Does this take into account the trend away from cash? Personally I’m 99% cashless.
I’m not sure. But we’ve been using them for quite a while now.
I’m going to offer a WAG that this is quite likely a factor in the higher than expected longevity of polymer, which in any case lasts much longer than paper in any conditions. Anecdotally, I almost never see anyone use cash in retail checkouts. I can’t even remember the last time I might have done so. The move to polymer was still a good idea because longevity is always going to lead to cost savings, and because it has a lot more security features.
Sure it should. A very hefty chunk of the US absolutely loathes coins, me included. Replacing lightweight, low volume bills with high mass, high volume coins is insanity. If anything, the trend should have been to replace coins with smaller bills.
Moot point now, but the automatic assumption that Americans would embrace higher value coins is fallacious and frankly rather insulting.
The idea of 1¢ and 5¢ banknotes is certainly intriguing! 
I don’t know what you find “insulting” about it. Maybe you should be more insulted by the fact that the US has lagged behind the rest of the world in just about every aspect of consumer payments – still using antiquated technology to print currency, refuses to retire low-value paper currency or even the completely useless 1¢ coin, and among the last countries in the world to adopt chip cards, RFID, and mobile terminals in restaurants. And a no-starter among almost every country in the world that has mostly or completely adopted the metric system.
This right here. If I want to get something from a vending machine, I tap my phone. Same for taking transit, buying groceries, or pretty much anything else. If I want to send someone money for a gift or splitting movie tickets, I send it to their email or phone and it auto deposits to their bank account. No apps, no 3rd parties like Venmo involved.
Inertia is not a good reason to keep doing things the old way.
Cite? Can you quantify this “hefty chunk,” and of these, what proportion have actually been outside the U.S. and tried using dollar or euro coins in place of low-value notes? I’m sure there are plenty of Americans who just hate the idea of any change to their money, but haven’t actually lived with the alternatives. Should they get to decide for the rest of us, despite the added expense to the country?
When I visited Canada in the early 1990s, shortly after they had introduced the loonie ($1 coin) and removed the $1 note from circulation, I was impressed by the convenience of dollar coins over bills. It was the same in Europe with the 1- and 2-Euro coins.
From that point on, I was sold on the notion of dropping low-value notes in favor of coins here in the U.S., and peeved that our politicians weren’t as rational as @wolfpup’s.
Coins are more reliable than bills when used in vending and other machines (although most of these now have card readers, of course). If you’re concerned about the weight of coins, there’s no need ever to have more than a couple in your pocket: you can always change them for $5 and higher notes.
Another thing to consider is that the value of today’s dollar is roughly equal to a quarter in 1980. Cite. Although as others point out, the move to cashless is making this issue less important, I expect cash to be with us for a long time, and holding on to low-value notes and coins like the penny, and now the nickel, just because some people don’t like any change (har!) is ridiculous.
Count me among the Americans who are bothered by the low value of US coins and would prefer higher-denomination ones. Once a year or so, I have to visit a coin-operated laundromat and having to, for example, feed twenty coins into a machine to start a five-dollar washer load is very annoying.
And it’s especially annoying that the lowest-value coins actually cost more than their value to produce.
I think a large part of that though is simply because the largest coins in common circulation are worth only 25c.
The UK is largely cashless but in the days of carrying around money, yeah the £1 and £2 coins were very useful; they worked easily in vending machines and you didn’t need to carry many to buy lots of things (so a pocketful of coins that you may be imagining was rarely the case). And most importantly, beaten up, torn, greasy banknotes, were relatively rare with £5 being the lowest denomination.
Not an assumption, simply an opinion. Not really getting what’s insulting about that.
(And we simply couldn’t redesign the coinage to have 5¢, 25¢, $1, and $5 coins that are dime, penny, nickel, and quarter sized respectively for . . . reasons.
If I’m stuck with a pocket full of change it would be nice if was actually usable as money and not something I throw in an old 5 gallon water bottle at the end of the day.)
Frankly I was flabbergasted when I found out many countries use private companies to print their money. Mexico actual used to use an American company to print their money.
Even the United States used a private company for printing banknotes during the Civil War.
I actually knew about the American Banknote Company. I never knew they printed US money though.
I think having loonie and toonie coins is very convenient. Unfortunately it does not remind me of being in the Old West, where I am reliably told you could throw a heavy coin to the bartender (plunk!) and ask for a bottle of whiskey, a beer, a room for a week, a hot meal, some pemmican, a hot bath, a woman, some oats for your horse, and a haircut and shave.
Now you can mosey in to Loblaws, throw a heavy coin to the self-checkout, and leave with an empty shopping bag.
I think it’s the assumption that, even though Americans say they wouldn’t like dollar coins, and have actively avoided using the past, they actually would be perfectly fine with it.
At this point in my life, I wouldn’t care. But back when I did carry cash, I did find $1 bills more convenient than coins in most cases when other were around. The exception was the vending machines, but then I only ever carried probably the same four $1 coins that I would get when I would make change for a $5 from the soda machine. (One dollar went for the soda, of course.)
It still seems to me that allowing both and seeing what people use is a pretty fair test. Sure, there would be some inertia to keep using what you’ve been using in the past. But that would abate over time if the new idea was genuinely better.
Uh, this is where we are now. There are vaults full of dollar coins just sitting there. We just need to bite the bullet and stop printing dollar bills (and two dollar bills).
To be fair, they still throw in the shave.
And change back