Posted on 03/09/2011 1:27:21 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
Americans are a tight-fisted people when it comes to their dollars.
So in order to replace the paper currency with dollar coins -- a long-advocated move that could save the government an estimated $5.5. billion over 30 years -- the General Accountability Office called on Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to help yank the $1 note from circulation.
In the past 20 years, the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, has issued four recommendations for a switch to metal dollars in order to save all the money spent to replace worn-out dollar bills. Dollar bills last longer than they used to and now have a life span of up to 40 months. But the coins have an average life span of 30 years.
The most recent study suggests that if a transition to dollar coins began this year, the annual net benefits derived from the cheaper production costs of coins and their greater durability would exceed the initial startup costs of minting more coins by the fifth year. And over 30 years, it would save taxpayers an annual $184 million.
But so far, all the government efforts to get the public to use the more than 4 million dollar coins in circulation have met with only "moderate success," GAO official David Wise said in the latest report to Congress.
"The United States is one of the most conservative countries when it comes to the use of coinage," said Ute Wartenberg, executive director of the American Numismatic Society and a member of the government's Coinage Advisory Committee, a group of citizens that weighs in on currency policy and designs.
Several surveys commissioned by the GAO suggest that the public is wary of giving up its George Washingtons, simply because it's what they know and because they are reluctant to carry around more coins.
In the most recent survey, a Gallup poll conducted in 2006, 79 percent of respondents opposed eliminating the $1 note and replacing it with $1 coins. Even when respondents were told the replacement would eventually save taxpayers a lot of money each year, the opposition was still at 64 percent.
"You have to withdraw the actual dollar bills, because we already have plenty of dollar coins and no one even knows what they are," Wartenberg told AOL News. "They don't use them and people refuse to accept them."
That was how the British and Canadian governments dealt with similar popular challenges when they replaced their lowest-denomination notes in the 1980s. And once the notes were withdrawn, 1-pound coins, for example, quickly became the accepted norm in Britain.
The European Union, Australia, Japan and Russia, among others, have similarly dispensed with paper notes for their lowest denominations, and all have benefited financially.
The Canadian House of Commons initially estimated that its switch to coins for one Canadian dollar would save the government $175 million over the first 20 years. But Canadian officials later determined that between 1987 and 1991 alone, the savings totaled $450 million.
In Washington, though, it has been difficult to get Congress on board, in part because legislators from the South fear the end of paper dollars would be very tough on the cotton industry that supplies the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Wartenberg notes.
Dollar production -- at a pace of 1.9 billion notes last year alone -- accounts for about 45 percent of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's currency production.
In his report, the GAO's Wise said the agency has told Congress and the executive branch in the past that they "would have to lead rather than follow public opinion for a transition from the $1 note to the $1 coin to succeed."
"This point was reiterated by Canadian and U.K. officials we spoke with, who said that the only way to transition from note to coin is to stop producing the note," Wise said. "While observing that the public was resistant at first, they said that, with no alternative to the note, public dissatisfaction dissipated within a few years."
Wartenberg speculated that the increased popularity in recent years of the state quarter series -- with symbols of different states on the back of each new 25-cent piece -- might have helped by nourishing an affection for coins.
But, she added, "trying to change people's mentality is a difficult thing."
They’re planning to start with lead slugs, but just until the population becomes inured to the notion; after that, the government is planning to convert to coins minted from congealed horse sh!t and glue.
Fact.
This is the beginning of “smart money”. Make conventional money too heavy to carry and deal with..then we will all go virtual...then we can all have smart money which magically shift its worth based on the powers that be.
We already have a whole bunch of dollar coins in circulation and that EVERYBODY LOVES! The Quarter. (Well, it’s probably worth a 1978 dollar!)
I have no problem with the dollar coin. The half-dollar coin that the ferry system pawns off on me - not so much.
Very worn condition - $3.45 Moderately worn - $3.85
Slightly worn - $3.91
Almost no wear - $4.10
If the coin is uncirculated look on the back to see if there's a small mint mark letter below the bow in the wreath. It may be blank or there may be a D. Numismedia lists the following approximate retail values as of 04/2010:
No mint mark (Philadelphia): $4.31 to $550.00 depending on quality "D" mint mark (Denver): $4.31 to $1260.00
‘They’re planning to start with lead slugs...’
BWWAHAHAA wait a minute slugs, shat n glue?
....fiddling with coins? Isn’t that what brought ROME to it’s knees along with open borders? Shoot, next they’ll be tryin to replace the good old American incandescant light bulb with some sort of goofy, poison filled curly-que wack job built in China, of all things.
The newer ones with their difference in color helped.
A pre 1964 quarter is now around $6.50 in melt value alone.
Dollar bills aren’t a problem; lose the penny first—it costs more than its face value anyway.
TC
You mean "Change"?
Susan B. Anthony buck reminds me of The Obammunist Government Motors Volt.
I remember the new stamp machines in every post office. It made change for up to a $20 bill. Change was in SBA bucks.
Now our P.O. doesn't even have a stamp machine. And no one uses the dollar that was the size of a quarter.
yitbos
First the article says the move would save 5.5 billion over 30 years. Then it says 184 million. Which is it?
I hate the loony and the tooney up here in Canada when I am traveling, just not convienient to carry you have a 10 and spend 5.01 and you have a pocket full of coins..
If you REALLY want to see some savings, how about THIS:
Congressmen must serve 12 years and have been re-elected at least 3 times to office before they are eligible for retirement (currently, they only need serve 6 -- yes, senators get retirement after 1 term, even if they are so pathetic they get booted after that term)
Retirement from elected office only kicks in at age 65, instead of right after leaving office.
THAT would save a lot more that a paltry $183 million/year.
Another example of big government telling its citizens — “We don’t care what you want and you will like what we give you because we know best.”
They are still in circulation, as well as the “squawbuck” and rather cheap looking coins with presidents on them.
There are vending machines that take $5 dollar bills and give change in dollar coins.
At another post office here in town a couple of weeks ago, for about a 5 minute period there were 19 customers in line and one clerk.
Whenever they would suggest this in the past, Ted Kennedy would get up and promise a fillibuster. Crane and co. the ones who manufacture the cotton paper for all the currency is based in MA.
Right after he died, one of the first things I thought was “There goes the dollar bill.”
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