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 And once the notes were withdrawn, 1-pound coins, for example, quickly became the accepted norm in Britain.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."
In Australia we dumped the $1 note for a coin in 1984 and the $2 dollar note for a coin in 1988. We got rid of the 1 and 2 cent coins in 1990.
To give you an idea of scale, our 10 cent coin is the same size as your quarter and our 5 cent is a little bigger than your dime. Each coin is of a different thickness and weight and there is also a difference in knurl on the edge of most of the coins.
*hurl*
Give ‘em time. That’ll come in 2019 after he celebrates his 10th year in office.
Will that be before or after they lop off a lot of zeros from the U.S. dollar?
” lose the penny first— “
Yeah - Bernanke’s dream is to replace the penny with a $10,000 bill...
its obamba and this govts own fault ...
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Sure, packs of T-shirts and socks are getting expensive because of skyrocketing cotton prices. Guess what else is made of cotton? The dollar bill in your wallet.
In 2010, the cost of making one note jumped 50% from what it cost the government in 2008.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/08/news/economy/dollar_cotton_prices/?cnn=yes
SBA dollar, AKA the “Carter Quarter”
Sounds like it would be tough trying to stuff one of these into a G String. The dancer might put up a fight.
I fully support getting rid of dollar bills. They’re filthy, disgusting, disease carriers. Ever get the ones the banks have fumigated and perfumed? Awful. They only last a matter of months before they’re shredded, and dumped into landfills.
The coins last decades, and the metal is actually anti-bacterial. You only need to carry 4 of them at most. One dollar bills are a huge waste of money.
In Canada they yanked the paper dollars quickly, though to their credit all sorts of vending machines accepted the $1 coins very quickly. A few years later, the same story with the $2. It is a pain carrying it around, but you can literally buy dinner with pocket change.
The presidential dollars look like casino tokens.
Australia dumped the penny. They just round to the nearest nickle.
Bring back the “wooden nickel”.
” They just round to the nearest nickle. “
IOW, they raised taxes without legislative action...
“Taxation Without Representation” - haven’t I heard that phrase somewhere before??
They minted at least a billion
How about shells with holes in them or maybe we can swap trinkets and beads for goods and services.
yet
I’m all for it if they use Gold or Silver to make the coins!
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