Should the US Change Metal Coins? (networkworld.com) 702
coondoggie writes: It may be time for the United States to rethink how the smallest parts of its monetary system — the penny, nickel and dime – are made. According to a report this week from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office, since 2006 the prices of metals used in coins have risen so much that the total production unit costs of the penny and nickel exceed their face value resulting in financial losses to the U.S. Mint.
Penny (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Penny (Score:5, Funny)
Lobbyists (Score:2, Insightful)
There are various copper and zinc related interests who lobby against changing this.
Nobody would actually miss the penny, though, I think, but enough lobbyists would make a fuss that it hasn't proven worth it yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't have a single cent there at all. Too damned expensive to ship over.
So if you bought stuff on base, the price was rounded to the nearest nickel. The stores didn't mind at all, especially since you'd see people picking up all kinds of extra stuff to get that total exactly right to round down.
<sarcasm>Gee, buying more stuff just to save two cents. Yeah, the stores were really aghast...</sarcasm>
Re:Lobbyists (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they should just find some other currency [marshu.com] to honor Lincoln?
Sort of funny how obsessed over Lincoln Illinois is, given that he never set foot there until he was 21. He was born in Kentucky to a family from Virginia, lived there until he was 7, then moved to Indiana where he lived until he was an adult.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, and as for the nickel, Jefferson should replace Jackson on the $20. Jackson's presence there has long been controversial and that would be a good reason to remedy the situation.
Re:Penny (Score:5, Informative)
For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner is rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner is rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed. Off course it helps that the VAT is already added to the price listed - what you see is what you pay, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work equally well in places this isn't done (something which always boggles me when I'm visiting the US btw).
The US penny today is worth much less than the half-penny was when it was removed from circulation... yet for some reason people oppose removing the penny.
Re: (Score:3)
We did the same here in Australia, maybe in the 80s or early 90s. Removed the 1 and 2 cent copper coins. Around the same time we moved 1 and 2 dollar notes to coins. Didn't have a lot of effect, other than making the minimum bag of lollies 5c instead of 2c (Hey, I was a kid at the time!).
You know what? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what? The vast majority of Norwegians can be tracked in real time by their card purchases.
What an efficient cage.
Re: (Score:3)
You know what? The vast majority of Norwegians can be tracked in real time by their card purchases. What an efficient cage.
Yes, but for ~98% of the adult population tracking the cell phone is much more efficient. Compared to that, paying my groceries by card is completely insignificant. The only time it matters if I don't like the purchase being linked to me, not the tracking aspect.
Re:Penny (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry... rational solutions to problems isn't our thing in the USA. I mean... first we'd stop making and circulating the penny, then we'd legalize medical marijuana, switch to the metric system, and finally embrace universal healthcare. That's just crazy talk!
Re: (Score:2)
*aren't /thought I'd fixed that before submitting
Re: (Score:2)
Seems like a good idea to get rid of everything less than a dollar, then make coins only and get rid of the paper notes.
It would make it a lot harder for robbers and drug traffickers. Most people can use a card when shopping and keep the coins for small transactions.
Re: (Score:3)
Living in a high crime country - we avoid cash like the plague. You never carry more than R50 if you can help it (about 3 Dollars). You use cards for everything - because having cash makes you a target for robbery. Since everybody stopped carrying cash - muggings have gone way down and now, if you do get mugged, they will almost certainly take your phone rather than your wallet because you almost certainly have only cards in the wallet and those are much harder to abuse (at least if you don't know the pin a
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard it mentioned that the US tends to be a lot more conservative in terms of it's monetary designs and policies for psychological reasons. Stability and continuity gives a feeling of fiscal stability (although reducing our deficit would do a hell of a lot more in practice).
Keep in mind that US dollars, unlike many other single country's currencies, are used as a de-facto standard in many places around the world, or at least *accepted* in many more places. Even the introduction of colors and other f
Australia (Score:2)
We got rid of the penny here in Canada. It was no big deal. I've hardly noticed the difference.
Well, Australia got rid of their 1c & 2c coins in 1992. We don't miss them.... but be prepared for old people to whine about having to round up/ down for cash sales.
Re:Penny (Score:5, Funny)
The US is a leader, not a follower, therefore it won't get rid of the penny like Canada did in 2013, no matter how good the idea is.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is how to avoid people melting coins and selling the metal for a profit. Because the people of the Philippines already did that after the peso was devalued so much that the metal was worth more. Hmmmmmmm. How to avoid following the Philippines, without following Canada?
Solution: Outlaw notes. Make all currency out of metal coins, thus causing a global commodity shortage and increasing the price of metals.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Penny (Score:5, Funny)
Give it time. It's only Tuesday.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Penny (Score:5, Insightful)
The value of currency is not just it's face value. The value of a currency is that it allows people to exchange goods and services.
Ideally, the coins ought to cost more to make than their face value (to discourage counterfeiting), but the value of the metal ought to be less than their face value (to discourage people melting them down for the metal).
Obviously, for notes, it is unlikely that the cost of printing will exceed the face value, but it is a lot harder to forge notes, and we can rely more on counterfeit detection technology. If, on the other hand, someone makes counterfeit coins, those would be much harder to detect (unless we start making some sort of smart coins with built-in counterfeiting technology).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Penny (Score:5, Funny)
seriously are you retarded? your argument for not doing it is that it would be doing something other sane countries have already done?
Slippery slope my friend. Lots of other sane countries have universal healthcare and gun control ...
The real slippery slope (Score:3)
Re:Penny (Score:4, Insightful)
Care to define 'gun control'?
The US has plenty of laws on the books at the local, state & federal level... none of which are apparently enough.
I'm still waiting for someone to specify exactly what sort of laws are enough with regards to firearms that they will be happy with that restricts the liberties of law abiding persons.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you ask I think the UK has it about right. No guns at all except for law enforcement when authorised by a senior officer, single shot target weapons kept at gun clubs, shotguns (licensed) for pest control and a few licensed rifles for specific kinds of hunting. And before you mention knives and illegal guns, our total homicide rate by all meand (per 100K people) is less than the US's gun homicide rate.
Re:Penny (Score:5, Informative)
The whole knives thing is just a red herring. Having a gun or not doesn't determine whether someone is more or less likely to want to kill someone else. But it does make them a lot more effective at it. Which is why they use them. Which is why guns were invented in the first place. They end a life much faster, much more reliably, with much less effort on the part of the attacker, than a knife.
To be more specific [nih.gov], the mortality rate for a treated gunshot wound to the heart is 24,5%, while for a stab wound to the heart it's 11.5%. Stab wounds to the chest that did not hit the heart in the study had a tiny 0.8% chance of death. There are lots of different studies from all over the world, this is just one example: knives are a very ineffective way to kill someone compared to guns. And it takes a lot more work and personal involvement. You're never going to see a situation where someone bursts into a crowded movie theater with a knife and stabs to death dozens of people
Even blunt objects used in assaults cause higher mortality rates than knives.
Re:Penny (Score:4, Informative)
8 people in an organized, planned out attack managed to kill 29 people, or an average of 3,6 per person. How many do you think they would have killed if they had access to assault rifles?
It's also worth adding that the Kunming attackers were subdued by a single policeman armed with an automatic weapon.
Re: Penny (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we have the right to wield guns is not to defend ourselves against other people. It is to defend ourselves against the government. If only the government can have weapons, it quickly becomes impossible to fight for other rights being taken from you.
People say 'you don't need assault weapons to defend yourself', but in actuality, that is exactly what you need to defend yourself against the government.
Don't give power to the government (Score:3)
It is to defend ourselves against the government.
Then don't put yourself in a situation where the government has that much power to begin with.
There's this thing called "direct democracy". You should research a bit about this.
If the general population has a final on anything and everything that the government does, then government's power a quite limited.
Re: Penny (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you haven't heard of sheriff and police organizations who are publicly refusing to obey some of these laws. (This is a constitutional crisis that should be dealt with sooner rather than later).
Re: (Score:3)
I think the actual reason the 2nd amendment is actually there so that a militia can be raised in a time of need and some portion of them actually bring their own arms, and possibly know how to use them. This was written when the Federal Government wasn't supposed to be maintaining a standing army, so it was arguably more important then.
That said I believe the US military would be outmatched by far in the case of a popular civilian rebellion. US military bases tend not to be fortified in any meaningful manne
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If only wingnuts took the other amendments as seriously as they take the first one... oh and the pre-ammendmented constitution itself...
I've yet to meet one who could name more than one other amendment or had the slightest idea what the actual US constitution says. Like most foreigners, I know it better than you do... but then, since the Iranian prime minister last year proved he knew it better than the republicans in congress this is not surprising.
Without googling - which amendment bans slavery ? Which i
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, you know, interpret the second amendment as written and require gun owners to be part of a well regulated militia.
Or, you know, you could learn what "well regulated militia" meant in the 1700s and you could then buy a clue...
It doesn't mean what your 2016 brain thinks it means, BTW...
Re: Penny (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Penny (Score:5, Insightful)
Eliot's character in "Leverage" summed up those idiots better than anybody else, ever:
"The difference between you and a real soldier is that you are willing to kill for 'your rights'. A soldier is somebody who is willing to die to protect somebody else's rights".
Re: (Score:3)
who were trained in drill and combat by the standards set by congress (that's the well regulated part)
No, it isn't... Well regulated meant well equipped and skilled in the use...
You have to read it in the time it was written, not 2016...
Even the US Supreme Court agrees with that...
Re: Penny (Score:5, Insightful)
Militias were regularly called out for use in the early history of the United States. In no case was it just the president saying, "Hey, everyone with a gun who knows how to use it, come on down and help me out!" They were organized militias, like each state's own mini-army, run by the state's government.
Let's take the Whiskey Rebellion [wikipedia.org] as an example. Washington needed an army to crush the rebellion. He put out a request to states for militia assistance (based on a new federal militia law [wikipedia.org]) and received it from New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Most of the state militia ranks were small (few wanted to serve), so the states put out a draft to flush out the ranks of their militias. These drafts into the militias were enforced by armed soldiers - in the case of Hagerstown, Maryland, a whole 800 of them. Two people got killed resisting the draft into the militias. With the militias' numbers raised to the desired level, Washington then personally marched into "battle" at the head of the militias (each of which had their own state-organized command structure serving under him). After becoming confident that there would be little resistance, he turned command over to the Governor of Virginia (who was personally heading the Virginia militia at the time) to finish the operation.
This is what a "militia" was back in the days when the US was founded: a state-run army, to be called into active service in times of conflict. They still exist - the US National Guard is a direct descendent of the state militias, converted under the Dick Act [wikipedia.org]. Also, obviously, over time the responsibility for provisioning weapons has shifted from the individual to the guard itself, since wars are no longer fought with hunting rifles.
That still doesn't make the US's second amendment unambiguous. But let's not pretend that a militia was something other than what it was. If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Pro-gun people should read that as "The founders wanted us to have the right to individually own weapons so that we can be trained to be good soldiers in times of emergency". Anti-gun people should read that as "The founders were trying to prevent any prohibition against state National Guard units from controlling their own weapon stocks."
The reality is that that statement it's a reflection of their world, a world in which the nature of threats and how they were faced was very different than it is today. I think it's pretty absurd to speculate about whether George Washington would have wanted John Doe to be able to own an AK-47 in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.
Re: Penny (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Except the whole fucking point of the 2A was to avoid a centralized, standing military! The National Guard is explicitly the kind of thing they were trying to avoid (it's part of the army, there is nothing state-run about it.)
Re: Penny (Score:4, Informative)
in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.
Except that is by far not all we do. As I recall it did not work all that great in Iraq. We defeated the regular military with those tools but still need quite a lot of infantry with small arms to really 'win' the fight.
ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.
Re: Penny (Score:5, Informative)
National guard units are under dual state/federal control. And pretty much have been since the Militia Acts of 1792, although back then it also took a Supreme Court ruling to allow the federal government to call them up, and states were more assertive in controlling their use back then (though not always successful).
At present, national guard units may be activated by either the federal government or the state. Under SAD (State Active Duty) the governor is the acting commander in chief of the state's national guard units. They can use all of the hardware controlled by the state guard, so long as they reimburse the federal government for any consumables, and can use it for any purpose compliant with the state constitution not explicitly banned at the federal level (such as armed insurrection). Examples of state uses of the national guard are natural disasters, riots and terrorist attacks. The Posse Comitatus act restricting the ability of the federal government to use armed forces within the country does not limit state-controlled national guard deployments.
Re: Penny (Score:5, Informative)
That still doesn't make the US's second amendment unambiguous. But let's not pretend that a militia was something other than what it was.
10 U.S. Code 311 - Militia: composition and classes [cornell.edu]
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Let's not pretend that the militia is something other than what it is.
Re: (Score:3)
You're citing a law first from 1956 to define what the founders thought? Curious approach there.
The "unorganized militia" was created as a concept in 1903. Also called the "reserve militia", it's the pool from which people can be drafted.
There is absolutely no ambiguity in what the founders of the US thought "militia" was, because they summoned them and used them regularly. They were state-run military organizations. That's what they were called, and the term meant nothing else. The concept was in turn
Re: (Score:3)
First, what the founders thought. The founders thought that it was important that the populace be armed for the purpose of being able to overthrow an oppressive government. This was relevant at the time, as the populace had just overthrown an oppressive government by taking up arms. If we apply this reasoning to today's world, it would follow that the populace must have access to surface-to-air missile batteries, electronic warfare devices, and nuclear arms. It is
Re: (Score:3)
ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.
True, but then nobody denies the US government the right to draft, arm and train however many soldiers it needs, particularly not in a declared state of war. And those powers aren't listed in the Bill of Rights anyway. It's not about who you can give guns to, it's about whose guns you can't take away. And from what I understand of the early militia, they didn't have service weapons. So the only way to disarm the militia would be to take their personal arms away. And "they" in this context would be every fre
Re: (Score:3)
That's fine, so long as the military has to do the same.
Re: Penny (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a minute, is your argument here that you want to have the ability to fight the US military?
Re: Penny (Score:5, Informative)
You could also take the opinion that the concept of a firearm today is something the signatories to the second amendment could hardly imagine - in 1791,
...cannon were privately owned. And you're bitching about magazine lengths. The breech-loading rifle was the assault weapon of its day. It let you fire faster than the next guy, and nobody was talking about banning it.
The world has changed, why cant people accept that these laws need looking at again?
Because they don't. Those laws are working perfectly. It's the laws that keep people in poverty and which stigmatize mental health issues (by taking away rights) that are broken. People don't kill people because they are happy.
Re: (Score:3)
The Supreme Court decided otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Penny (Score:5, Informative)
The Supreme Court disagrees with you.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/su... [cornell.edu]
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER
. . .
Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2â"53.
(a) The Amendmentâ(TM)s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clauseâ(TM)s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2â"22.
Real Meaning of Second Amendment (Score:3)
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
What people on both sides don't understand is the first part. What this means is that INSTEAD of having a standing Army which the colonists lived in fear of and was required to enforce tyranny, it was necessary to have a well regulated (armed and trained) militia. If you want to be free and secure this is the only option. If you have a standing Army you will be sec
Re: (Score:2)
So basically Canada has nothing to do with it, other than beating us to it.
Don't you just hate being second place? Well cheer up, if we don't do it soon, we won't even get third place, and how will you feel then?
I wouldn't be upset if they ditched all the coin
Re: (Score:2)
Here in Australia 25 years ago we abandoned 1 and 2 cents.
Said coins exist in the Eurozone but even 15 years ago, small denominations were worthless to the point that not every national mint produced them.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is this a reference to the show, or to the fact that her husband was slapping her around? (The punch of that joke is that he's suing her for alimony.)
Scam (Score:2)
Here's an easy way to make money with Canadian pennies.
1) Go to a vending machine
2) Put in $1 in pennies
3) Immediately press the change button
4) Take the US coins and run before the Secret Service catch you
Do that two million times and you're a millionaire!
Re: (Score:2)
Most vending machines stopped taking pennies a very long time ago. You might have luck w/ nickels, but I think the weight of the CA nickel wasn't the same as the USA one... but, if you shove it in w/ some force to it, the machine will register that force as the missing weight sometimes.
Re: (Score:3)
For that matter, how does Canada deal with it? Is it something like this or something else?
We round to then nearest nickel. 0.02 is 0.00 and 0.03 is 0.05.
Re: (Score:3)
The tax at the checkout thing is because unlike VAT, our sales tax is a local thing, that varies by county, and city, and sometimes state. The politics of sales tax increases, and who gets a slice of them, is probably an industry unto itself, employing an unknown number of toadies and bureaucrats and enriching corrupt politicians across the country. Someone could probably make a great career out of studying this bizarre meta-economy really. That someone would have to be far more masochistic than I though...
More doller coins and add 2 doller coins (Score:3)
More dollar coins and add 2 dollar coins with cutting the 1 and 2 bills.
Re: (Score:2)
Drop the printed notes and run coins only. Few people need larger banknotes these days.
Don't get into what people "need" (Score:2)
Re:More doller coins and add 2 doller coins (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I was once asked to leave a strip club after I dropped a couple of dollars worth of ice cold change down the front of a strippers panties.
we're off the gold system (Score:2)
we're off the gold system, where metal coins were a store of value, linked to the market price of the metal in the coin. They're just representations of value, like glass beads or deer vertebras. it doesn't really matter how expensive they are, that doesn't affect their value. I'm not going to shed tears, considering all the ways that the US gov currently wastes money. Did you know that Donald J Trump has a full secret service retinue, bought and paid for by the taxpayers?
Re: (Score:2)
It matters when it becomes worthwhile to melt them down.
Yes, it's time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Kill the penny.
Kill the Nickel.
Keep the dime - the smallest coin will now have the smallest value.
Kill the quarter
Create a new $0.50 piece a bit bigger than a dime, maybe a bit smaller than a penny.
Create a new $1.00 piece about the size of a nickel, maybe slightly larger.
Create a new $5.00 piece about the size of a quarter.
To avoid confusion between new/old, change something mechanical - put a hole through the middle, or make them all octagonal or decagonal.
If you're worried about cost, make the dime and half out of Aluminum. We've given up the concept of any actual value in our currency, so it's time to give up the artificial weight that made them feel like silver.
Don't try to differentiate them by color. As the Sacajawea dollar taught us, after a few years in grubby fingers and rattling around in pockets, all coins start to have the same surface color.
We end up with rationally sized coins, getting bigger as the value gets bigger. We get rid of the small valued paper money, which is also expensive to print/replace.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yes, it's time. (Score:4, Interesting)
Resize all currency (bills) to make them easier for the blind to use
In Canada we just have brail on the notes, which are now made of plastic as another saving, they're supposed to last a longer though not as long as loonies ($1 coin named after the Loon on it) or toonies ($2 coin).
Aluminum Penny (Score:2)
The penny should be made from aluminum like the yen is in Japan.
What do you use the penny for? (Score:2)
What do you even use a penny for? I'm asking this as a serious question.
Last time I was in the USA, I ended up with a pocketful of pennies that were pretty much useless. Who uses a few pennies to make up the price when paying for something, as opposed to pulling out a couple of bills instead and getting some change.
Even the nickel is debatable if it's worth keeping or not.
More and more transactions are done electronically these days - so you can keep your $x.99 pricing if you want, and if it's an electronic
Re: (Score:2)
We use them to fool old folks into thinking they are making money by picking up pennies. Then when their back goes out from bending over to pick them up wham $12,000 hospital bill.
Really thats about all they do at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
I did notice that, there were dropped pennies everywhere. My 6 year old daughter had a great time collecting them. I think she might have ended up with an extra 20-30c all up. Seems like no-one else even gave them a second thought.
Re: (Score:2)
There's still no problem with cash transactions if you're rounding them to the nearest $0.05
Would you really care, or even notice, if your meal at Maccas came to $8.75 instead of $8.73, and they charged you an extra 2 cents to round it up? How about if it came to $9.30 instead of $9.32, and it's in your favour?
Copper pennies (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is, if the coin has more value melted down then people will do exactly that which takes the coins out of circulation...
Export them! (Score:2)
If smaller denominations are only useful for giving to the homeless then stop minting them!
Less wealthy nations such as Timor Leste and El Salvador use the US Dollar as their currency. Withdraw them from circulation in the US and ship a containerful elsewhere.
Bring back eagles. (Score:2)
At the beginning of the 20th century, we had cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars. Then we had quarter-eagles ($2.50), half-eagles ($5), eagles ($10), and double eagles ($20). The purchasing power of a dollar then was about 30 times what it is today.
So: ditch the cent and nickel. Keep the dime, half and dollar coins (making the half less bulky, please!), and bring back coins for $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. The dime will still be worth less than the 1900 cent, but this way we keep the nominal "d
Re: (Score:2)
And today it wouldn't be a problem to drop the printed money and only run coins. At least it would be more cumbersome for robbers and drug traffickers.
Re: (Score:2)
And today it wouldn't be a problem to drop the printed money and only run coins. At least it would be more cumbersome for robbers and drug traffickers.
Well, that and a popular stripper's bottoms would look ... disturbing.
Re: (Score:3)
Making change with a vagina is a skill. Few strippers in the first world bother learning for $.25. Hence I am in favor of large value coins being in common circulation. We cannot allow a vaginal coin handling gap...
What a coincidence... (Score:2)
A 1949 dime, made of silver is still worth about a dollar...
Ditch the small coins and ditch paper money (Score:3)
First ditch the small coins and then get rid of $1 notes and replace with a coin and add a $2 coin.
Next swap over to plastic notes instead of paper notes. The plastic notes last much much longer and are much more difficult to forge.
Plastic Money! (Score:2)
Oh, wait...
Never mind.
Re: (Score:3)
Probably Australia as they invented polymer bills and have the experience.
Yes, metal is out (Score:2)
Make nickels out of plastic, dimes out of soft felt, and quarters out of bone.
Coinage Winddown Program (Score:2)
Our currency only has fiat value, so replacing the coins with base(r) metals is sensible. A program can be enacted by the govt. to buy up all of the existing coinage. Even poor immigrants don't care about pennies, so they should be eliminated. Nickels aren't in much better shape. Dimes are the smallest unit people care about, yet only slightly given how often I find them lying around unmolested. Quarters are the only way to pay in certain coin-op machines (e.g. laundromat washing machines), so they have val
Kind of ironic to see this story today (Score:2)
It's a bit ironic to see this story when copper just fell below $2/lb. Old copper pennies are still worth more than face, but the current clad pennies are worth less than face again. We have a bear market in commodities the past few years to thank for this. I seem to recall that nickels had something like $0.07 of metal in them a few years ago, and now it's about $0.027 according to coinflation.com.
Of course it's good to think about this, because it's only a matter of time before commodities go up in pri
A cashless society (Score:2, Insightful)
A government's wet dream.
Replace the 1 cent coin (Score:3)
Why does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Pennies are no longer made of copper; they're now copper plated zinc.
2) The US Mint does not have it's own recycling forges and processing equipment; they purchase materials on the open market like everyone else.
3) Yes, Japan still has yen, made of Aluminum. Everyone there hates them, too.
There's no good reason to go to two decimal places on physical prices anymore. Make a new 50c piece (because the current one is to large/expensive to produce to be practical), stop producing pennies, nickels, and quarters. About the only people that would piss off would be the parking meter folks, and I'm very much in favor of pissing those people off.
Make USEFUL Metal Currency! (Score:4, Informative)
Canada has one of the best physical currency systems I've seen. No frigging pennies, transactions rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Means at *worst* you'll have a few pieces of useful silver jangling in your pocket vs a pile of worthless pennies.
Dollar coins are actually useful in Canada. You can put dollar coins in meters, snack and soda machines, etc. vs trying to fold and iron a mangled paper bill to appease the finicky reader. You can actually USE dollar coins there to buy things without getting looked at like a asshole. You can walk into a bar and slap some coins down and buy a beer.
The U.S. would do well if they could actually implement usage of $1 coins in automated kiosks. Very few people use dollar coins because you can't do anything with them here. Machines won't take them. Hell, people often won't take them, legal tender or not, because they aren't familiar with them and think they're getting a wooden nickel or something. If you could use them in machines, more people would use them, more people would see them and realize that they are legit, and then they could be used for lots of small transactions.
And, as a an aside, plastic currency is awesome. Run your wallet through the washer accidentally, or fall out of the kayak on your trip? No problem. In the U.S., you can hold a legally acceptable but worn paper $5 in your hand and be unable to purchase anything from an automated kiosk because somebody ran it through the washer at some point and the reader can't make it out. I'd imagine it is harder to counterfit a plastic bill as well.
This isn't rocket surgery. For a society based on the success of commerce I don't understand why the U.S. makes small transactions so awkward.
Re: (Score:3)
I say get rid of pennies, nickels, and dimes. I volunteer at a coffee house whose prices (incl. tax) are all multiples of $0.25. Both customers and volunteers love it. (They accept lower denominations as payment, but don't keep them in the register.)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't one just round up to the nearest quarter for tipping purposes anyway? When I holidayed in Canada and the US I used to chuck my small coinage in the tip jar out of courtesy anyway, i.e. that $2.70 caffe latte becomes $3 in no time...
(disclaimer: in my country we don't tip)
Re: (Score:3)
Just round all prices to the nearest quarter and be done with it.
ARE YOU CRAZY that would mean Flappy Birds and FartNoiseMaker apps would cost $1 instead of $0.99. That's a psychological barrier most people are not ready to cross. You sir are talking about destroying app stores.
Re: (Score:3)
We're not on the gold standard anymore. Making a penny adds 1c to the total currency in circulation. They "sell" those bags of pennies to the banks and that money is counted as revenue by the government. Except that it costs more to make them than they return. Quarters, on the other hand; well, this is from the WaPo from a while back:
"The quarter program has been a breakthrough for numismatists, or coin collectors, and a boon for the U.S. Treasury. A federal study estimates that 139 million Americans are co