Congress Looks at Doing Away with $! Bill

From ABC news

American consumers have shown about as much appetite for the $1 coin as kids do their spinach. They may not know what's best for them either. 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.

It seems the main savings comes because coins need to be replaced every 30 years, versus dollar bills being replaced every 4-5 years. Makes sense to me.

How would you feel about this, ATS? Personally, it wouldn't phase me much at all, but I'm curious to know others' views.

I like my dollar bills.


The coins make neat jewelry though.

The bigger savings would be that we don't have to pay for borrowing the coins from the Federal Reserve since the US would mint them themselves, unlike we do the bills which are Federal Reserve Notes and their property.

Your tax dollars at work

reply to post by smyleegrl


As long as they don't look like quarters. Can't tell you how many times I did that.

In Canada we have been with the 1$ and 2$ coins for a long time
maybe heavier in the pocket lol
but i prefer to have coins then useless 1$ paper bills
those bills doesnt have a long lifespan compare to the coins
i did keep some old 1 and 2$ paper bill from the old time has souvenir

i think the USA is long overdue to make this jump
would save a lot of money to avoiding replacing millions eachs months
but its a capitalist issue .. the more they print it on paper ..
the more they get tax payer money

Dollar coins are such a novelty to me. I think it would be cool.
Just as long as they don't leave a nasty metallic scent on my hand.

They should do away with all the phoney paper bills and replace them with gold and silver coins. That would save them a ton of money and take care of some other problems in the process.

reply to post by Ben81


Similar to us here in Australia. We've had $1 and $2 coins for 25 years now (that's an approximate but ignorant rough guess, but I remember our $1 and $2 notes as a kid fondly). But the coins are not a big deal, and honestly, the US is in so much poop you guy's should be doing everything that will save money and make sense.

Not only that, but when I lived in USA I got caught out a few times thinking I had money, only to find a few lousy bucks! GAH!

So will strippers start wearing coin purses around their waists? I mean how I am supposed to put a $1 coin in a g-string honestly. On a serious note I really like my $1 bills because they are light weight in my pocket and easy to carry. Could you imagine walking up to a convenience store counter that runs out of $10 bills and has to give you $13 dollar coins for change?

They're also looking into getting rid of the penny and nickle because they cost more to make than their face value.

An article in The New American says this is a sign of inflation as our money loses value, it becomes worth less (or more acuratly worthless) than the paper it is printed on.

Dollar's Decline Catches Up With U.S. Mint

The real issue is the declining purchasing power of the currency. And that goes back to the year 1913 when the Federal Reserve System was successfully foisted upon the American public as a result of the banking establishment's antipathy towards the gold standard, which prevented them from creating fiat (unbacked) money out of thin air. Perhaps no one understood that antipathy better than Alan Greenspan. In 1966, prior to becoming chairman of the Fed, Greenspan championed gold, writing in The Objectivist:

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense ... that gold and economic freedoms are inseparable.

He then went on to explain that the real reason for the push behind the scenes for the Federal Reserve was to finance the welfare state:

Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation.

But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

The New American

Its worked well for canada, they have their loonies ($1 coin) and toonies (2 coin) and $5 bills. Cracks me up to see vending machines that say "loonies only"

American $1 coins are too similar in size to quarters though.

reply to post by smyleegrl



the dollar bill has been worthless for 40 years but when it is all you have left of the past, you want to hang to it.

the coin is too much like the pound, although America is too much like Europe now too.

The story is that they are doing away with $1 dollar COINS not bills. They mention how it would be more economical if we used them instead of a dollar...

I have always thought it was a little behind the times. "Back in the day" when you could get a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk for a few coins...the USA Gov minting coins made perfect sense. It was the most commonly used currency and therefore it was part and partial to "national Sovereignty" to produce your own most commonly used currency. Shoot, I remember actual penny candy, a loaf of bread was a quarter, a dozen eggs less than a dollar.

As inflation rose and product prices went up, minted coins became less useful. I say they should mint the $1 dollar coin AND a $5 dollar coin. Anything we can do to lessen the involvement of the federal reserve, the better off we are.

For what it's worth, It doesn't matter what the currency is. A worthless piece of paper or worthless piece of pot metal. I guess the metal has "some" kinda intrinsic value where a piece of paper does not. But when a loaf of bread is over 2 dollars and a gallon of milk is near 4..."what" the currency is made of is meaningless...it takes too much of it to live.

I have no problem with 1 or 2 dollar coins. If it saves money im all for it.

Originally posted by phroziac
Its worked well for canada, they have their loonies ($1 coin) and toonies (2 coin) and $5 bills. Cracks me up to see vending machines that say "loonies only"

American $1 coins are too similar in size to quarters though.

so they will have to replace the vending machines?

Save your dollar bills they might be collectable someday, might be worth a dollar,
lol

Actually my husband does save star notes.

whatever their called.

Originally posted by phroziac
Its worked well for canada, they have their loonies ($1 coin) and toonies (2 coin) and $5 bills. Cracks me up to see vending machines that say "loonies only"
American $1 coins are too similar in size to quarters though.

Here's what we use...including Loony and Toony (terms actually used by the Royal Canadian Mint):


Works just fine.

reply to post by smyleegrl


Wow flash back, how many times have they done this already? How many Reagan coins went nowhere? Why...oh yeah too similar to a quarter.

It's another way to make money out of thin air; create several billion of these "coins" with several billion paper dollars still in circulation...both get hoarded meaning they get to print or stamp more. Talk about a secret way to inject the economy with more currency. Hell it worked fine with the other dollar coins that made it out of the mint; go on ahead. I'll pretend I didn't see through the scheme; other members will pledge not to have knowledge either...and this new made up stack of billions will pull the US out of the slump and Obama will get some credit when it rebounds after all.

Salut!

I work in banking, and money is filthy! Having said that, my problem with this is that I have never had paper money leave a stench on my hands like change does! People dig change out of some nasty places!!