Posted on 11/30/2012 7:10:34 AM PST by upchuck
[Snipped pretty severely to meet posting guidelines.]
Congressional auditors say doing away with dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins could save taxpayers some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years.
At a House subcommittee hearing Thursday, the focus was on two approaches:
—Moving to less expensive combinations of metals like steel, aluminum and zinc.
—Gradually taking dollar bills out the economy and replacing them with coins.
Equipment would have to be bought or overhauled and more coins would have to be produced upfront to replace bills as they are taken out of circulation.
Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said men don't like carrying a bunch of coins around in their pocket or in their suits. And Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the $1 coins have proved too hard to distinguish from quarters.
"If the people don't want it and they don't want to use it," she said, "why in the world are we even talking about changing it?"
Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, said a penny costs more than 2 cents to make and a nickel costs more than 11 cents to make. Moving to multiplated steel for coins would save the government nearly $200 million a year, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
And watch 6% sales tax round up to 10%.
Great idea! Get rid of the filthy things. They carry germs, viruses, all sorts of junk. They only last about 6 months, then are shredded and dumped into landfills. This nation needs to be an austerity budget. Every $ counts. Just don’t spend a lot of time on it. Make the decision, and move on.
Just another unintended consequence of the Federal Reserve Act. I have read that the American dollar is worth approximately 96% less than what it was in 1910. I think it is worth less than that.
A big thank you to Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, all th early twentieth century progressive movement and all the enlightened big government bastards that followed them.
The fundamental problem is devaluation. When pennies don't purchase anything, people don't use them, and they just come to fill change jars across the country. The same is starting to be the fate of the nickle, and soon I assume the dime.
In a greater sense, the same thing has occurred with the dollar. You don't purchase things with a dollar so much, as receive it in change.
When I was a kid, pennies actually purchased things, and a quarter would get you a soda and a candy bar. And that was 50% inflation over when my father was a boy. In fact, pre-1945 the problem with the penny was that it was too much for small items, such as a piece of gum. This was solved by some locales issuing fractional pennies.
All that said, I like coinage. I would personally like to see coinage up to $50.
Find something else that really needs changing
It’s time once again to trot out my currency and coinage reform proposal.
Given that there has been ample inflation on the order of 10 since the last change, and we have an excessive array of confusing coins and low-value currency, it is time for a practical simplification.
First, denominations need to proceed in a proportional way without large value ratios or crowded ratios. The classic 1-5-10-50-100... progression with ratios of 2.0-5.0 is ideal as a minimum, with denominations of 2, 20, etc. being optional for important valuations.
Second, we want to avoid coins of such low value that they are more trouble than they are worth. Economic waste occurs with the extra time wasted dealing with needlessly small coins. A dime is worth less than a minute of labor at minimum wages, and no currency transaction requires anything smaller than this denomination. The penny and the half-cent served well as the smallest denominations when their values were that of today’s dime. (Note to any economic imbeciles: electronic transactions are often conducted in smaller units than our smallest coin, and that cash registers have been “rounding” - without bias up or down - to the nearest small coin for sales tax purposes for generations. Google “sales tax rounding” if you have doubts and read a few articles).
Third, we want to set the coin/currency transition at a practical level that avoids our wallets being overstuffed with small bills, or our pockets with too many coins. Coins should be suitable for purchases like a magazine, a coffee, a lunch, or a brief cab ride.
Fourth, the ratio between the largest and smallest coin should be limited to a practical factor. Consider that the economy functions effectively with coins at 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25, with pennies treated as trash, and larger coins generally not used. That is a factor of 5 between the largest and smallest coin. A factor of 10-50 may be ideal, and a factor of 100 (as in actual current coinage) is excessive.
Fifth, we need bills of adequately high value for large cash purchases (consider the largest Euro note has a value of about 6.5 times that of the largest US note.)
Sixth, coins should be sized approximately proportional to their value for ease of recognition and use.
The proposal:
Coins:
$0.10 (slightly smaller than the current dime)
$0.50 (slightly smaller than the current nickel, larger than the penny)
$1.00 (slightly smaller than the current quarter dollar, larger than the nickel)
$5.00 (slightly smaller than the current half-dollar) Or it could be set at $2 to avoid overlap with a $5 note.
Currency Notes:
$5 (optional)
$10
$20 (optional)
$50
$100
$500
Our current 6 coins are replaced with 4.
Our current 7 notes are replaced with 4-6.
If you want to talk about making coins out of silver or gold, I’m even more enthusiastic:
$1000 gold coin (1 oz)
$500 gold coin (1/2 oz)
$100 gold coin (1/10 oz)
$20 silver coin (1 oz)
$10 silver coin (1/2 oz)
$2 silver coin (1/10 oz)
$1 copper or base metal coin (1/2 oz)
$0.50 copper or base metal coin (1/4 oz)
$0.10 copper or base metal coin (1/10 oz)
It’s more fun to tip with 10 ones than one ten. So I’ve heard.
So this is consuming their time? What about that legislation to pour $7 billion into the study of Phorid-Humpbacked Fly mating habits?
With pennies. Lots of 'em!
What is the governments fixation with forcing the people to carry metallic dollars? It’s a loser of an issue and they have spent billions of dollars on metal dollar coins that no one wants.
$2 bills?
The stripper can just carry a little bag around her waist to hold the coins.
It will hang down like a ball sack.
I'd sort of like to get my collection done past James A. Garfield.
It will never happen. Every few years, they bring up the idea, but it doesn’t fly with the public. We didn’t use the Sacajawea coins, and we won’t use some other dollar coins. You may convince Euroweenies to carry coin purses, this is America.
“How are we going to tip strippers? :)”
Magnetized breast implants and g-strings?
I’m pretty sure the “ladies”would find a way to accept coins...could actually get very interesting.
I hate change! Everytime they talk about this it makes me angry.
this is about harmonizing coins with the rest of the world.
It is a BS argument.
This is a distraction effort just like any time the conservatives get close to amending the constitution they insiders poison the effort with a “flag burning” amendment.
Nobody will ever round down though, so it’s just more inflation dumped on us dopes. A drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the inflation that’s coming our way, perhaps, but still nothing to be happy about.
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