Personally I’d loathe carrying that much mass in my front pocket on a regular basis. As it is the keys and occasional cell phone are vexing enough. Doubling the amount of metal jangling about near my man-bits is no small shakes to me.
I see it the same way but from the other side of the fence. Every time there’s a thread or discussion about the new US bills or limited edition state quarters theres a small but loud subset of people who always bring up the desperate need for the US to eliminate the dollar bill. Some are locals and some are foreigners, but they all seem to be operating under the presumption that dollar coins are vastly superior to dollar bills in every way.
Changing from bills to coins would be a huge undertaking and would need to force a sea change for all American users. As it currently stands bills work perfectly fine and I see no reason to raise a big stink about getting rid of them.
The point is it’s the proponents of change who tend to raise all the fuss.
Notes get destroyed in the washing machine and thrown away with receipts, ticket stubs, scraps of paper etc that people keep alongside them in their wallets.
But maybe you’re right that, on balance, coins are somewhat easier to lose, so why bother with them at all? Why not make all money out of paper?
It’s a bit of a slippery slope argument (or is that a straw man?) you’re throwing out here but I’ll humor you. If pressed, I’d prefer to eliminate coins before I’d start turning bills into coins. As it is, pennies are useless and dime and nickels could pretty easily be rounded into quarters as far as I care. Losing quarters would be where I’d draw the line, but if it’s that or getting $1 and $2 coins I’ll take the former.
$7.49 is about €5.97 or £4.14. Given that there are both £2 and €2 coins, either of those purchases could be made with three or four coins, no digging about for a wallet necessary. Of, if you’re not keen on coins, you could pay for them with notes and ditch the resulting change as soon as possible - at least that option is available, unlike in the US where you have to dig out a wallet or money clip in order to buy a coffee. The point is, inflation reduces the value of money, so you reach a point where coinage is no longer convenient unless you bump up its value. 30 years ago a dollar was a lot, and you could buy things with a convenient quantity of coins. Nowadays 1 dollar is probably worth about as much as a quarter coin was back then, yet the currency has not changed to reflect that.
Eventually things will have to be adjusted, or you’ll end up with the situation you see in third-world countries, where you get people buying a loaf of bread with a wad of fifty notes stapled together.
Not at all, and I think you’re being a bit unkind calling it that; I’m just trying to explore why it is that one dollar is the point at which paper currently takes over from metal; I’m sure we could both agree that there is some point where the transition should occur, I’m just not convinced anyone (and I’ll happily include myself in that) has yet argued that they know the best point for the transition to paper, or indeed that there is any simply-derived best point.
I’m not sure if there is a better answer to this except that’s the way it’s always been. AFAIK the US system has always had a break at the $1 bill mark, with occasional incursions of the $1 coin.
Agreed. And you’re right I can’t quantitatively prove that the demarcation should be where it is now, but since I’m not arguing for change the burden isn’t really on me there. It’s the proponents of the shift that need to prove that the $1 has been devalued to the point where it’s relegated to coins.
Considering the $1 is still the denomination where you buy most trivial items like candy bars, sodas, waters, chips and is therefore carried in abundance theres a fair argument that it’s better in paper form.
Sure, in fact, unless a system is completely unwieldy, people will just migrate into a new set of comfy little habits to work with and around it.
In the UK, we’ve been subject to an almost constant stream of changes to currency and mensuration; I’ve lived through the transition to decimal currency, the statutory change to metric weights and measures, the introduction of the £1 and £2 coins, as well as the radical redesign/reissue of most of our currency denominations; there is always vociferous minority opposition, there is always dark prognostication about the terrors that will befall us should we embrace this latest proposed change… then the change happens anyway and without fail, life very quickly returns completely to normal.
Sure, some of the old shortcuts, habits and conveniences don’t work any more; people just find new ones and get on with their lives.
Since the dollar coin was introduced, I’ve seen **one **of them. And that was about a month after they came out, when a friend came running up to show me this odd artifact he’d just be given at the gas station by an attendant who thought it was a funny looking quarter. And I live in a major metropolitan area, not some little podunk town in the middle of cornfields (apolgies to residents of Podunk and those who like corn) My point? How seriously was the gov’ment about the introduction? Where were all the coins? Why don’t the parking meters or vending machines take them?
They’re not going to be successful in winning over our hearts and minds until they’re serious about circulation and get places where we can use them. And it really won’t work while it looks so much like a quarter.
People bitch like hell and won’t use dollar coins if they look like quarters. People bitch like hell if bills are altered and they don’t all look alike.
The reason for the quarter problem is exactly what I mentioned in my post - the cashier gave it out in change thinking it was a quarter. So his till is off 75 cents for every dollar coin he mistakes as a quarter. If that happened to me enough, I’d simply start putting the dollar coins in the farthest coin spot in my till and not give them back out. I can only imagine this is why they didn’t circulate well.
The only other money I get besides change from vendors is twenties out of the ATM. If vendors hold onto the dollars (for whatever reason), I’ll never get my hands on them.
Oh lord, your government tried an experiment with dollar coins, and they made them look like quarters?!? Talk about designing something for failure.
Mangetout is absolutely right. If your gov’t gets serious about 1 and 2 dollar coins and actually puts some thought into making it happen, you will all grow accustomed in a surprisingly short time. It’s called a paradigm shift, and it is relatively painless. I don’t actually know the reasons we shifted to 1 and 2 dollar coins, but it hasn’t made any difference in my life (except using vending machines and parking meters is easier), and I assume there actually was a reason for the shift.
The Canadian government made it pretty simple back in '87: We’re introducing dollar coins. We’re burning all the dollar bills. Get used to it.
And we did. And vending machine and parking meters adapted accordingly.
Then they did it again back in '93: We’re introducing two dollar coins. We’re burning all the two dollar bills. Get used it.
And we did. And vending machines and parking meters adapted accordingly. And apart from that initial “Hey, if you freeze it you can pop the middle bit out!” controversy, it’s been big jingly change ever since. The coin purse industry couldn’t be happier.
The USA’s initial experiment with the dollar coin (the Susan B. Anthony dollar) didn’t work 'cos it looked too much like a quarter, so small wonder that any attempt to try again would be met with resistance.
We already had another dollar coin attemp: the Sacajawea dollar, which can’t be confused with a quarter. However, no one seems inclined to use them except Post Office stamp vending machines and the Tooth Fairy.
This is what I miss the most. I have a habit of dropping my change into a little change compartment in my purse. Of course, with the ridiculously high taxes I was used to, I always rounded my figures up (I suck at math), paid with appropriate bills, dropped my change into the little pocket. At the end of the week, around the time, by my approximation, I was just about broke… I’d sift through that coin pocket. It was never very heavy, but suddenly - YAHOO! I’ve got $27! Or sometimes $53 (if the purse was feeling heavy)! Or $14, if I’ve been using the vending machines all week at work…
But still. That was always quite a little thrill. And $2 is $2… rattle that coin pocket and think, miserably, “damn, no clinking around in there, must not be much” only to peek in and find a toonie. YAY! $2!
Out here in Seattle, I just don’t get those pleasant surprises anymore. If I find a quarter, I’m pleased, but then I start looking for more. I’m always left unsatisfied. Sigh. Also, a wad of ones annoys me. It looks like I’ve got more than I actually do. I start getting excited: “What have I got here?! $50? $100?!” No. $8. Damn. Well, maybe I can catch a matinee. No big soda, though.
I like it out here, and don’t actually find anything much of a hassle. I’m just playin’.
I saw one of those new $10s the other day. I must’ve gotten it in change somewhere. I remember pulling it out of my pocket and thinking it must have been on heat-sensitive material and I’d sent it through the dryer. Then I looked more closely and realized that this must be a new dollar design.
HIDEOUS. Too busy. Ugly, ugly color – and I usually LIKE the combination of peach and green and white. But it has to be the right peach, the right green, the right white. These aren’t them.
Canada was much more fun. I was only there for a weekend, not long enough to be able to easily remember what color $5s were versus $10s, $20s, $50s, etc. But I loved the one dollar and two dollar coins. It was nifty to reach into my pocket, pull out a handful of coins, and know I had enough for lunch.
Or for that matter a medium cup of English toffee coffee and a donut at Tim Horton’s. Sigh… I really miss Toronto. Enough that I’m seriously considering a trip up there sometime this summer…
I, for one, am taking a fast liking to at the new 10-note. In the words of Sgt. Provo, It sings! Much more pleasant to my aesthetic than the 20, IMO, with the one noticeable exception of the “10” constellation-pattern all over the face – surely thay chould have gone for something subtler.
IRT the new designs in general, IMO the best change anyone could make on the face of the 20 and 50 would be removing Jackson and Grant, anyway – one good excuse to officially abolish the $1- and $2-notes officially, would be to promote Washington and Jefferson to take the places of those two.
As to the convenience or inconvenience of the ones and twos – one big issue with this is that many of us dislike going around with pockets full of jangly metal. As it is, whether or not you have two $1 notes or two $1 coins in your pocket, after making a purchase that comes to $1.27(tax included) you end up with (usually) two quarters, two dimes and three pennies. BUT, if what you had was a ten-note, and the teller has run out of fivers, the 8 dollar notes can be folded away easily while eight dollar coins added to the prior .73 means you’ll spend the rest of the afternoon sounding like a horse sleigh (and hell, no, I ain’t gettin’ no change purse until I’m officially issued one at age 70!).
They are, however, mighty convenient at the transit station, that’s indisputable.
Also a lot of people seem to be concerned that if we establish the $1 coin as the norm, The Man will take advantage of a psychological sense that coins = ***“small” * **change (blame several generations passing since the abolition of gold and silver coinage), and set things up so that by everything gets rounded up not just to the next .75, but to the next whole dollar. They still want to hold on to the idea that the whole-unit of our currency is something significant enough to warrant a banknote, and that you should think twice about making us part with another one.
Well no wonder! The name is worth more than the coin! Not to mention it it seems like it should sound like “Sack o’ Jaweeah” which is nonsensical – and plus, nobody wants to carry around anything they have to refer to as a “sack of.”
“Loonie” sounds silly, but at least it’s easy to say. So much so that when the $2 coin was introduced featuring a pair of polar bears (like we didn’t have enough “great white north” stereotypes) we called it a “toonie” (or “twonie”) because “polarbeary” stumbled off the tongue like a 2 A.M. pub crawl.
As for the Great Change Find – actually I like that too. Oftentimes during the week I’ll just pay with bills with the purposeful intention of accumulating change. At the end of the week when the paper is dwindling I’ll fish around in my back pocket for the fistful of change I’ve collected and discover I’ve got like $20 in there. Cool! I’m not poor!
What happened in Canada is that in the 9 year period between the adoption of the dollar coin and the adoption of the $2 coin is that the $2 bill became much more prevalent. It lost its stigma as “bad luck” quite quickly, although it gave way for basically the same reason as the $1 bill.
