“Except the people LIKE the paper dollars, which is why we keep using them.”
The reason we use paper dollars while Canadians can’t is that their government took them out of circulation; the dollar coin was all that was left. If our government wants to get rid of paper dollars they would never leave bank branches again; you would simply receive dollar coins anywhere you had been receiving singles. To their credit, Canada very quickly modified their vending machines, video games and such when they replaced the $1 and $2 bills with coins; I think it went smoothly.
Pretty soon a dollar won’t be worth the paper it is printed on...
In theory (or so they say) the reason our dollar coins are always quarter sized is for vending machines. Most of them can handle the dollar coins. Except of course that quarter size makes them even more annoying for us, so we don’t use them.
Of course as electric money gets more prevalent the whole discussion becomes more and more meaningless. I know of plenty of vending machines that take debit cards, even for cheap stuff like soda. The whole physical money thing is on the path of obsolescence.
Almost all vending machines accept the dollar coins. I use them all the time because they are a heck of a lot easier to deal with than dollar bills.