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

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The dollar coin could be the size of a quarter or smaller. I don't know whether the government would be that sensible.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

We already have dollar coins, and they are, indeed, about the size of a quarter, which is how I know how heavy they'd be. They're also easy to confuse with quarters when paying with a handful of change.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But they're BRIGHT GOLD colored.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Either we're thinking of different coins, or we perceive colors differently. The coins I'm thinking of are the ones you get when you're unfortunate enough to buy a stamp from the automated stamp machines at the post office, and all you have are twenty dollar bills. You end up with nineteen dollar coins. They're slightly yellower in color than the quarters, but only on the edges or when held at an angle in certain lights.

It can't be just me because cashiers have accidentally given them to me in change, and have thought I'd handed them a dollar in quarters when I gave them four dollars in dollar coins.

Also, not everyone can see the color, bright gold, slightly gold tinged, or whatever. and the tiny bit of angling around the edges quickly wears down, so discerning that the difference between them and quarters by touch isn't all that easy, either.

To me, it's telling that although the dollar coins have been around for years, the only place which I've known to use them regularly is the post office. And a lot of stores won't take them in payment, regardless of the fact that the law says they must.

[goljerp]

If we're getting rid of the penny, nickel, and dime, I see no reason why we can't resize the quarter and dollar coins so that they're different sizes / shapes /etc.

It really is crazy that we're still using pennies.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

I'm with you all the way when it comes to pennies!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm talking about these:



I've never had a problem buying things with them, myself. When did you have problems?

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Ah! Definitely talking about different coins. I've never even seen one of those in use. The coin I was talking about is the Susan B. Anthony dollar. I've had trouble using them in Target and at various convenience stores. It's been a while since I got stuck with them because I now go out of my way to avoid buying stamps from post office machines, which is where I usually get saddled with them.

[cellio]

I hate SBAs. To this vision-challenged person, they are too similar to quarters. The Sacajaewas are just fine.

I don't currently carry change for any great length of time, though, and with dollar coins that might have to change. My smartphone doesn't want to share a pocket with a coin purse, and loose coins are a pain with other pocket contents (keys, pen, magnifying glass, etc). So I don't know where to carry coins any more, and in practice they end up in a bowl until I remember to grab just a few before going shopping. (Well, quarters go to the car for parking meters.) I would not miss pennies, and in fact tend to leave them behind if there's a receptacle for them at the cash register.