$50,000 For Halves & $2 Bills?

Although you can be a bit of a broken record, Fox (much love anyways), your passion for the subject is inspiring. The only objection I actually have is that in one sense yours is an unwinnable battle. You'll likely get your wish regarding simplification and consolidation of issues - losing the Dollar bill, larger-denomination coins - as much as a result of desirable cost-cutting as for the unmentioned 800lb gorilla in the room:

We're not really using cash as a society any more. Cash transactions at POS are down to something like 25% of all transactions, and that number is lessening every day. Heck, I'm a Luddite in my mid-50's, and the only reason I ever use cash any more is for tips. I go through two debit cards per issue lifetime, wearing them out from having used nothing else to spend money. The younger generations are even more plastic-centric.

So some of your goals are rendered near-inevitable with or without your input, and others become less-likely (vending machine reform) every day because there simply isn't enough demand to justify the investment. Heck, it's getting difficult to hail a cab which doesn't have a card swiper in it.

You can assume that any changes made to our monetary system which do not directly relate to reducing overall cost are being made for purely political reasons, because some certain plurality maintains an emotional opposition to it. Nobody in government who uses logical thought progressions in their heart of hearts is in favor of expanding anything, monetarily.

You can retool a vending machine to accept rocks if you want, that isn't the problem.

The problem is that new coins and bills require each machine to be adjusted to accept them. Most vending machines are less than 20 years old, and in that time frame the half dollar or $2 bill have been invisible. While there may be some machines around that take them I would venture to say that most do not. There is no real need nor is there a demand for these coins to work in these machines.

With pop running $1.50 or more out of machines the next big investment will be more card acceptors and bill acceptors rather than retooling for large value coins. There are vending machines around now that accept ONLY plastic, no cash. Expect to see these around more and more.

I think that any plan to introduce $2 coins in the USA and make half dollar and $1 coins more commonplace is just going to run out of time. Plastic money is king now and the prince in waiting is electronic money (pay by smartphone etc,) or maybe biometrics.

The age of cash is pretty much over and there will be nothing new in coins down the pike except for maybe a lessor alloy for the 5 cent piece. I don't think that the vending machine folks will bother making these work in their machines, just like most don't accept the penny. As for bills, the current round of improvements might be the last or next to last.

n9jig & basebal21,

One thing you don't get about "plastic" money, is credit card fraud, and identity theft. This has happened to my mother and my father at least four times, each. Maybe more. You can't steal someone's identity or run up someone else's bills, who has a $200, $500, or $1,000 bill. Sure, if you flash that 1K bill around, you could get robbed and lose all of that money, and most likely, never get it back, but its much better than a wad of $100 bills in your pocket. And even though a stolen credit card could be canceled immediately, if stolen, that does not stop the possibility of someone opening up another credit card account with your stolen identity. Therefore, I believe we should really take a few steps back, and eliminate all electronic methods of payment, and bring back $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills and issue $200 and $2,000 bills as well. I think that would be way more secure, as far as identity theft goes. Try to think of how great your "plastic" is after dealing with identity theft and credit card fraud more than a half a dozen times.