What is the logic behind having a paper dollar and a coin dollar in the US? The paper dollars fit in your wallet and are much easier to slip into a stripper’s g-string. The coins make loud jingling sounds in your pocket and most vending machines won’t accept them. Is there a reason for this?
On the contrary, most vending machines do take dollar coins. A lot of things we want to buy in the US cost over a dollar now.
The last time I checked also a coin lasts a lot longer than a piece of paper.
Learn to deal with the dollar coin.
I can’t wait for the dollar coin to be more accepted and used. There is no reason to keep wasting money printing the paper bills. Coins are more convenient and last much longer. (And just think of the fun a dollar COIN would add to the strip club experience 
).
I’m with you BratMan. I don’t like the idea of dollar coins myself (I know they last longer, etc. but I find it extremely annoying to carry coins around).
I had a short-lived but interesting thread about this in GD:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=23026
Anyways, I’ll have the nice jar of dollar coins in my room.
-S
I don’t have a problem with the dollar coin, but I can see where you could get that from the OP. I’m just wondering what the point is in having two versions for the same monetary amount. The govt is pushing the dollar coin, hoping it catches on, so why not just do away with the paper dollar or vice versa?
It would be nice, though, to drop a dollar coin into a vending machine instead of finding that perfect, crisp dollar bill so the machine doesn’t keep spitting it back at you.
And I must agree with Gazoo that a dollar coin would be MUCH more interesting at strip clubs!!
If you’re not gonna spend 'em, I’ll buy 'em from you for 50 cents each.
Simply put, the United States has both a dollar bill and a dollar coin because while it recognizes the overwhelming superiority of having a dollar coin, it’s too spineless to risk upsetting the highly temperamental American public by withdrawing dollar bills from circulation.
Note that pretty much every other country in the world with a halfway stable economy uses coins not only for their value equivalent to the U.S. dollar but for higher denominations as well. Canadian coins, for example, go up to CA$2 (about $1.35); unless it’s still got $2 bills in circulation, Canada’s smallest bill is a fiver (about $3.35). In Spain, at least three years ago (before the euro), the smallest paper denomination was the 1,000 peseta bill (about $6.75). The 100 peseta “Juan Carlos,” roughly the size, weight and color of the new Sacagawea dollar, was probably either the single most circulated coin in the country or a close second to the 25 peseta piece (there was no 50 peseta piece). There were also 200 and 500 peseta coins, but 500 peseta coins were hardly ever to be seen, and 200 peseta coins only crossed my palm a couple of times during the week I was there, whereas I always had several Juan Carloses in my pocket. In Germany, where you’ll get about three Deutschmarks to the dollar, coins go up to 5 DM. The Brits use a coin for the pound (a while back some wags said should be nicknamed the “Maggie” --“It’s a cheap brass bit that thinks it’s a sovereign”), and the pound is worth nearly $2.
We Yanks, though, would still be trading in furs and beads if someone didn’t just go ahead and make the decision to have a little progress without us.
Exactly. If the Treasury had a spine, we’d all be using Susan B. Anthony dollar coins by now. If they had a spine, there’d be no more pennies minted. And if Congress had a spine, we’d be using metric regularly now, and not just for soda, fat grams, and crack.
On the other hand, these things are stymied by the complaints of the completely ignorant morons who cling past reason to the old paper bill; who think that they’re being robbed when we round to the nearest nickel; and who think that their personal liberties are being taking away by the ‘One-World-Gummint’ and refuse to learn the logical system of measurement that the rest of humanity is using. Sigh.
Peace.
You’re blaming the wrong organization here. The fact that we have dollar bills as well as coins is determined by Congress. Send an email to your congresscritter about it.
BTW, the way that a sackie wears is not a point in its favor. When new it looks nice, and though it tarnishes fairly quickly, the tarnished color still doesn’t look that bad. What looks ugly is that the gold color is a just thin coating which wears off on the raised rim and perhaps other raised areas. This happens fairly quickly too, a few weeks in circulation will do it.
I’m still visualizing a g-string full of fifty bucks worth of sackies… (go gravity!!)
I smiled at her, and she smiled at me. I said, “Are you game?” She said, “Yes,” so I put a sackie in her slot and played her!
rimshot
If only…if only those spineless weenies at the Federal Communications Commission would force all networks off the air except the WB, which everyone knows is the best.
But no, those moronic viewers choose other programing - including cable! - past any reason. They refuse to recognize the superior, enlightened TV programs offered by that paragon of networks, the WB!
Yes! Yes! Ban all networks, broadcast & cable except the WB! Look at Cuba, China, North Korea, and Vietnam. They have one network, determined by those who know best since they love and care for everyone. It works there! Why not here!
Sure they may be protests…but only from people who aren’t team players…the malcontents. But over time, everyone will learn to love (as the enlightened already do) WB’s commitment to the essential goodness and purity of our precious bodily fluids!
Ahhh, the choice argument. OK, bright boy, if having a choice is so important, why don’t we print 25 cent, 10 cent, 5 cent and 1 cent bills as well? I’ll tell you why: because it would be stupid. The cost to print them would be more than they’re worth, and they’d wear out in no time. The chief advantages of coins over bills are durability and low production cost. Bills only regain their edge over coins in hyperinflationary economies in which money is constantly being redenominated, because it’s cheaper and easier to change a printing plate than a minting die.
For that matter, the main reason we use bills at all is that, once upon a time, their denominations were out of the range of what a person would spend on an everyday basis. They weren’t walking-around money – they were banknotes, i.e., letters of credit provided by banks for people or institutions that needed to exchange atypically large sums of money and didn’t want to lug around lots of heavy gold coins. Coins are lighter now – they’re mostly made of zinc rather than silver and gold – and the function once served by banknotes is now handled by checks, credit cards and electronic fund transfers. Thus it’s kind of kooky for us to be using bills at all.
I have here a one cent bill issued by the Government of Hong Kong some 25 years ago. Admittedly, it was not as costly to make as a regular bill. It’s only printed on one side, has no serial number and is much smaller than regular bills (roughly 1 1/2 by 4 inches). Still it has a couple or anti-counterfeit features: a picture of the queen and a pale blue background.
The government of Hong Kong is not noted for stupidity, nor for wasting money. So why did it issue this bill?
Are you sure it was issued by the Hong Kong government? Currency in Hong Kong these days is still printed by banks – for example, I recently acquired HK$90, most of which was in banknotes issued by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp.
As to the exact reasons why it was printed as a bill, beats me – I have a Hong Kong 5 cent coin from the same era. But as you did note, it was very small and only printed on one side, and am I right in guessing that it was printed on much lighter-weight paper than most paper currency?
The People’s Republic of China prints bills in pretty small denominations too. I’m not really sure why. Could be a resource issue. (Several Asian countries, including China, also “mint” coins made of metallic-colored plastic!)
Just yesterday I heard a report on NPR about how much money costs to produce. The figures they gave were 2.5 cents to produce a paper dollar, running up to 5 cents or more for larger bills (economy of scale, mostly). The new golden Sacagawea dollar costs 12 cents to produce.
so what’s the benefit? It’s the much longer life of coins. The NPR report stated that a dollar bill lasts 18 months on average. Fifties and Hundreds last 9 years or more. But the US Mint website (http://www.usmint.gov , there’s a link to the Bureau of Printing & Engraving (paper money agency) there) says a coin lasts 25 years before it becomes uncurrent. So if you do the math, the coin costs .5 cents a year, the paper 1.6 or so.
Just my 2.5 cents worth.
panama jack
It does not have the name of a bank on it. And it does say “Government of HongKong” on it. Also has the signature of the Financial Secretary.
Yes, the paper stock is definitely lighter than US currency.
dtilque–your note was indeed a geniuine, government produced piece of money from Hong Kong. It’s late, and I can’t access my library on coins/paper this minute. Why it might be produced at the same time as a coin of 5 cents will have to wait.
I will try to answer tomorrow, assuming some other helpful soul doesn’t answer first.
From the posts I’ve seen, I gather I’m in the minority. However, I like dollar bills and am not at all anxious to see them replaced by coins.
Coins, to me, are kind of annoying to carry around. Bills go nicely into the main pocket of my wallet, while the change has to be stuck…someplace (I keep mine in one of the little card slots.). Too many coins make my wallet lumpy and annoying to sit on - this can also be done with bills, but it takes far more. I could keep my coins in another pocket, but after trying it for a while I found it yet more bothersome.
The only advantage I see to coins is that the last longer, and thus cost less for the government.
I’ve spent time in Europe, and have noticed that larger-valued money is in coin form there. Possibly just because I’m used to the way the U.S. does it, I found that bothersome because I had this huge chunk of change to tote around.
I guess I’m one of moriah’s “ignorant morons clinging beyond reason to the dollar bill.” Oh, well…think whatever you want.
I would like to add these benfits:
-Easier to use in machines (I just fought with the soda machine this morning trying to convince it that the single I was inserting into was indeed legal tender U.S. currency)
-Easier to make change (most people experienced with cash registers will tell you how easy it is for them to dip their hand in a coin slot and pull out the correct number of coins every time.)
-No problem if they get wet, or go through the washing machine.
Ah the choice argument…
Meaning, IMHO, freedom and liberty.
Dollar coins never went away folks, the Suzies fill many a government warehouse, saving the taxpayers tons of money no doubt. At the rate they’re used, they might outlast spent plutonium.
People (as in We the People) don’t like them. Simple as that. Yes, to some, we are morons who could be corrected by a government dictate that all dollar bills must be replaced by Sackies or Suzies or whatever. But I wouldn’t want to be the Congressman who supports such a noble improvement.
Yep, inflation has reduced the buying power of the dollar. Yep, a lot of people use debit and credit cards. Yep, dollar bills don’t work very well in soda machines (Funny thing, people aren’t pulling Suzies out of government coffers to use in machines.)
So why not, penny, nickel, dime, and quarter bills. Been there, done that. People did use small denomination U.S. stamps as currency but it never caught on. (I don’t believe that stamps were ever official legal tender.)
Choice = freedom. You’ve got your Sackies, you got your Suzies, use’m. But to me they’re both Yugos.