That’s ~40 years of retail commerce. Then I switched to using a credit card for everything. Now using coin or currency feels really weird. You too can change your habits when it makes sense for you to do so.
If you often make purchases of a size where the available coins make sense, you’ll probably learn to use them. The reason your current habit makes sense (and is therefore reinforced) is entirely because our coins are the wrong denomination. If most days you made 3 or 4 transactions at 20-40 cents each, you’d be paying with change to maintain a small but useful supply in your pocket.
And you’d probably learn to do the same thing if armed with $1, $2, and $5 coins applied to current retail prices.
There’s also one specific company, Crane & Co, which manufactures all the paper used in manufacturing U.S. currency. Senator Ted Kennedy had their back (since they’re in MA), and had no trouble blocking any move to eliminate the $1 bill, given his stature, seniority, and influence on the Hill. After he passed away I hoped we might finally be able to do something about this, but it doesn’t look that way.
No they aren’t, because there’s no guarantee that the decision will be made in the interest of fostering actual practical utility, rather than sentiment. If I’m reading the figures right, many countries, for example Egypt and The Philippines, have currency notes well under .25 in value (In the case of Egypt, less than .05). We can be like them, we’re already well on the way.
I spend all my change. Even the pennies. It comes out of the pocket at the end of the night and into the pocket the next day. But I’m weird that way. I will also pick up pennies from the ground.
That explains one time transitions like with paper money (which actually had two iterations), but not the “series” coins like the state quarters, the Presidential dollars, the American Indian dollars - things that change frequently, and you never know what you are going to see on them.
Seriously, pick a design and leave them alone.
Not a problem, I’d already posted my intent to do so.