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 Replies: 64 / Views: 8,358 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1272 Posts |
I use a debit or credit card for almost all of my purchase and have only paid in cash two or three times in the past year. The same is true for all the people who I am around. So why are coin mintages so high?
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Valued Member
United States
415 Posts |
Waaaay more people still mostly use cash than you would think. I work in a bank, and I would say 90% of the people who bring in their paycheck flat out cash the whole amount instead of depositing any of it. And people with direct deposits like to pull it all out of the bank the second it goes in. It really blows my mind. I don't get how it makes sense or is safe to carry all of your cash on hand, but it seems like the majority of the people where I live do just that.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1158 Posts |
What is crazy is that we taxpayers lose about $100 million a year minting pennies and nickels that cost more to make than their face value.
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
Lots of older folks use cash, because it becomes a form of enforced budgeting. Some older folks either don't or won't use computers for electronic transfer of funds. Still others prefer cash to either debit or credit cards so they can avoid going into debt.
The use of cash however, comes with it's own inconveniences.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1531 Posts |
Quote:
What is crazy is that we taxpayers lose about $100 million a year minting pennies and nickels that cost more to make than their face value. Crazy scary. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1158 Posts |
 and we probably won't need to make dollar coins for a while: "The Fed has noted that dollar coins have proven so unpopular that roughly $1.4 billion are sitting in its vaults, unwanted. That's sufficient to meet current demand for more than 40 years, the central bank estimates"Edited by tkbslc
07/07/2014 01:30 am
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Valued Member
United States
88 Posts |
As per the chart above, the cost of producing dollar bills is LESS than the interest on the national debt, so these idiots keep printing more money.
As Ron Paul said, "Imagine an art auction, where every bidder is given an additional million dollars....wouldn't we expect the bids to go up"? Or, "If the supply of Mickey Mantle baseball cards were to increase a million-fold, each individual card would become almost worthless; same thing happens to money - the more the fed prints, the less each individual monetary unit is worth."
Clearly, the Fed has stolen 96% of every dollar, in their efforts to redistribute wealth, but what they have actually done is stolen money from the poor and middle class, and redistributed to the VERY people they were trying to TAKE it from!
Circling back to this topic, printing more money is a bit of a scheme; it "justifies" some of the more eggregious things going on in Washington, and provides cover for those crooks at the Fed and the Central Banks...
-EndTheFed
Paul, Ron. (2009). End The Fed. Grand Central Publishing, NY
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21786 Posts |
The information provided by tkbsic graphically proves that the penny and nickel should no longer be produced. Message to the U.S. Government: STOP MAKING THEM for circulation. There is plenty of them remaining for collectors to last a lifetime. None of us miss the Half Cent, the Two Cents, the Three Cents and the Twenty Cents in circulation, and most of U.S. citizens would be happy to see the current half dollar in it's present form disappear. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
7613 Posts |
They keep making them because the US Mint needs to keep their Government employees busy and their management "empires" intact. In fact, the US Mint is the largest coin dealer in the world. They have thousands of employees in high paying jobs.... From management to janitors. If they were ran like a private business they would be out of business. It will eventually be privatized to cut costs. Someday.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1158 Posts |
Quote:The information provided by tkbsic graphically proves that the penny and nickel should no longer be produced. Message to the U.S. Government: STOP MAKING THEM for circulation. There is plenty of them remaining for collectors to last a lifetime. None of us miss the Half Cent, the Two Cents, the Three Cents and the Twenty Cents in circulation, and most of U.S. citizens would be happy to see the current half dollar in it's present form disappear. I think we should make the dime, half dollar and dollar coins only and kill the dollar bill. It is cheap to make a dollar bill, but it only lasts a couple years in full circulation vs 30 years for a coin. Switching to the dime, half dollar and dollar coin would let us easily remove the hundredths place from our pricing. Instead of $9.94, it becomes $9.9 or $5.67 become $5.7. The dime is worth what the penny was in 1950. Might as well let the dime be the new penny. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4901 Posts |
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Switching to the dime, half dollar and dollar coin would let us easily remove the hundredths place from our pricing. Instead of $9.94, it becomes $9.9 or $5.67 become $5.7. Yup, and a 6% tax on a $1 purchase becomes a 10% tax |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2368 Posts |
I agree with replacing the dollar bill with a dollar coin, but how will we get the general public to accept them? The Eisenhower dollar, the SBA, Presidential dollars, etc. The dollar coin, regardless of size, has a history of rejection. Anyone have any ideas on how to make dollar coins go mainstream?  |
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Valued Member
United States
76 Posts |
The thought of having purchases rounded up just sticks in my craw. I've done the math, and it wouldn't be much over the course of a year, but it still strikes me as a hidden tax on the consumer.
Eliminating the cent and nickel is just a symptom of a bigger problem. We need to get our National financial house in order and stop borrowing and spending more than we have. Maybe then our money would be worth more than the metal its made of.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1391 Posts |
I live in Idaho and we have large populations of refugees here. These people come from all over the place, some from places that the general public doesn't even know there was a civil war or ethnic cleansing going on. Most all of these people are distrusting of the banking system and are pretty much cash only. You selling a car they want? They'll drop a wad of cash on the table. A lot of them will pay cash for a house, too. As much of a credit/debit system as there is, I think people sorely underestimate the size of the cash economy in the U.S.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1158 Posts |
They are already rounded. We are just changing the precision. We decided a long time ago a
That .001 dollar coins were too small.
Besides, just as many purchases would round down. With the tax comment, yes it would be effectively 10% on 1 dollar but it would be 5% on $2 and 6% on $5.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
To answer the original question, yes a LOT of people do still use cash, but the coins are of such low purchasing power that much of the coins produced wind up in change jars because no one wants to carry all that low value stuff. But it is still needed for commerce so every year the mint has to make it all over again. As I have mentioned before if each person just puts aside, loses, or even throws away ONE coin per WEEK it will consume the entire annual Mint production.
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Replies: 64 / Views: 8,358 |
Posted 07/07/2014 12:35 am
