Economically, they should move to coin dollars as well. It’s not worked in the past for one key reason: they need to also quit producing cloth dollars.
“Paper dollars” have too short a life span to be economical. Plus, the mint has plenty of coin dollars already warehoused and ready to go.
When I was overseas on active duty 20 years ago, we didn’t use pennies. Transactions were still made ‘to the penny’ and rounded. 1-2 cents round down, 3-4 round up. Worked just fine.
Except the people LIKE the paper dollars, which is why we keep using them. The government is supposed to work for us, they should stick with paper. The people don’t really give much of a crap about pennies and nickles. But we use paper dollars, the mint can shove the coins.
They studied just going to dollar coins last year. There are a lot of costs involved, especially from vending machine companies to convert to only dollar coins so the plan was scrapped.
Saving pennies and nickels is a can’t lose investment. They are guaranteed to be worth at least their face value, but could end up far more valuable. Best of all there are no transaction costs.
perhaps plastic notes like Australia has?