Or, alternatively, we could cut defense spending by 1% and save that much money every year.
Better yet, lets cut defense spending by 50% and save $300B per year. Honestly, other than the big defense contractors, nobody would ever notice or care (well, people would notice that our economy suddenly had 300B of extra cash in it every year).
We already have $1 coins. There was a recent push to get people to accept them. Didn't seem to work.
At this point, we should move to contactless cash cards that can be used like some credit cards but without transaction fees. Reducing the need to carry cash will also save money, and time. Wait, I've got a penny here somewhere.
Get rid of the dollar bill and those coins will take off real quick. After 18 months no one would miss having to jam a few dollar bills into a machine to buy a Coke.
Absolutely. Additionally, wider use of large coins would enable vending machines to sell more goods without accepting bills. We could do without the $2 and $5 if we really wanted.
I'm not sure what's stupider, people's attachment to one dollar bills or the idea that we need to get them to accept coins before pulling the paper ones.
I've been spending a lot of time in London recently, and it's shocking how much better things work with coins up to £2 and paper only for £5 and above. First of all, change suddenly is useful again, second of all, if you have paper money it's actually worth something. It used to be this way in the US too, I mean you actually used to buy things with a nickel or dime. Doing away with paper ones should not be such a big deal, it should be thought of as maintaining the status quo in light of inflation, but I guess it's a boiling frog situation.
It's a real nuisance to have US currency where there's stacks of identical looking bills that have wildly varying amounts, though usually after shopping they end up being heaps of $1 bills. You look like a gangster, but you only have $30.
Coins might be heavier, but they fit in parking meters, vending machines, and so on. Ten dollars in change isn't a whole bucket any more.
We got rid of anything paper below 10. So now 1, 2, 5 coins (and some for cents) and bills 10 and up. We used to have paper bills for 1, 2 and 5 before, nobody misses them.
It's not that similar. There are no ridges, I've never had a hard time telling them apart. The Susan B Anthony coin was pretty badly designed, with both ridges and silver color.
A $1 coin should be more along the lines of the British Pound. It needs a nice, reassuring heft that tells you, "yes, guy who won't adopt metric, this really is a dollar."
Oooh. 5.5 billion /pinky raised to mouth/. Add a zero or two and cut the years in half and you may have something. That kind of money in this kind of economy is rather inconsequential.
Anonymous electro cash. That's the win. I am not a fan of a cashless future if we lose our anonymity in the process.
You're right. Coins are cheaper than bills, but $183M per year isn't going to balance the budget. Basically, keeping the $1 in bill form is costing 60 cents per American per year.
After the 700 billion TARP bailout that our government minted on a whim, I've never looked at Federal money the same way. If it's not 12 digits, it's definitely inconsequential.
Better yet, lets cut defense spending by 50% and save $300B per year. Honestly, other than the big defense contractors, nobody would ever notice or care (well, people would notice that our economy suddenly had 300B of extra cash in it every year).