Y’know, I got that in change at Tim Horton’s the other day, and it broke the suspension on my Bentley. So I’m suing them for everything they’ve got. Bastards.
Counting gold or comic books isn’t a scale. There’s two factors involved. Inflation indexing, which is a lot like counting gold and comic books except you use a wide basket of goods, says 8x increase. The other factor is that people made a lot less money then. Because of that, it’s not really unreasonable to say the increase is 20x or 30x (shocking as it may sound), but it’s not quite correct to say a quarter was ‘worth’ $5 (fact is, you could buy with a quarter what you can buy today for $2).
The problem with dollar coins is they’re too fn big and heavy!
We should overhaul our coins, but do that by making a new set of sizes so that $1 is same as or smaller than a quarter, and the smaller denominations are smaller than that. We can put holes in the middle too, to differentiate the new set and because holes are lighter and easier to hold. The metal should also change. I don’t know what metal they use for coins in China, but it’s much lighter than ours.
And lastly, yuppies should start a fashion trend of wearing those little coin sacks, and fondling them as they smoke their cigarettes. Money clip in the pocket, coin sack on the belt. Yeaa 
Personally I prefer bills because change is a pain to carry. Bills fit conveniently in a billfold or wallet, and you can flip through them and quickly find whatever denomination you need.
With coins, you’d either need to carry some sort of coin purse, which is bulkier and still leaves you fumbling around in there for the right value, or you just end up carrying them loose in your pockets. That’s what I usually end up doing, meaning if I want to find a quarter I have to dig out my key chain, my wallet, my cell phone, my flash drive, and possibly a pack of tissues before finally finding the coin I need. (I keep all that stuff in my front two pockets because I don’t like to be sitting on a lump all day.)
What’s the advantage of coins anyway? If it’s just that you don’t have to straighten them to put them in the vending machine then for me that wouldn’t mean much, since I rarely use the vending machines at my work anyway. I guess maybe dollars wear out quicker, but as I understand it older money is routinely taken out of circulation and replaced anyway. And I’d think that paper money would be cheaper to manufacture.
I’ve read in a number of places (sorry, no cite) that coins last so much longer that they’re more cost-effective for the Treasury than paper money, especially one-dollar bills, which in active circulation last less than two years, on average, IIRC.
Coins generally last fifty years or more. (That US coins older than 1964 are uncommon is the result of hoarding based on the changes of that year.) Small bills last about one.
Where the hell do people in the US keep getting the idea that having $1 coins= having to carry a coin purse?
We manage just fine with normal wallets in Australia & NZ, and I can’t say I’ve ever considered $1 and $2 coins to be an inconvenience- they’re gold coloured, so all you do is open your wallet, open the coin compartment, and look for gold coloured coins. Easy. It’s certainly no more hassle than flipping through all the notes in your wallet looking for $1 notes or whatever.
If you guys are concerned about excess coinage, then why not get rid of pennies? That would go a LONG way towards easing your “I’ve got a pocketful of worthless change!” issues, IMHO…
As for why businesses don’t request dollar coins for their change (which is how most coins enter circulation) has a few reasons. First of all, they’d still have to deal with large amounts of dollar bills due to people paying with them, thus adding complexity to their operations and not removing anything(I work at a busy store and I get on average less than one customer a day who uses dollar coins). Sure the last coin slot could be used for those, but it still doesn’t provide any benefits to the business (and would be left with no where to put half dollar coins on the rare occasion someone uses one.) And as for counting items, the store I work at has a machine that can automatically count bills by weighing them.
As for two dollar bills, they are more problematic as they don’t have a place for them in the register. Most businesses have other uses for the fifth bill slot (they might put 50s and 100s there, or in my job’s case we use it to store as-yet unopened rolls of coins).
I don’t know about Australia, but here in the US most wallets don’t have a coin compartment in them. If we want to carry coins in a container we’d need a separate item. My wallet is no bigger than it needs to be to fit some bills and some credit-card sized objects in it. For instance: http://www.technotheory.com/images/wp/wallet_small.jpg
The real reason we don’t get rid of our small bills is because strippers don’t have a place to keep coins and you can’t snort coke with a stack of change.
Yeah, but only the actual strippers care. The clubs can always issue scrip, as many already do, and shave a little off the top when they do it.
What is this “Change” and “Cash” that you all speak of?
Are not all transactions accomplished through the Intercourse of the Magnetic Strips with the Electric Boxes, or the typing of the Mystical numbers into the Internet Forms?
It most certainly is pontification. You may not recognize it, as it is your default style.
Please explain how I was wrong. She admitted her phrasing was poor. And I (tacitly) accepted it. At any rate, your contribution more than a day later added nothing to the conversation.
Answer this question : I have 175 one dollar bills. What is the equivalent number of quarters?
If you can’t post without speaking as if you were God’s messenger, you might want to try not posting.
[minor detail] The mint claims that coins last 30 years. A one dollar bill’s lifespan is said to be 18 months. [/minor detail]
I love it. You wait how long to post this back? After chastising me for waiting a whole day? 
I don’t pontificate. Beyond that, I’m not getting into a personal battle with you on the public board. If you have something to say, say it in private, or put it in the Pit (where I never bother to go, just saying). Otherwise, it seems that this is quickly getting to be a violation of the rules.
And there was nothing wrong with her phrasing. She stated she was talking about the equivalent NUMBER of quarters. Number is not the same thing as value, or even the somewhat ambiguous term “amount.” You seem unwilling or unable to simply admit that you made a mistake in reading this.
I don’t know about Australia, but in the home of the four-dollar coin, we have this clever little compartment in either side of our trousers, and in many jackets and other items of clothing. It’s just perfect for storing small items such as, say, coins, ready for easy access when you need them. :rolleyes:
Ditto. My current “wallet” is really just an oversized credit card case, not really fit to carry more than one or two bills, much less coins. YMMV, of course. My size and shape are such that a larger wallet just doesn’t carry well with my keys, phone, and knife. I’ve already culled the keys several times, the missus insists I carry a phone, and I’m not giving up my knife!
Coins loose in my pockets either dump themselves out somewhere or go home and pile up in drifts around the bedstand and clothes dryer. I tried piggy banks, but they get into sumo matches with the alarm clock and end up rolling under the bed. Hmm–that may be my best retirement fund option.
I’m thinking about installing a dedicated coin bin in my car for what my wife calls “karma cash” (handouts). Coins in cup holders get sticky. Coins do have the advantage of not blowing away if you miss the handoff. But I wonder, if I give an Adams dollar to a homeless person, might he or she think it’s fake?
I currently have 1 $10 bill and 2 $2, 4 $1 and 2 25¢ coins in my pocket. I also have a wallet with several credit/debit cards and a US $1 bill left over from a trip south of the border. This is as much as I typically carry. Coins get used for small purchases, with any remaining smaller ones tossed into a can at the end of the day for future dumping into the nearest CoinStar. For purchases over $10 I use my debit card. $1 and $2 coins are not a problem to carry around - I rarely have more than will fit into the 8 available slots in my handy little plastic coin holder.
I’m guessing you are about my parents’ age, and grew up during the Depression, or maybe during WWII. It interests me that, even though people didn’t have much money, they didn’t think there was any need to price things any more “granularly” than the cent, which was worth something at that time. Of course I think that was eminently sensible, and the ethos of the time concerning coinage was that, if a coin wasn’t, in itself, worth enough to buy at least something, it shouldn’t exist. In the early-mid 20th century it seems you could buy the following types of things with various coins, based on my impression from books and movies:
.01 - penny candy (of course)
.05 - ride on subway, bus, or streetcar; pack of cigarettes; a newspaper; cup of coffee or bottle of soda; candy bar
.10 - heck, a whole class of store was named after this. Time or Life magazine
.25 - a beer in a bar
.50 - a cocktail in a bar
1.00 - full meal in a diner
5.00 - dinner in a white-tablecloth sit-down restaurant
My god, if you had a pocketful of quarters you were golden!
I like your plan, except I would keep the dime but drop the quarter. To me, the dime is a reasonable smallest unit for making change. I would go about implementing the change like this:
(1) First, the Mint has to come up with a better “golden” alloy that won’t tarnish. One of the things people don’t like about the new dollars is that quickly turn an ugly greenish color.
(2) In addition to the dollar, issue a new half dollar of the same metal and weight standard–i.e. exactly half the size and weight of the dollar coin. This gets the public used to the idea that coins of this color are more valuable
(3) Withdraw the dollar bill – maybe Ted Kennedy (Any relation?) will have passed on by then and it will be possible.
(4) The rest of your plan.
Europe and Canada have certainly been a lot better than we have about facing the reality of rising prices, but they, too, still favor some very low value coins.
To all you people who prefer the paper dollar: yes, a dollar bill is lighter than a coin, but we’re not talking about big weights here anyway. Don’t you find, after a point, that it becomes awkward to pay for things with a large number of dollar bills? Or when you have to fish through 9 singles in your wallet to find the $10 bill you know is hiding in there? And one’s wallet gets so fat with singles it’s hard to close.
I especially hate paying a small parking charge with a twenty, and getting the change back all in ones.
A four-dollar coin! Amazing.
The U.S. tried that in the 1800s but it didn’t work out. It was gold.