Getting rid of the dollar bill

[xiphias]

Congress is once again considering getting rid of the one-dollar bill, and it's about time. Our coinage is ridiculous at this point. We really ought to get rid of the dollar bill, the penny, and the nickel.

When we came up with our currency, the penny was the smallest coin we chose to have. And its buying power was about what a quarter is today. So, originally, we thought that the smallest amount of money that it was worth considering was a quarter. We'd do fine getting rid of everything below the quarter. This is what the cafeteria at Lis's work does; this is what the restaurant I used to work at did. And we did fine. There is no reason to deal with pennies, nickels, or even dimes.

(Why do we still have pennies? Because of the zinc lobby. Seriously. Pennies are mostly zinc, and the zinc lobby doesn't want to give up their major market.)

Now, down to dollar coins. Let's discuss video games.

The first video game shipped to bars and so forth was "Pong", in 1972 which cost 25 cents a play. That was the price point of pinball games at that point, too. The buying power of a quarter in 1972 was about $1.38 in today's money.

So, if coin-operated video games (which DO still exist, to an extent) cost a dollar a play, it'd still be a deal. And, for that, we'd need dollar coins.

The only argument I've ever heard in favor of dollar bills is that you can stuff them into strippers' garter belts. However, the dollar being stuffed into a strippers' garter belt was already a thing by the early Seventies -- and the buying power of a dollar then was similar to the buying power of a five today, which means that it is high time that strippers started getting paid in fives instead of singles. Just sayin'.

Comments

[jazzfish]

One of the awesome things about Canada is the $1 and $2 coins. Unlike certain countries with their Susan B Anthony dollars, we did it right: the loonie (so named for the bird on the back) is a little bigger than a quarter and sort of a dull brass color, and the toonie (by extension from "loonie" although they missed a trick not calling it a "doubloon") is slightly larger than that and two-tone, so they're easily distinguishable from a) existing coins and b) each other.

Also we just now got rid of the penny, too. I'll let you know how that goes.

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

...(by extension from "loonie" although they missed a trick not calling it a "doubloon")...

Who's they? It's not called a 'toonie' in any official context, and when it first came out, there were all kinds of people wanting to call it a 'doubloon(ie)'. But 'toonie' (sometimes spelled 'twoonie', though not as much these days) won out.

Hell, 'penny', 'nickel', 'dime', and 'quarter' aren't official names either. I imagine they're loans from American English.

[jazzfish]

"They" being "Canadians in general." As a recent immigrant I tend to switch between 'we' and 'they' with little rhyme or reason.

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Oh, I getcha. I did realise, got from the rest of your comment that you were a Canadian, and wondered if you thought that the names were somehow mandated by the government.

I don't know if you're recent enough for this to be meaningful, but welcome to Canada. :)

[jazzfish]

Been a little over a year, but still, thanks! :)