[zeugma]

We’re not far from that; Canada has already gone that route. They don’t make pennies anymore, and their dollars (and two dollars) are coins only. I see more and more small businesses here dropping the penny already, and as I understand it, it costs more than one cent to make each one.

This is actually a good idea. Both the penny and the nickel actually cost the treasury more than a penny and nickel respectively to mint and issue. Also, given our minimum wage laws, even if a worker were to bill by the minute, the smallest increment would a dime. i.e., if you are paid .10¢/minute, you are only making $6/hour.

Here's what I think we ought to do from a monetary perspective:

• Drop the penny
• Drop the nickel
• Drop the dollar bill
• Expand production of dollar coins (they work much better in vending machines than bills do
• Produce a $5 coin (optional)
• Start printing $500 and $1000 notes again (the drug warriors and other enemies of the Constitution will scream bloody murder about this, but we used to have both of those notes in circulation back when a $500 bill would have bought a brand new car. Inflation has reduced a $100 bill to less than $10 of actual value)

The biggest problem with dropping the nickel is that it can cause rounding issues. (i.e., a dime won't divide evenly into a quarter. There used to be half-dimes, but they were not favored in circulation, mostly because of size issues. At the time we had actual constitutional money.)

[kearnyirish2]

It is probably easier to re-adjust the value of the denominations (deflation so pennies and nickels actually buy stuff again). It is just a bad sign when your lower denominations disappear; while people remember the Spanish peseta and Italian lira, many don’t know that in decades past they had “cents” as well - and they ALL disappeared. For Italian lira, the lowest denomination may have been 10 lira by the time they were replaced by the Euro - and Italian billionaires became mere millionaires.