Issuing new dollars, with a nominal value 10 times greater than today’s nominal values wouldn’t be devaluation. Devaluation usually refers to the deliberate lowering of the value of your country’s currency relative to another’s. Consider the recent changes in the relative value of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar, or the Euro. Those changes are real, not just nominal.
I recognize that issuing “newbukz” wouldn’t be easy — that’s why I said that it wouldn’t occur any time soon. However, all that it would be doing is recognizing the effects of decades of inflation, and depreciation of the value of the dollar.
In Canada, we converted the dollar bill to a coin about 20 years ago, and more recently the two-dollar coin was issued. (BTW, a two dollar bill was a lot more convenient than you might imagine — in my lifetime it was worth what a twenty is today.) Now, there’s serious talk of a 5 dollar coin. In my father’s youth, 5 dollars was a good day’s pay — now, it’s about to be reduced to pocket change.
That’s interesting about $5 per day being a good days pay at one time. It reminds me of the “Stick up for breakfast” campaign by some cereal company in the ‘70s. The grand prize was a $5 per week allowance for a whole year. As a kid I was like wow! $5 per week! It seemed HUGE.