Coins Act Reintroduced

It's a good idea, long overdue.

There are many reasons why Americans don't like the idea of using $1 coins. I wonder how many of those presidents coins are sitting in Federal Reserve banks?

They are nice to collect but I don't want to be forced to use any $1 coins in daily commerce. There is a big difference in collecting coins and using them in commerce.

Besides that, I was just thinking, wouldn't the coins be much easier to counterfeit than the $1 bills? Of course there are counterfeit coins in circulation, but I'm not expecting to receive $5-15 in quarters or pennies but I can see someone paying that with the dollar coins.

No, I'm against that proposal of getting rid of the $1 bill. I pay taxes and I don't mind paying for the convenience of having a $1 bill over a coin option. I see this proposal as a step backwards.

If they really wanted to save money and move forward, they would slowly get rid of printed hard currency and issue a backed up plastic government cards. It would be cheaper to issue and much harder to counterfeit. And Coins/currency would be minted for collectors.

Just like issuing numbers on bills, I'd like to see tracking IDs on every cent on a card. You swipe your card to pay $20 for something, I'd like the government and/or bank to be able to see where every cent has come from. Lose your money/card, it would be just like calling the bank to cancel your card. The old ids get killed and new numbers given to you.

Someone tries to pay with a card that has money with duplicate numbers or numbers not issued by the government, it wouldn't work. If someone shows up with a duplicate number for any of the cents, it would be easy to see who's trying to counterfeit it.

But I just hate carrying change in my pocket, hate the weight, the jingle, hate having to think more that my money might be counterfeited, just a whole lot more issue with the coins than the bills.

And I'm curious about who's the benefactor of this proposal. Is it a miner? But overall, the more I think about it the more I dislike this proposal.

"wouldn't the coins be much easier to counterfeit than the $1 bills?"
A jet ink printer and paper you can get at home depot vs casting/striking counterfeit coins.....I don't know, it seems like option 1 is easier to me.
"You swipe your card to pay $20 for something, I'd like the government and/or bank to be able to see where every cent has come from."
Do you want them to listen to all phone calls and internet activity too? yikes, I'm pretty liberal and your proposal scares even me.
"Is it a miner?"
More like the American taxpayer, we need to do whatever we can to save money and this is a pain free way(for most) to save billions.

People don't counterfeit small denominations. If I'm going to waste time and material the denomination needs to cover the costs of production.

Yeeeeeeeah I knew I was going to take grief for the Buck Rogers stuff lol

And my audience are coin collectors!! Lolol

I disagree with that proposed legislation and put out an alternative, if you don't like it, that's your opinion, and I definitely respect that. I'm not a currency expert but tried to put an alternative out there instead of just saying: "No, I think the bill is bad".

But my main point was we need to remember there is a big difference between coin collecting and how daily business transactions are handled.

If I were to go shopping in a few stores and received just $5-10 in those coins I'd look to trade them in for any bill in a heartbeat. So the government better crank out a lot more $5 and 10 bills because I'm sure others would do the same. And how much would that cost? This is why I don't accept the explanation that getting rid of the dollar bill will save so much money.

As for my proposal and the government tracking stuff that a few of you brought up, As soon as you were born in the US and issued a SSN # you were traceable. Got a drivers license, government picture ID or passport? As soon as you file a return they know who you are, where you currently reside, how much money you make, how you made it . . I mean they know who and where you are already! I'm more concerned of what companies are doing with personal information than what the US government is doing with individual's information right now.

But as this IRS scandal is highlighting that its more important what the government is doing with the information gathered rather than whether they have the information.

But again I'm not a currency expert, so just "X" that portion of my earlier post out if you hate it. Lol, just forget that I even mentioned it!! It opens up political issues on privacy and this and that and to be honest lets just avoid that one, shall we? Its probably just me, but I just brought it up because I use and prefer to use plastic, checks and I'll take a $20 bill with me when I go out but I hate carrying change.

But getting back to topic, sorry I'm not for the $1 coins use in daily life, never have been, never will be. They're nice to collect but not so great to carry around. Unless its in a 2x2 or slabbed I don't want to carry it.

I have to respectfully disagree with people on this issue.

Listened to the news the past couple days? They are already doing that too.

Agreed. And there are many, many businesses in favor of eliminating the $1 bill.




Some people will, some people won't. Most retail businesses will gladly take your singles now and give you larger bills in exchange. I know it's been awhile since I worked retail but we always had a sign behind the counter that read "Need singles $1" and it was on the counter at least once a week. I don't see any reason that there would be a greater need for $5 and $10 bills then there currently is.

The currently $1 coin is barely larger than a quarter, do you go out of your way to trade in $2 worth of quarters?

If I promise to not use $1 bills can those that don't want to change pay my taxes for me? I mean, I owe far less than the $4.5B that we would save with the change.

This is a topic much discussed here.

Here are a couple threads that people need to see before making a final decision on this. The general idea is that the transition is painless and the weight issue is trivial. Well the Canadians went through this and you will find that government forcing people to accept these was a problem and that weight in the pocket most definitely is an issue.

Canadians answer dollar-coin questions.
https://goccf.com/t/141177
https://goccf.com/t/112063

Also it should be noted that it has not been verified that the transition will save as much money as they claim. One thing not taken into account in the government studies was a very real issue I learned when Canada switched to Loonies - the weight of transferring (lets say) $1,000,000.00 of metal coins costs a lot more than transferring the same amount of paper (think banks). guess where the increased costs get passed on to?

As an example, a box of half dollars ($500.00) weighs ~25 pounds. Even if for some reason, I would want to carry $500.00 all in $1.00 bills, I would be carrying about half an ounce of weight, or 24 pounds, 15.4 ounces less!

I know dollar coins are smaller, so the difference would not be as much - but you get the idea.

So although it may be true - specifically - that tax dollars are saved, it does not mean we the people save money.

In fact, in Canada there was an initial cost increase on just about everything b/c of two basic things. One was the cost increases of handling metals. The other reason was that when the dollar psychologically becomes nothing more than "pocket change," people setting prices knew Joe Public would spend more fluidly - and they did.

Polymer notes also need to be examined as a cost saver.

And one more thing: When the US half dollar was used regularly by US people, the weight issue did not come up so much because .50 was a lot more money than nowadays. You did not need to carry multiple halves.

Nowadays you need more than one dollar coin to even buy a bottle of Pepsi from a machine.