American Dollar Good!
Foreign Money BAD!
I just love paying for 20 or 40 dollars worth of groceries with these. Makes Hadjie mad down at the 7 come Eleven.
Posted on 09/13/2002 1:58:35 PM PDT by GeneD
Filed at 4:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Gold dollar coins weigh down the pockets. They are costly to ship. And few Americans think they're better than the good old greenback.
Dollar coins are a flop even before their third birthday, even after a $67.1 million, three-year marketing campaign by the U.S. Mint, a government report says.
While initial public awareness generated by the advertising was strong, the new dollar coin, like the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, ``has failed to achieve widespread use,'' the General Accounting Office reported Friday.
According to July, 2001 statistics from the U.S. Mint, people use the dollar coin in just 1 percent of dollar transactions, the report said.
U.S. Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore acknowledged her agency has yet to overcome public and commercial resistance to using the coin dollar and generally concurred with the report's findings, she wrote in response.
It is the second time a dollar coin has failed to catch on -- the last being the silvery Anthony coin, which often was mistaken for the quarter. To rectify the problem, Congress in 1997 required the new coin dollar to be golden in color.
But the GAO reported Friday that banks, retailers and others are widely mixing the two together, since they are both $1 denominations.
``Until we minimize commingling, many people will continue to avoid using dollar coins in general,'' the Holsman Fore wrote.
So formidable were the cultural bias and other problems that the U.S. Mint earlier this year stopped circulating the gold dollar coin until it could reconsider its viability. The GAO report recommended that the U.S. Mint not spend any more money on marketing unless it found a plan that it could show would persuade more people to choose the coin over the paper bill.
Among the problems pointed out in the report:
--Widespread use of the dollar bill and public resistance to the dollar coin. ``Until individuals can see that the coin is widely used by others and that the government intends to replace the dollar bill with the dollar coin, they will be unlikely to use the coin in everyday transactions,'' the GAO wrote.
--A chain reaction that preserves the status quo. Retailers will not stock the dollar coin until they see the public using it. The public is unlikely to use the coin until they see retailers stocking it. And banks and armored carriers are reluctant to invest in new equipment to handle the coin until there is wide demand for it, the GAO said.
--``Some people consider the ease of carrying the bill to be more beneficial than the durability of the dollar coin,'' the GAO wrote
--Higher delivery fees for the heavier dollar coins than paper bills.
It didn't start out this way. Hopes for the new currency were high five years ago when Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, a law authorizing the new dollar coin to replace the Anthony dollar coin. Its face would bear a rendering of Sacagawea, a Shoshone interpreter who assisted the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean.
The act directed the department to start a marketing program for the new coin. And it prohibited the paper dollar from being removed from circulation.
The GAO estimated that the dollar coin would save taxpayers about $500 million each year because coins last longer than paper notes and cost less for the government to distribute. The coin is profitable per unit, since it costs the mint about 12 cents to produce one, for which the government receives $1.00 in spending power.
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On the Net: General Accounting Office: http://www.gao.gov
U.S. Mint: http://www.usmint.gov
Let me put my MBA to use and suggest a plan:
"Quit making dollar bills!"
DUH!
Also DUH! :)
The article is correct...everyone here hates the coin and resists its use...I have a solution to this clumbersome and anoying "goldtone" $1.00 coin:
Simply gather up any of the annoying things you have laying around and send them to me so I can ride the retail world of them as soon as possible (I figure it's the American, patriotic, responsible and noble way to help rid the nation of this pesky thing).
"Quit screwing around with dollar coins. They don't meet real people's requirements."
DUH!
I suggest John Adams for the dollar coin.
Regards, Ivan
No kidding. In order for a dollar coin to be feasible, you've got to instantly be able to identify by touch it in your pocket.
BINGO
The Act did NOT do this as it was originally written. Some lamebrain offered it as an amendment as a rider to some other desireable bill - and the act was so amended.
The golden dollar coin will enjoy wild success - the very minute that someone has the spine to tell the Fed to start replacing the bill with the coin.
Since when did every little nit-sh*t item about this country have to be a goll-darn popularity poll? Do what's right and move on. If some pipple don't like the golden dollar coin, tough bananas. They can ship 'em to me freight collect.
Michael
I have one of those too. I wasn't advocating dollar coins, just proposing a plan. The idiots can't see that there won't be a change as long as they provide both options.
As far as real people's needs: I have traveled in many countries, they all have coins in denominations similar to the US dollar. The people survived.
The only two term president since Ike that didn't disgrace himself in office.
Seriously though, I don't mind the dollar coin. Whenever I get dollar bills without anything larger, I usually just shove the bills in my pocket instead of putting them into my wallet. I.e. I treat them as I would treat coins.
Now they just need to pick a metal which doesn't corrode so easily. Didn't they even hand out blanks of various metals to the mint employees to see how they hold up in real life. I don't mind pennies turning brown, but the "gold" coin should stay gold colored.
When I read my own post, I sounds a lot like I was advocating dollar coins.
DOH!
Duh.
I said it would fail before it was even in circulation.
It was doomed from the start. I don't personally know anyone who will accept it as tender.
It's idiotic.
Oh, man, I hate that thing! I've been to Australia a couple of times, and I always lose one or two of these things. Not to mention that the cabbies can pick out an American tourist with ease, and will pass you two 50 ringgit pieces glued together as change if you aren't careful (ringgits are the currency of nearby Malaysia, and aren't worth the metal they're made of).
For those not in the know, two 50 ringgit pieces glued together has the same size and feel as the Australian $2 coin.
I can tell you've never travelled outside the US. A paper note for the basic currency unit is a hideous waste of tax payer money, and it's far easier to pay for small purchases with coins. All the paper note does is take up almost-meaningless thickness in your wallet.
If you want a fat wallet, make more money.
Michael
American Dollar Good!
Foreign Money BAD!
I just love paying for 20 or 40 dollars worth of groceries with these. Makes Hadjie mad down at the 7 come Eleven.
People want stability and consistancy, thus offering a coin in place of a bill won't work. But it wouldn't work the other way, either. Try to produce a quarter dollar bill, and folks will still use the quarter and many of the same arguments will appear. It all has to do with what the public is used to.
The problem is that the net value of a dollar bill is slipping considerably. If it costs $500 for the U.S. Mint to print 10,000 dollar bills which will last 8 months on average, and it costs $1,200 for the U.S. Mint to mint 10,000 dollar coins that will last 12 years on average, then the clear winner is the dollar coin.
The question then is, how do you get people to use it, and the answer has been given. Quit making the dollar bill, and banks will eventually be forced to push the dollar coins into circulation.
As for who should be on the Dollar Coin (Which should be slightly smaller than the Kennedy Half-Dollar. The Half-Dollar is just a bit too bulky to carry around 6 of them, which is the average number of dollar bills a typical person walks around with.), I would recommend Adam Smith on the front, and the modern American Flag on the back.
Just my opinion.
There is no way that this is remotely true. I have never received one back in change, and certainly not 1% of the time I get change.
Maybe they're counting Las Vegas slot machines or something.
How can 1/300th of an ounce weigh anything down?
I fail to see what foreign financial structures have to do with ours. And why on earth would I assume countries that screw up just about everything else in their existence, possess unerring acumen as pertains to coinage?
And you really believe how “expensive” dollar bills are to coin? $500 million a year “lost”? Puleeze. I doubt it. That’s a government figure: you have to divide it by three, or multiply it by four – depending on the agenda.
And coin is far less “convenient” than bills. People who use money clips, by and large, do not walk out of their front door in the morning with coin in their pockets. Everything goes in a coin dish the night before and is out of sight, out of mind until the bi-annual pilgrimage to a change counter. Introduce dollar coins and remove dollar bills, and everything just becomes a bigger pain in the ass: I don’t mind walking around with 6 one-dollar bills in my clip but, 6 one-dollar coins are annoying.
This is the THIRD failure of a dollar coin in my lifetime. Someday, maybe, the Treasury Department is going to get a clue: a dollar coin will fail until inflation takes the value of a dollar down to the value of a quarter. Even then it might fail.
Its the size stupid.
Presently, the dollar coin is nearly indistinguishable from a quarter. So, besides the fact that carrying a pocketfull of dollar coins is reminiscient of an episode of Seinfeld, you run the risk of mistaking a dollar for a quarter.
Make it bigger than a quarter by at least 1/4". (I know, the coin-operated machine guys don't want this, too bad)
Give it a smooth edge so that you can tell by touching the edge that it is not a quarter.
Put a HERO on it, Reagan. This is the second time they put a Politically Correct woman on the dollar coin. It failed both times.
None of the above will happen, and the dollar coin will still remain an oddity.
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