Get Your Coins Moving: Some Parts of the US Face a Shortage of Quarters (chronline.com) 203
Heidi Thorsen owns the coin-only laundromat "Lunar Laundry" in Seattle — and discovered an odd phenomenon, reports the Seattle Times. "Thorsen went to her bank to replenish her coin supply. But the bank was so short on change, she could only buy a few $10, 40-quarter rolls, and most often there were none at all..."
Thorsen speaks for many in the local coin-operated economy, a diverse, somewhat old-school community of businesses and consumers that has been in a state of agitation since COVID-19 interrupted the normal cycle of coins. "It's something I have to think about all the time," says Queen Anne resident Dan White, whose apartment has a coin-operated laundry. Early in the pandemic, White had to frantically group-text friends to secure enough quarters for a weekend's wash... "People that aren't using quarters for a laundry machine have no idea that this is even happening." Indeed, the Great Quarter Shortage has exposed another social and economic divide as a subset of consumers and businesses must scramble to replace what COVID has made scarce. The result is a kind of two-bit black market, rife with clever workarounds and conspiracy theories, and no small amount of social friction...
Technically, there is no quarter shortage, in Seattle or anywhere. The U.S. Mint produced nearly 24% more coins in 2020 than in 2019, despite a temporary pandemic slowdown, and continues to roll them out at "near record levels," according to Mint officials. The problem, federal officials say, is many of the roughly 55 billion quarters estimated to be in circulation have been stranded by the pandemic in places — under your couch cushions, say, or in your console coin holder — where the coin-operated economy can't touch them. It's a smaller, less visible version of the supply chain crisis, but with quarters instead of cargo containers.
Early in the pandemic, many consumers and businesses stopped using physical currency out of safety concerns. Overall cash purchases in 2020 dropped nearly 27% compared with 2019, while the rate at which coins and bills change hands fell more than 70% — the steepest drop on record — and hasn't recovered, Federal Reserve data show. As coins accumulated in homes and handbags, retailers that were typically quarter-negative even before COVID went even further in the red and made even more frequent coin purchases from banks. Consumers, meanwhile, were also less frequently hauling in their caches of spare change to banks or coin kiosks. As the circulation of coins slowed, and as the reopening economy led banks to order more coins from the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank saw its own coin inventory fall below normal levels. In June 2020, the Reserve imposed a "temporary" restriction on coin orders by private banks that, despite a brief reprieve this year, remains in effect. Some banks restricted their own coin sales, even to big retail customers — and many still do.
The bank is "shorting us on our order a lot," says Dave Garcia, assistant store director at Ballard Market, which, like many retailers, has suspended its own quarter sales to consumers...
It's a problem for the "unbanked" without debit cards and the small-business owners who depend on them and "can't afford to upgrade to digital payments and the touchless economy." (And the article points out this includes laundromats, more than half of which are still coin-operated in the U.S.) The CEO of the Coin Laundry Association even tells the Times that some laundromats have resorted to installing a kill switch on their change machines, just so if noncustomers try to make change, "they just cut the power to the machine."
The owner of the Lunar Laundry ultimately installed a digital system that lets customers pay through a phone app after scanning a washer's QR code. A bar owner in Seattle even believes a conspiracy theory that the government is prolonging the shortage to push everyone to digital currencies so their purchases can all be tracked.
But in fact, the Times notes, "Solving the quarter crisis has become a top priority of the Federal Reserve, where a specially empaneled U.S. Coin Task Force is working to persuade Americans to spend those quarters and other coins back into circulation..."
Thorsen speaks for many in the local coin-operated economy, a diverse, somewhat old-school community of businesses and consumers that has been in a state of agitation since COVID-19 interrupted the normal cycle of coins. "It's something I have to think about all the time," says Queen Anne resident Dan White, whose apartment has a coin-operated laundry. Early in the pandemic, White had to frantically group-text friends to secure enough quarters for a weekend's wash... "People that aren't using quarters for a laundry machine have no idea that this is even happening." Indeed, the Great Quarter Shortage has exposed another social and economic divide as a subset of consumers and businesses must scramble to replace what COVID has made scarce. The result is a kind of two-bit black market, rife with clever workarounds and conspiracy theories, and no small amount of social friction...
Technically, there is no quarter shortage, in Seattle or anywhere. The U.S. Mint produced nearly 24% more coins in 2020 than in 2019, despite a temporary pandemic slowdown, and continues to roll them out at "near record levels," according to Mint officials. The problem, federal officials say, is many of the roughly 55 billion quarters estimated to be in circulation have been stranded by the pandemic in places — under your couch cushions, say, or in your console coin holder — where the coin-operated economy can't touch them. It's a smaller, less visible version of the supply chain crisis, but with quarters instead of cargo containers.
Early in the pandemic, many consumers and businesses stopped using physical currency out of safety concerns. Overall cash purchases in 2020 dropped nearly 27% compared with 2019, while the rate at which coins and bills change hands fell more than 70% — the steepest drop on record — and hasn't recovered, Federal Reserve data show. As coins accumulated in homes and handbags, retailers that were typically quarter-negative even before COVID went even further in the red and made even more frequent coin purchases from banks. Consumers, meanwhile, were also less frequently hauling in their caches of spare change to banks or coin kiosks. As the circulation of coins slowed, and as the reopening economy led banks to order more coins from the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank saw its own coin inventory fall below normal levels. In June 2020, the Reserve imposed a "temporary" restriction on coin orders by private banks that, despite a brief reprieve this year, remains in effect. Some banks restricted their own coin sales, even to big retail customers — and many still do.
The bank is "shorting us on our order a lot," says Dave Garcia, assistant store director at Ballard Market, which, like many retailers, has suspended its own quarter sales to consumers...
It's a problem for the "unbanked" without debit cards and the small-business owners who depend on them and "can't afford to upgrade to digital payments and the touchless economy." (And the article points out this includes laundromats, more than half of which are still coin-operated in the U.S.) The CEO of the Coin Laundry Association even tells the Times that some laundromats have resorted to installing a kill switch on their change machines, just so if noncustomers try to make change, "they just cut the power to the machine."
The owner of the Lunar Laundry ultimately installed a digital system that lets customers pay through a phone app after scanning a washer's QR code. A bar owner in Seattle even believes a conspiracy theory that the government is prolonging the shortage to push everyone to digital currencies so their purchases can all be tracked.
But in fact, the Times notes, "Solving the quarter crisis has become a top priority of the Federal Reserve, where a specially empaneled U.S. Coin Task Force is working to persuade Americans to spend those quarters and other coins back into circulation..."
Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like the folks who own laundromats couldn't upgrade to machines that accept credit and debit cards; or even, gasp, dollar bills since the days of commercial washing and drying for under a buck may have escaped unnoticed several moons ago.
Most folks I know hoard change by throwing it a bucket at the end of the day. It's just not worth loading it back up every morning.
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
upgrade to machines that accept credit and debit cards
It is not that simple, the laundromats need to be able to afford new machines. Many of their customers don't even have bank accounts.
The change hoarding is mostly the culprit here. They are waiting for the pandemic to be over. And yes this idea is greatly over simplified.
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They should really be moving to Bitcoin these days. Everything will be Bitcoin soon.
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And we should get rid of TP, because everything is moving to bidet.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's always easy for the guy who doesn't have to do it.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious, is there even an option to retrofit the existing machines with electronic payment methods? I would think the unit that accepts payment would be a module that could be removed and replaced, but that of course depends on someone actually making replacement modules for not-crazy amounts of money (at 66 machines, even sane costs are going to add up even if you spread it out by doing them in batches...)
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only time I touch cash nowdays is for some small business. Even my local vending machine has at least 3 ways to pay. Debit/Credit card, SMS, QR code for local banking app, sometimes even cash!
Now, I have a few piggy banks with more than a few coins. I'd happily take them to the bank if they wouoldn't charge me time and labour to count them (even after correctly rolled). When I last did that, the bank employ asked me if they were for my kids, and I said yes, which escaped the charge.
Cash, is a dirty, PITA. But, it's a necessary evil. Some people can't have or don't want cards. There has to be another way to pay that can be anonymous, it's a basic freedom. It's just another aspect of freedom of speach. I can write anonymously if I want to, I can act anonymously too. FORCED use of trackable payments, no thanks, i can't be anonymous if tracked. I can choose to also pay in a trackable means, eg, by card. (Criminalising the owning of cash, such via civil forfeiture laws is also completely immoral).
Anyway, if getting coins is such a problem, how about, perhap, paying MORE than the 4 x quarters are worth, perhaps $1.05? No one says you can't in a free market economy. Scarcity of goods, etc?
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Get a third party to pay the fee for cashing in change for other currency. The machine in my neighborhood grocery store offers no-charge conversion of coins into a selection of gift certificates. I pick a retailer that I use often, and the only inconvenience is that the money is tied to that account until I spend it.
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Because grocery stores need small change to provide it to customers who pay in cash.
Otherwise they have to pay banks to supply this small change for them.
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cash, is a dirty, PITA. But, it's a necessary evil. Some people can't have or don't want cards.
Given that cash is now considered the money of the poor, that would be awkward in that many social services use debit cards when they disburse funds to the needy.
There has to be another way to pay that can be anonymous, it's a basic freedom. It's just another aspect of freedom of speach.
Go to bitcoin?
The increasing problem for people that feel the need to hide their transactions is that cash is becoming obsolete. Actually for many of us, it is long obsolete.
If you are worried about tracking - this might sound strange, but use it to your advantage. I make certain that I use my Credit card at various places. I smile and wave at the security cams. Nothing like time stamped alibi generators.
Completely unrelated, I misspelled "alibi" in that last sentence, and spell check wanted to change it to "Nothing like time stamped labia generators" 8^)
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Cash, is a dirty, PITA. But, it's a necessary evil. Some people can't have or don't want cards.
Given that cash is now considered the money of the poor, that would be awkward in that many social services use debit cards when they disburse funds to the needy.
There has to be another way to pay that can be anonymous, it's a basic freedom. It's just another aspect of freedom of speach.
Go to bitcoin?
The increasing problem for people that feel the need to hide their transactions is that cash is becoming obsolete. Actually for many of us, it is long obsolete.
If you are worried about tracking - this might sound strange, but use it to your advantage. I make certain that I use my Credit card at various places. I smile and wave at the security cams. Nothing like time stamped alibi generators.
You really think the shop is going to keep the video long enough for you to actually use it for any court case? No, it'll be gone in a week, long before you even hear that you might need it.
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Now, I have a few piggy banks with more than a few coins. I'd happily take them to the bank if they wouoldn't charge me time and labour to count them (even after correctly rolled). When I last did that, the bank employ asked me if they were for my kids, and I said yes, which escaped the charge.
My credit union has never charged me for bringing in coin rolls. Though I've never brought in more than ~$10-20 worth of coins at one time.
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Informative)
My credit union has never charged me for bringing in coin rolls. Though I've never brought in more than ~$10-20 worth of coins at one time.
Same here. I usually accumulate about $80 in quarters, dimes, nickels, and (gasp) pennies before trading them for folding money. My bank has never charged for this. I usually roll the coins, but the bank has a change-counting machine they will happily use at no charge as well.
I will say, though, that the rate at which I accumulate change has declined significantly since the start of the pandemic. Working from home 3 out of 5 days/week means eating lunch out less, which means less change to throw into the bucket at the end of the day.
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My credit union has never charged me for bringing in coin rolls. Though I've never brought in more than ~$10-20 worth of coins at one time.
Same here. I usually accumulate about $80 in quarters, dimes, nickels, and (gasp) pennies before trading them for folding money. My bank has never charged for this. I usually roll the coins, but the bank has a change-counting machine they will happily use at no charge as well.
I will say, though, that the rate at which I accumulate change has declined significantly since the start of the pandemic. Working from home 3 out of 5 days/week means eating lunch out less, which means less change to throw into the bucket at the end of the day.
Yeah, I started working at a smaller office with no snack machine or cafeteria a few months before covid. Most everything I eat is brought from home these days and my coin collection has pretty much stopped accumulating.
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Some people can't have
That doesn't make cash necessary, that makes the laws and systematic barriers preventing people having something incredibly common and these days borderline necessary to society absolutely insane.
It's just another aspect of freedom of speach.
Nope. Please don't conflate some important constitutional freedom with you paying for something. Payment has never been about being anonymous. It has never been a right. Heck historically it has happened only in person and often under legally binding contract. You were never anonymous, not when you're using your cr
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cash is still king for the poorest among us, particularly those likely to do the wash at a laundromat.
As mentioned above, many folks still prefer the anonymity of the cash transaction. Cash is the original cryptocurrency, and the preferred legal tender of the neighborhood pharmaceutical distributor or massage parlor.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:2)
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The laundry in my university halls of residence used special tokens back in the last millennium, so I agree that it's certainly a workable solution.
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I have $400 in cash on me all the time. The reason? I sold something to a friend who paid in cash. I have a online bank so I'm not in a position to deposit it and I don't really spend cash.
So I just carry it around in the hopes that one day I'll think to use cash instead of my debit card.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:2)
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Avoid malls is pretty much always good advice. If covid did one great thing it is the normalization of drive up pickups. I love that I can order pretty much anything I wan: Food, tech, clothing, etc and either have it delivered to my home (sometimes the same day) or I can simply drive up and have it placed in my car. I have not been in a store in months.
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One of my online banks just partnered with CVS. You can hand your money to a cashier and have it instantly deposited.
Cash is still the preferred medium of exchange for day laborers, homeless people, drug dealers and drug users. Most of these guys fall into all four categories. Most of these people are homeless because they consider money a temporary nuisance to be disposed of rapidly, possibly on lottery tickets. I don't understand how they feel that having more money to throw away will help them any.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:2)
Just some ideas... you could leave that cash at home for when you need to pay a plumber, AC guy, yard work etc. They might give you a discount for paying cash.
Or you could put it all on a preloaded debit card almost anywhere for about $10. Spend it in the next month so you aren't hit with the monthly fee, $5 - $10 usually.
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Several U-scan type self checkouts are marked no cash. At Meijer if you want to pay with cash only a single cashier is setup to deal with it. Cash has been relegated to the stigma of the one checkout line that sells packs of cigarettes. Not that they are necessarily the same checkout line. Its difficult to spend change when no one even takes cash.
If I wanted to scan and bag groceries, I would apply for a job as a cashier. Unless you have only one or two quick items, the self checkout lines suck balls. A full service line with a competent cashier and a bagger will scan and bag as quickly as I can unload the cart. Since you don't receive any discount for doing the work of two paid employees, why would you embrace such suckfullness?
And for the record, Kroger's self checkout accepts cash. Maybe don't shop at Meijer...
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I have this same position. I will not use self checkout. If there was a discount for using them I will, but otherwise I'm keeping the local cashier employed and getting the service I pay for.
Re: Technological advance needed? (Score:2)
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The Meijer right near to my work used to play that "you-gotta-use-the-self-checkout-line" shit, but finally wised up. There are always multiple full service lines available now. Don't patronize the work for free lines and you'd be surprised how
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Yes, people "still do that". Where I live, in a fairly affluent SoCal community, it appears that a great many people "still do that". Now and then one of them (usually an elderly woman) will even pull out a (gasp!) checkbook in the grocery store checkout line, and the clerk actually knows how to deal with it! The self-check terminals at the local Vons happily accept cash.
By the way, the reason Meijer has cut back on cash transactions? The coin shortage. They acknowledge that it's an issue for lots of custom [local12.com]
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Well, that certainly degenerated quickly from a discussion about coin shortages to "I'm really pissed about my personal situation." I hope you can get the professional help you so clearly need.
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not at all simple if you have a bunch of machines that are coin operated.
Card payments need an internet connection to work, either over broadband or cellular network. There are transaction fees, rental fees on the terminals. That is if someone even makes a system that is compatible with the machines, rather than expecting you to buy new ones. They probably want to lock you into their ecosystem too, so you get to pay two lots of middle men.
Taking bank notes is often mechanically difficult in the space available for coin mechanisms. The mechanisms cost more too, because they have to be extremely jam-proof which is hard with a floppy bit of scrunched up paper, and the tech to detect forgeries is much more complex.
Basically it's a considerable cost to do those things, and especially in the case of card payments it creates additional costs to every transaction in a business that is already low margin.
local only cash to card systems cost alot as well (Score:2)
local only cash to card systems cost alot as well.
Some arcades have them but they can cost alot for games at an bar (bills are easy but change is hard)
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It's not like the folks who own laundromats couldn't upgrade to machines that accept credit and debit cards;
They don't even need to do that. They could move to a token system, ala arcades of the 80's. Take coin/cash or even debit/credit card at the token machines. Cost of converting the washers/dryers would be substantially less than converting them to take cards as well. With tokens, you create essentially a closed loop so you don't need to replenish coins all the time. Sure, some tokens will walk out and not come back but tokens are cheap as chips, so to speak.
Added bonus: it reduces fraud at the change mach
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It's almost like a problem that was solved years ago with both arcades and casinos.
Common Sense, Not Technology (Score:2)
As it declines more and more in value coin-operated devices will need more and more of them. It's already worth about a te
Re:Technological advance needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
As usual, people are mistaking an *economic* problem for a *technical* one -- I was going to say "engineering problem", but a problem being both technical and economic pretty much defines what an engineering problem is.
A coin operated laundry is not likely to be a high margin business, so asking it to invest in technology, not to *increase* profits, but to stay where it is, that's a lot to ask. You have to consider that many of its customers won't be able to use the technology *because they don't have a bank account*.
Most folks I know hoard change by throwing it a bucket at the end of the day. It's just not worth loading it back up every morning.
This is a common mistake I have found in the software industry -- assuming the user's problems are like yours. A middle class neighborhood runs on credit and electronics funds transfers. When an elderly person in front of you at the supermarket insists on paying with cash, you roll your eyes at the inconvenience it presents *to you*. In a cash-dependent neighborhood, the need for physical money to change hands is a limiting factor for everything. As for those dollar bill machines, they'd probably work well in your neighborhood because your neighborhood hardly ever uses cash. In a poor neighborhood dollars are faded and ragged, hard to feed into a machine and hard for the machine to read. That's why the washing machines operate on quarters in the first place; where they're needed, quarters work better.
It's not sustainable though, and something has to be done in the long term because at some point people will need to feed pounds of coins into the machine to get a load of laundry done. Coin operated laundries provide a critical service, often to customers with the least flexibility in how to pay. If you want to bring those businesses in the 21st Century, you've got to get their customers there first.
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Coins cost way too much money (Score:2)
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A quarter costs 0.0862 cents to produce ! That's 34% of its value !
If only they were that cheap.
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Re:Coins cost way too much money (Score:4, Insightful)
At least do away with that goddamn penny. On the rare times I use cash the pennies they give me in change get thrown in the parking lot. Canada and Australia did away with pennies but the zinc lobby here pays a lot of money to keep the government minting them. I'm not one of those idiots either who says they're losing money because pennies are worth more than a penny in raw materials. That argument only holds up if the mint is selling coins at face value (which it isn't).
Re: Coins cost way too much money (Score:2)
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My local brewery prices their beer so that with tax it is a even dollar.
Customers like it, bartenders like it, and you know exactly what it will cost for the night.
Sure some idiots complain his beer is more expensive than the other place, but they are only a penny or two off and I don't have to calculate tax.
Re: Coins cost way too much money (Score:2)
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Won't work for things that are sold by weight or volume. For instance, meat, produce, gasoline, etc.
Re: Coins cost way too much money (Score:2)
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I lived in Switzerland for a few years. All of the prices in stores included tax and were rounded to nice whole numbers so you paid what the tag said.
Also, they don't have pennies or nickles. Cuts down on the amount of change you need.
(Off topic rant.... They don't have paper checks either. All bills are paid by EFT and all stores take debit cards so you don't have to pay credit card fees.)
Re: Coins cost way too much money (Score:2)
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Let's see, 0.0862 / 25 x 100% = 0.34%, not 34%.
Stay in school, kids!
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No, they aren't the same units, but that was a grammar problem on your part. Ichijo's math is correct, but your quote of the price was wrong. A quater doesn't cost 0.0862 CENTS to produce, it costs 0.0862 DOLLARS to produce, which is 8.62 cents.
Ichijo converted your unit, cents, to the same unit you used for the quarters, which was dollars.
The correct answer, according to this Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com] is that quarter coins cost $0.0895 (8.95 cents) to produce. The slight difference in price will vary dependi
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Read the original post again. Yeah, the OP expressed it incorrectly, but Ichijo is right.
Wrong Analysis (Score:2)
A quarter costs 0.0862 cents to produce ! That's 34% of its value
First, I assume you meant $0.0862 to produce. However, your analysis is somewhat off because combining it with your $0.062 for paper money the difference is small and a coin lasts a lot longer than paper and so will be cheaper overall.
Given that there are still some applications that need coins, if you want to save production costs the obvious solution from your data is to produce higher denomination coinage. If you have a $1 coin in common circulation (yes I know one exists but is rarely seen) that wou
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Maybe if it cost money to get rolls of coins, businesses would be incentivized to round a little and not happily count out $.99 in change.
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Interesting. I use dollar coins for riding the bus. At first glance it seemed like it might be cheaper if the US were to use dollar coins instead of dollar bills, since logically the cost of production should not be that dissimilar to the cost of the quarter. However, searching it, I found an interesting study: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao... [gao.gov]
Apparently it was first recommended years ago that switching to dollar coins would save money. The dollar coin cost more to produce, but it lasted for 30 years, whic
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Dollar coins, also know as the Indiana version of "The card reader at the toll both is out. I only have a $20, and I'm about to get $17 in coins back"
So angry.
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Shouldn't that be a ten, a fiver and a $2 coin? That's the way it would work here if there were toll booths.
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Sadly no, the 80/90 toll road has almost no humans in the process and the machines only dispense $1 coins.
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Best would be to update the toll booth to RFID/License plate reader so at the worse you get a bill but generally you prepay by the month or so, which is how it worked here before tolls were eliminated.
OTOH, you now have 17 dollar coins in your car, not pocket, for the net 5 trips on the tollway.
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California toll booths don't accept any payment. Everybody has a FastTrak pass or they just send you a bill to your license plate address.
You can drive through the toll booths at speed. No delay.
Nintendians stole them! (Score:2)
Where is the 'some parts' in the summary ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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laundromats (Score:2)
can someone mod sigma derby to TITO? (Score:2)
can someone mod sigma derby to TITO? and have that mod PASS NGC?
They're in a container ship in Long Beach (Score:2)
And they're likely to get stolen somewhere in East L.A. along the tracks.
Not really a "conspiracy", now is it. (Score:2)
"..A bar owner in Seattle even believes a conspiracy theory that the government is prolonging the shortage to push everyone to digital currencies so their purchases can all be tracked."
You know, I'm all for giving the mixed bag of society a good shake to look for those nuts every now and then, but when the US Government is threatening to hire tens of thousands of IRS auditors to track a massive amount of consumer spending, this turns from conspiracy to fucking reality faster than you can say "audit".
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Truth, it's the war on cash personified where every damn transaction will be checked. The ACA allocated 16000 new IRS agents just to track your compliance with buying healthcare, now Yellen is trying to seal the deal although I heard the latest socialist bill being debated dropped that provision. [go.com]
Make banks pay cash for coins without hassle (Score:5, Insightful)
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I thought they just weighed the rolls instead.
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For what it's worth, in my area (NYC tri-state), a big local bank (TD Bank) used to have machines to count your coins though they disappeared quickly after a class action lawsuit was filed because these machines allegedly shortchanged (!) customers generally a tiny bit, I bet, unintentionally (i.e., I bet their hardware was a bit bad)
https://money.cnn.com/2016/05/... [cnn.com]
Seattle (Score:2)
We need the quarters to feed parking meters. The US Mint can increase coin production all it wants. But the city will just increase patking fees and suck them all up.
It's My Wife... (Score:2)
Solving this is really really simple. (Score:2)
Ban coinstar machines and\or require banks to count change. I don't know about you but I can't even go to my local bank anymore and have them sort through a bag of change, and this is what banks are for. Why would I take a 3% cut on all the money I get back from change (yeah there are credit cards but I still use cash every once in a while)?
If banks would count change for free like most used to, maybe people would bring change back and get it back into circulation.
Not enough quarters in some quarters. (Score:2)
Not enough quarters in some quarters
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There's the weight too. Don't the pants of youth today sag enough? Plus coins are easier to sanitize.
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So notes costs WAY much more money than coins.
I found an interesting study on that point: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao... [gao.gov]
TLDR: In 2011, the Government Accountability Office had previously thought that the longevity of coins would save money, and thus recommended the switch, but today it is no longer the case, especially because the longevity of bills has increased. Moreover, they point out that the higher weight of the coins would result in higher transportation fees, not only for the government, but for private companies that transport money. Too b
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Will you knock that shit off! A quarter costs $0.0862, or 8.62 cents; not 0.0862 cents.
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Yes, but when introduce a dollar coin, you must *also* get rid of the penny. The cash registers all have *only 4* bins for coins, viz., quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies. When a dollar coin comes along, there is no place for it to go. I am convinced that the penny only still exists to push everyone onto cards since it is so worthless and annoying.
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The dollar coin goes where the bill used to go, same with the $2 coin, it replaces where the $2 bill went. We (Canada) stopped printing ones in 1987 or '88, shortly after the $1 coin was introduced. We didn't get rid of the penny until much more recently.
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Opportunity? I seem to remember something similar happening in arcades in the 1980s. Laundromats would do well to invest in business-specific tokens instead.
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Run into the ground? The stock market has climbed to its highest level ever. Unemployment is down to what it was decades ago. Millions of people are back at work after the failure of the past four years.
You sure have an odd definition of running the country into the ground. What are you going to blame on Biden next? Rising wages?
Not sure where you're getting your employment numbers, but the BLS does not paint a rosy picture [bls.gov]:
The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was 6.0 million in October, essentially unchanged over the month but up by 968,000 since February 2020. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. (See table A-1.)
These are also enlightening and show that things were better under the last administration.:
- Civilian unemployment rate [bls.gov]
- Persons not in the labor force who want a job [bls.gov]
- Unemployed 27 weeks or longer as a percent of total unemployed [bls.gov]
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Those links do not show that things were better under the last administration.
The last link is a laugh - of course the percent of unemployed people that have been unemployed 27 weeks or longer is going to go up as the unemployment rate drops.
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Re: Biden is a nightmare (Score:2)
Dont forget when you mebtion it to them it slides right off. Never happened.
I bring it up as i sold my jeep getting 14mpg for a 36 mpg nissan sentra. In 2007 because i couldnt keep up with the gas bills. I traded payments and saved on gas.
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High gasoline prices. But those people can't grasp how supply and demand works.
Exactly If you prevent oil from being pumped from domestic wells and 'friendly' wells elsewhere on the continent, that restricts supply and raises prices. That's how we went from being a net exporter of petroleum to having to beg for increased imports from desert people who hate us.
Aaaaand...it now comes to us on diesel ships, not through invisible pipelines. The economy loses, national security loses, and the environment loses. Gee thanks, Mr. Biden!
Re:Biden is a nightmare (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Biden is a nightmare (Score:5, Funny)
On a long enough horizon, both parties have been in charge when something bad happened.
Yeah, I've been looking for a good independent presidential candidate to run everything into the ground for something different.
Re:Biden is a nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
Presidents can't do that much really. They get all the blame if something goes wrong, and occasionally credit if something goes right, but overall it's a massive team effort. They all campaign on "I will sign X on the first day in office" only it turns out to be much harder than they thought. An independent candidate would be good; but not because they can get stuff done but because they'll be forced to try to negotiate on the basis of something other than "it's good for the party".
Re:Xiden is a nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, back on topic. This is yet another attack on physical cash. Recall how they have been trying to kill pennies (USD) for years now which is the strongest valid argument for removing anything from circulation. When the coronavirus hit, the media started attacking cash and pushing for transactions to be electronic because money is germ-ridden. In actuality, you aren't likely to catch this virus from handling money.
This shortage is yet another part of the attack. The quarter is the highest value coin commonly used these days. If you remove the quarter from circulation, people will be losing value in not getting their change back, and they will use their credit cards instead.
Every transaction WILL be traced. Enter the social credit system.
-C.D.R-
Remember a lot of viewpoints on using pennies are purely cost/return analysis. When it costs more to make pennies than they are worth, something is wrong. Rounding things to the next lowest $0.05 value would have minimal impact on most businesses, though some may have that low of margins to deal with. Ultimately the ability to trace transactions should not even come into play when considering the economics of the cash economy, heck, ideally the ability to track all transactions should be a benefit to consumers as it should only be accessible by the consumer... unfortunately the world we live in means someone will take advantage of this. Just like computer algorithms that personalize internet experiences should make the web a better place for all users, not a way for corporations to track all their daily activities. I'm starting to become numb to all this to the point where I just don't care to use all the new and fancy stuff.
Re:Xiden is a nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
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You did notice that every purchase over 600 is logged to the Regime already?
And the rabble clutched their ARs again, growling in deep south accent "one of these days, 're gonna do sumthin". And then went back to the glowing rectangle in their comfortable living rooms that is providing all the meaningful things in their mind, raising their fist and their thin beer their favorite team scored yet another very meaningful point and won a meaningful game in the most-meaningful league of the most meaningful sports
Re:Xiden is a nightmare (Score:4, Informative)
I like your "rabble" story but your first sentence premise is just wrong.
There is no logging of every purchase over $600. There is no logging of purchases unless you use a credit or debit card. That logging is done by the banks and not the "Regime".
There was a proposal to have banks report total DEPOSITS of more than $600 PER YEAR to the Regime in order to catch people avoiding paying tax on income. However, the Republican party of tax cheats torpedoed that proposal.
Right war, wrong enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a war on cash, but it's not the government that's waging it. It's the banks, Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Venmo, Apple, AT&T, etc. They all want to collect "transaction fees" on every purchase, even in places like laundromats with razor thin margins that can't afford it.