WHY should the US use more coins?

Great Debates
61

$500,000,000 per year in savings just for losing the $1 bill. Every year. More in savings if you got rid of the penny.

It makes no sense to keep the dollar bill. You’ll have to do it sometime. 20 years from now, when a dollar will buy a single stick of gum, will you still carry the damn things around in your wallet? I can picture it now - someone goes to the store and buys some milk. It costs $18.39. They give the person a $20, and get a $1 bill, two quarters, a dime and a penny in change. They stuff the bill in their pocket where it gets washed later and turned into lint, and throw the coins in the garbage bin on the way out.

62

During my sole overseas trip to England 10 years ago, I fell in love with coins all over again. It didn’t hurt that the exchange rate was about 3:2, so the coins were worth even more to me. I seriously felt like a kid again, when I could buy something with a couple of coins and the transaction just felt so… satisfying. And my habits quickly flipped from my American ways. I’d pull all my coins out first, see if I had enough, and if not, begrudgingly go for the bills. I never had the huge build up of coins in my pocket that I get here. So, color me convinced.

63

(I’m in the US)
For about the last year, I haven’t used $1 bills. Sure, I get them in change, although I’d much prefer dollar coins, so I just save them up until the end of the day and then put them in my dresser drawer. What I do is go to my credit union near my work every couple weeks or so and get $50 (2 rolls) of dollar coins. I use them to tip, to buy small purchase, whatever. Once I have a large enough stack of Washingtons, I will deposit them into my c.u. account.

Dollar coins are soooo much better than the bills–I never have to fight the vending machines to take them, I always have more money in my pockets than I’d’ve thought, they make good converstation starters when paying for a drink at a bar with a stack of gold coins, there’s more room in my wallet. The whiners who want to keep the $1 bills have to put it in perspective with inflation (as has been mentioned previously in this thread)

Half dollars, on the other hand, can go to hell.

64

Small arms ammunition (as one example) is heavy, noisy, and inconvenient to carry in large quantities. Coins are fairly light, are in no way noisy (your keys make more noise in your pocket), and $100 in $2 coins doesn’t weigh much at all and is still quite a sizeable amount of useful cash.

In most countries I’ve been with 1 and 2 [ForeignMoney] coins, they’re gold coloured- unmistakeably “Valuable”, as opposed to the silver or copper “shrapnel” coins of lesser denominantions. So at a glance into your change compartment, you can instantly see how much money you have in there. Australia’s 50c piece is fairly large and shaped like a dodecahedron, so it’s pretty unmistakeable in there too.

It’s also worth bearing in mind (for our American readers) that most other countries have technicoloured paper money (ie, each denomination is a different colour), so instead of having to organise your wallet in a vaguely OCD-like fashion, you can again tell at a glance what’s in there.

Just wondering: Do those of you in the US think those of us overseas have Renaissance-era merchant coin purses on our belts or something? Because we don’t. $1 and $2 coins really are more convenient, easier to use, and generally better for everyone.

Kind of like the Metric System, actually. :smiley:

65

I thought you all bartered with live sheep and stuff like that.

And I would like to note (again?) that while I have a strong objection to (american) coinage and a similarly stronger objection to relegating the dollar to that hellhole as well, the problem is a symptom of the coinage system in general over here and not dollar coins specifically. One could easily argue that the real problem is all the “shrapnel” coinage (and I suspect that hauling out a handful of that crap and poking through it would be a pain even with the big coins gold-colored), but the thing is the strapnel isn’t going to go away over here. We’re old-fashioned about things like that. (And the metric system, and the color of the dollar. Though, I would still sort colored dollars, since color wouldn’t help that in the slightest.) So adding one- and two-dollar coins would just make the change situation an even bigger mess, causing more money to fall into the ‘change pit’ and stagnate as we pretend it’s not there.

(Seriously, the little crap can add up. For a while when I used vending machines a lot I would sort out the quarters at the end of the day and drop them in their own little bank, the way some people do with pennies as a public service to humanity. A couple years later I had $500 and bought a DVD player with it. (Though, legal tender my ass, the bastards wouldn’t accept the coinage, despite my having rolled it first. I had to make an extra stop at the bank to convert the coins into something useful.))
Also I want to repeat that thanks to the magic of debit cards, I care a lot less about anything to do with coins than I used to. So if the fed want to coinify the dollar bill, my dressertop will get richer a little faster, but otherwise no biggie.

66

What you’re forgetting is that when $1 and $2 coins come out, the notes are withdrawn from circulation. It’s not an either/or proposition- if you want to pay for things with $1 and $2 units of currency, you have to use the coins, end of story. So they won’t end up stagnating in jars on shelves in garages or whatever because they’ll be getting used.

Pennies, on the other hand, really need to go- a point on which I think most people are agreed.

67

And by identical argument, I have to use quarters. Which totally explains both the DVD player, the two piggy-banks full of quarters, and the foot-wide pile of miscellaneous change on my dresser.

In other words, no, you are wrong. I don’t have to use any coin. I would just observe a drain on my spending money as my paper money evaporated at a faster rate. Or to be more precise, I would start actively avoiding the, um, one store I shop at that doesn’t take debit? And then then I would never use coins again. I’m nearly there already.

(I admit I’m atypical in the extremity of my avoidance of coins, but I think I’m not atypical in my use of debit (or checks, for those who prefer them). I really think this whole issue is well on the way to becoming completely moot.)

68

Look, it’s great that you personally have adopted your own specialised coin-free lifestyle. But the rest of the population of the United States hasn’t, and for them $1 and $2 coins, as well as the deletion of the 1c piece, would be a good, useful, and desireable thing IMHO.

69

And IMHO, based on my observation of everyone around me, nobody likes to use coins much (except my dad, who likes to stand there and count out to the penny one-by-one). Might forcing everyone to carry pocketsful of metal eventually change this dynamic? Maybe. But I’m seeing the general mindset around here being that coins are trash.

This may vary by area, though. I can vague imagine that in a city full of parking meters and toll booths you might have been forced to get used to using coinage, which would obviously speed acceptance of dollar coins if for no other reason than you won’t have learned that all coins are, as a class, worthless.

70

In the US, sales tax is added after RRP because sales tax is a state issue and every state has a different sales tax. Unless this changes, the US system will always be designed to have large amounts of the lowest denomination coinage filling your pocket no matter what other reforms you make on the system.

71

You want lots of COINS? We got 'em! Go to your local burger joint and buy burgers and fries for two using only quarters. You’ll need forty or fifty of them, and maybe a little purse to carry them in. Seriously, it’s not that we don’t have the metal, it’s that we don’t have any higher denominations.

But how is the burden of cleaning out the coins, as you put it, not worse than futzing around with them at the point of sale? My experience in Germany was as carlb described; I usually ended up with fewer coins at the end of a day, because it was often possible to buy something with coins only, including in my case a restaurant meal of Spaghetti Vongole with a glass of wine. Most people keep their coins separate from their bills–in separate pockets if male. You really can’t buy anything with coins in this country, so the only utility they have in day to day transactions is if you can use them to make up exact change, which you do essentially to avoid accumulating more coins. “$12.76 is the total? Wait, let me root around in my pocket for six cents.” It’s usually too much trouble, and that’s why the coins accumulate.

Or look at it this way. If I offered you $100 in bills or $101 in nickels, I would expect you to take the $100, because the extra $1 isn’t worth the trouble of counting out fifty piles of nickels and wrapping them, not to mention having to take them to the bank. I expect it would be the same if the amount in nickels were $110, although presumably everyone has a break point at which they’d prefer the larger amount in nickels, rather than the $100 in bills. What would that amount be on average? $105? $115? More? Whatever, let’s say it’s $107.75. The case can be made that the person choosing $100 in bills over $107.75 in nickels is saying that the pile of nickels is worth, at best, $99.99. That’s a convenience task of $7.76. That’s money gradually dribbling away its value, even in the absence of inflation.

I don’t understand why that’s acceptable, or why more people aren’t outraged about it.

72

I used to toss any leftover loonies and toonies in my desk drawer at work, so I would have money to feed the vending machines. When the tin got full, I rolled a few and shoved them in the back of the bottom drawer. After about 10 years, my wife gave me heck when I brought home $2300 worth of change. Try that with dimes and nickels.

OTOH- I also helped count the local McDonalds charity donation boxes. They were typically 95% pennies (by weight). Between the insects that flew in and were trapped, and the pure garbage and food that people also “donated”, I had to run a money laundering operation before rolling the coins. Wash then in a colander and dry spread out on old towels. A 5-gallon pail half-full of pennies would be, IIRC, about $250. Pennies are useless. Australia and NZ were so much more sensible. Since the local McD went through so many pennies, they happily absorbed the rolls and passed a cheque on to the target charity. Recycling!

Canada’s PST has always been added after the price. The GST was supposed to be hidden, but the opposition accused the government of trying to pull a fast one by hiding the sales tax, so to be up front the government agreed that a price to be advertised did not require the sales tax included.

In fact, when the coins were introduced, Canada specifically stated that $1 and $2 bills could only be used as legal tender for the next year (or was it 2)? Then the banks would stop honoring them.

Canada used to have a $1,000 bill, which was a brighter red than the old $2 but easily confused. As you can imagine, they were pretty rare - $1,000 used to be real money back then - and still every so often there was an article in the paper about someone who accidentally spent one a a $2. So coloured money does not always help.

Maybe we should go to the old Italian system before the Euro, where the equivalent of a dollar was about 1,000lira. Almost every price was in equivalents of 100 multiples. I think I actually got a 50lira piece once - as change for a McDOnalds meal purchase.

Oh wait, maybe with current economic policies the US is getting there… There’s also the policy of the Zimbabwe and Sandinista Nicaragua economies - just recall the banknotes every so often to print 3 extra zeroes on them.

73

No. Canadian $1 and $2 bills remain legal tender, according to the Bank of Canada. From the link (emphasis added):

74

(Likely as not, the clerk laid the bills flat in your hand and then dumped the coins on top.) You left out:

Step 3.1. If necessary, use your upper arm to squeeze your umbrella or other impedimentia against your side, so as not to drop them.

Step 3.2. With dominant hand, pluck the quarters from on top of the bills, move to pocket.

And:

Step 4.1. If the bills were laid carelessly, or are old and wrinkly, use both hands to straighten up the pile so they’ll fit in your money clip.

75

I try to keep mine sorted too, just to make it easier to know what I have on hand. Among other things, this helps me use up the ones for small items, rather than accumulating a thicker and thicker wad as higher denomination bills are broken. This means that when I get change I have to file the bills when I put them away…about the same amount trouble at either end of the transaction, I’d say.

Well there may be hope yet, after all, in L.A. we now have trains, and more medical cannabis stores than Starbucks. So some things don’t stay the same after all.

76

I would think the seignorage (Mint’s profit) inherent in stamping out $1 and $5 coins would be a boon to them. The FRB might presumably lose a smidgen of its own profit, being bereft of the responsibility (and opportunity) of issuing singles. IIRC, coins in circulation are in effect Treasury obligations, so when they get dumped in jars and forgotten, or lost or what have you, it’s a free gift to the Mint. Like a tax. I’m not against taxation per se, but I like it to be defined legally by some law in an open manner.

77

And, as I forgot to point out, those quarters can all be different! Talk about variety. This is the ingenuity that enabled us to reach the moon.

(Can Rennaisance Era Purse become an SDMB catchphrase? Please?)

78

I smiled.

79

I don’t see your point: you’re just arbitrarily combining steps. Watch, I can combine steps to make the “proposed” system more efficient too:

Step 1: Pull out your pile of coins from your pocket. Open your fist. Select the $10 coin. Or two $5 coins or whatever. (Note that you have to make sure you’ve got the right coins, etc. This step is no more effort than with bills.)
Step 2: Hand it over.
Step 3: Receive 4 one-dollar coins and two quarters, and dump that back in your pocket.

See? Three steps! And the “current system,” under your theory, not only uses four steps, but it also requires the use of two hands. What criminal inefficiency!

80

You probably wish you could still get those old Pulsar watches that required you to use your other hand to press the button to light up the digits.