Here Cecil mentions a proposal to discontinue $100 bills because they’re often counterfeited. Um, ban the most useful & valuable bill, but keep the worthless cent piece? How…American.
It has been a long time since I used a $100 bill, and I very rarely use $50 bills. Practically all transactions at that level and above in the US are paid using credit cards, debit cards and cheques – except perhaps for illegal transactions, like paying for hookers & drugs, which I have no experience of. I agree that the penny should be abolished, but the $100 bill would not be missed either.
Cecil’s column was written in 1994, when prices were different than today. Heck, a penny had some value back then – not a lot, but some.
Ban the $1 bill. Ban the one cent coin.
The $100 bill is the most useful? To whom? Maybe you use them for lighting your cigars or something, but I can’t remember the last time I actually used a C-note.
RR
I agree the penny has overstayed its usefulness, but how is the $100 useful?
They could do away with the $100 & $50 at this point. Neither are commonly used and stores generally dislike anything higher than a $20. Most larger purchases are now done with Debit or Credit cards and checks. Banks do transfers electronically and do not use the large bills for said purpose anymore.
Why not kill the $100 and the penny and then think about eliminating the $50.
Jim
We use $100 dollar bills all the time, although I must admit it’s usually in Vegas. Dump the half dollar and the dollar coin - those are useless.
Could you live without it in Vegas? This sounds like the exception and not the rule.
I remember when $100s were used to buy used cars and expensive stereo equipment, but it really seems like these are all done by card or check now.
In what way is the dollar coin useless? Or rather, in what way is it of less use than the dollar bill?
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They are coins, and therefore heavy, noisy and unwieldy. Bills are better than coins for just about all denominations.
My bookstore is in a small town. During the tourist season, we probably receive ten $100 bills per week and perhaps two or three $50s. I’d argue that the $50 is far less commonly-used and far less useful than the $100.
But bills wear out a lot faster and aren’t as cost-effective to produce as coins. The UK and Canada widely use larger-value coins and it works fine.
Yes – the largest value coins in common circulation seem to be the Japanese 500 yen coin, the British £2 coin and the Swiss 5-franc coin. 500 yen coin - Wikipedia These are all worth more than USD 4.
From what I’ve seen, C-notes are used a lot by people who don’t have checking accounts and such because they don’t believe in them or whatever. They literally cash their checks, so for $800 eight $100 notes is much more convenient than forty $20 notes.
I’m with you, but people who share our opinion in the bills versus coins debate seem fewer and fewer.
Perhaps, but having spent significant time in England, I found a pocket full of pound coins to be far more annoying than a pocket full of pound notes (which I got when I visited Scotland). But I am also a guy who doesn’t like thick wallets or big keychains, so maybe that has something to do with it.
To me, cost-effectiveness is a “Who cares?” argument. So we save a few million dollars by using coins. So what? Compared to what the government wastes every second, that money is less than chicken feed. As for what the Poms and Canucks do…we did have a revolution, you know. What others do doesn’t mean it’s right for us.
Like the time a Mars probe was lost due partly to a careless engineer, but mainly because our refusal to adopt metric measures extensively.
And it isn’t always right to keep things different out of sheer obstinacy and stubbornness.
The wear and tear on clothing, wallets and the like will be much greater than the money saved by the mint, and the costs will be directly born by the citizens who are forced to use coinage they don’t approve of.
Fight coins! Paper Foney for All Time and All Denominations! Fight the Man!
With all of the anticounterfeiting measures and bizarre colors nowadays, U.S. paper currency is looking pretty “foney.”
I like the colors, actually. I’m glad to see that the older large-portrait twenties are beginning to appear less frequently and the colorful ones are replacing them. Same with the tens, although I don’t see that many tens anyway.
And I just saw the new five the other day. The only thing here that I don’t like is the gigantic magenta 5 on the back. I know it’s for a good reason, but did they have to make it magenta?