Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- mental_floss Blog » Who Cleans Up After Seeing Eye Dogs? – Learn something new every day.
- House Republicans Want To Replace $1 Bill With Gold-Plated Coins | TPMDC – Okay, color me on the side of the GOP in this case — trash the dollar bill and, replace it completely (not optionally) with dollar coins. Save a nice chunk of change a year … but also use all those stockpiled dollar coins first. Then we can adopt the metric system, and things will all be nice and happy.
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Ah-hem. Money is already metric . . . .
£1 has been a coin for years here, given that $1 is 66p the idea of expensive paper money for loose change is somewhat ridiculous
I have thought the USA should model the dollar coin on the £1 coin for many years. I like the extra weight and thickness of the coin (assuming it’s still got the form factor I saw the last time I was in England). I like the fact that a coin of that basic form would be easily distinguished from a quarter (unlike the Susan B. Anthony dollar), and I think that the extra weight and thickness would give it a feeling of substance and value that would make it more palatable to the public than a dollar like the Susan B. Anthony dollar. At the same time, I don’t like coins similar to the Eisenhower dollar, since they were too large to carry practically in one’s pocket.
@Arty: I was referring to everything else. Yes, the US was an amazing innovator and proponent (thanks to Ben Franklin, I believe) of decimal money, ahead of the French and the Brits. Alas, since then, we’ve eschewed the simple powers of 10 in everything else, dagnabbit …
@LHussar: One of the interesting things that happens every time I’ve vacationed in the UK is it seems my wallet empties of cash far faster then it should. Then I realize I’m running around with £20 in change in my pocket …
@DaveN: Be it large, small, thick, thin, round, or faceted, the only way to make the dollar coin successful is to mandate their use in replacement of dollar bills. Or, if you want to take a bit more gradual approach, stop making $1 bills altogether and let the coins take over as the paper wears out. In either case, given the option, the American people simply won’t use the things until they have to.
Is it *people* who don’t want to give up the dollar bill, or shopkeepers, who don’t want to change their cash register drawers and vending machine manufacturers who don’t want to change their machines to accept different-sized coins? I tend to think most people will accept and use whatever they get in change. Shopkeepers and vending machine manufacturers, on the other hand, have lobbyists.
@Dave: I was joking! Silly person.
The new Polk dollars are quite nice and have indents in the sides very different from a quarter, so no worries about the blind misidentifying them.
I love the dollar and 2-dollar coins in Australia. Smaller than a quarter, but thicker. Very nice! ( I had a pair of earings made for my mother out of Aussie dollar coins!
So, you’ve got the same amount of money, just in a different form…
What was so hard about 12 pence (‘d’) to the shilling (‘bob’), 2 shillings to the florin, 5 shillings to the crown, 20 shillings to the pound, 21 shillings to the guinea, with coins for 1/4 penny (farthing), halfpenny (ha’penny), three pence (“Thrupney bits” rhyming slang for … ahem.. mammaries) 6 pence (‘tanner’), half a crown, and a note for 10 shillings (People still use “bent as a nine bob note” to mean 1/ not legal, 2/ gay). Some people even use ‘half a dollar’ for a pound, dating back to the post war exchange rate of $2 = £1!
The reverse pictures on the notes change regularly (ever 3 years or so) – the monarch is always the obverse – so we don’t tend to refer to them in the same way as the Presidents are in the US. However the colour stays the same, so a tenner is occasionally called a ‘brown beer-token’. Sizes vary to help the blind – larger notes are worth more.
You employ 7 people at 3/5d an hour on a 42 hour week. How much do you have to pay in wages? Now you see why I am glad to be born in 1969! However they kept the some of old coins in circulation for years – a florin became 10p, and the new 10p’s were matched in size and composition, just with a new design etc.
Your head of state may trust in God, ours is his personal bodyguard: the letters round the edge of the obverse are short for DEI GRATIA REGINA FIDEI DEFENSOR – Queen by the grace of God, defender of the faith – a title given to Henry VIII by the Pope (Irony, our coinz haz it).
The £1 is still the same size, the design changes regularly, and there are sets for each of the home countries (Rose, thistle, leek and harp for instance) . No doubt there will be Olympic ones next year. I like the bi-metal £2 – thinner, but looks like you could replace the silver bit with a pound.
Hmm – mistype – the 3rd para should be at the bottom!
Not a pound, a 1/2 crown it was $4=£1 – the 10/- was a ‘dollar’
Sorry
@DaveN: There’s certainly a push-back from the retail side. But I think it’s an overall conservatism amongst the American public in general to some change being imposed on them by the Evil Government.
@Arty: The Aussies and Canadians both have two-unit coins. I’m not convniced that’s absolutely necessary, especially in an increasingly cashless society. I’ll settle for one-unit coins first.
@LHussar: ‘People still use “bent as a nine bob note” to mean 1/ not legal, 2/ gay’ We use “Phoney as a three-dollar bill” for (1), and occasionally “Bent as [same]” for gay, though that usage is falling out of circulation, so to speak.
I don’t see our bills changing President, if only because any presidential selection would be highly political, and thus impossible to make happen. There are occasional suggestions to replace FDR on the dime, and I’m sure there are regular back bench proposals to put Reagan on the something (perhaps a new three-dollar bill, ahem), but …
Interesting notes on the particulars of the decimalization of the British currency. I’d be mildly mocking about how late y’all came to the game, if it weren’t that we were still saddled with inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, gallons, pounds … *sigh*
Yeah, that “Defender of the Faith” was quite the chuckle (I say, even as a good Episcopalian).
I did enjoy the home country backs on the pound coins. If you end up with ones showing that dreadful 2012 logo, though, I might have to boycott another vacation there.
I prefer bills to coins. Bills fit in my wallet and go where I go. I have to remember to rab coins and put them in pocket (OK, I have to do that with the wallet, too, but it’s automatic; coins sit in a pocket of my car’s door or get dumped somewhere in the house where they are easily forgotten).
It becomes a matter of habit and utility. I almost never carry coins around with me — but I would, if they were dollar-valued.
I guess I think the push-back from the general public would be lessened if the dollar coins the government had proposed had been more distinct from the Washington quarter. But in any case, I agree that the most effective way for the government to proceed is just to stop producing new dollar bills, and start flooding the system with dollar coins. They would need to put up with a bunch of whining, and ignore a bunch of lobbyists from the retail industry, but that would get the job done.
I haven’t seen a Polk dollar yet. I’ll have to make a trip to the bank. Unfortunately, I bet vending machines haven’t started to take them yet. Lately, I’ve been using my debit card more and more (no charges for me yet), and cash less and less. It’s a pretty convenient way to go if you’re not worried about debit card fraud.
And as long as you don’t have a bank charging you fees for accessing your own money via debit card (e.g., BofA).