Dear Fanny:
I recently paid for some items at a convenience store with $1 coins, and the cashier reacted as if they were play money. After I told her I had nothing else smaller than a $20 bill, she reluctantly accepted the coins.
I'm one of the few people who actually uses the gold-colored presidential dollar coins. The U.S. Mint began turning them out in 2007, starting with George Washington and continuing with each president in the order they served. The president's portrait is on the obverse (front) and the Statue of Liberty is on the reverse.
Since four presidents a year are honored, we are now up to our 19th chief executive, Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81). The series is scheduled to end in 2017 with Gerald R. Ford (1974-77).
To me, the most important thing about the coins is that they save money. How? A dollar bill lasts only three or four years, at most, before it wears out and has to be replaced. A dollar coin will last at least 30 years.
The federal Government Accountability Office estimates that eliminating dollar bills in favor of dollar coins would save taxpayers $5.5 billion over 30 years. That's not chump change.
Besides saving money, the dollar coins are more convenient to use in vending machines and at highway tollbooths.
Whether the public likes it or not, the federal government should begin phasing out dollar bills in favor of dollar coins. What do you think?
Dear Bill:
During my lifetime, people used silver dollars actually made of silver and gold coins actually made of gold.
It's not that paper bills, or "greenbacks" as we called them, didn't exist. It's just that many people felt that coins were "real" money. Politicians argued for years whether the country should be on the gold standard or the silver standard.
In reality, the value of money depends on the financial strength of the government issuing it, not whether it's paper or metal.
Carrying around a purseful of heavy coins was awkward and annoying. So I was happy to use greenbacks to pay for larger purchases.
Decades ago, the government forced people to abandon gold and silver coins of $1 and higher denominations in favor of paper currency. Now the feds want us to revert to coins, at least for the dollar.
This is just another bone-headed ploy spawned by those "geniuses" in Congress, who passed a law mandating the production of presidential dollars.
Back in 1979, the feds tried to foist Susan B. Anthony dollar coins on the public. But the public overwhelmingly rejected them, in part because they were silver colored and could easily be confused with a quarter. The Sacagawea dollar, first minted in 2000, met the same fate although it is gold-colored.
The presidential coins are duds, just like most of the presidents depicted on them. Who really wants to see Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan on their coins? Even if Elvis were depicted, people still wouldn't use them because they're just too inconvenient to lug around. Businesses and banks dislike them because they're costly to handle and ship.
According to news reports, Federal Reserve branches around the country are storing a whopping $1.2 billion in dollar coins--which cost $360 million to mint--that have piled up unwanted. The reserve told Congress it may need to spend $650,000 to build a central vault in Dallas and another $3 million to ship dollar coins there from across the country.
While a supposed savings of $5.5 billion over 30 years sounds like a lot, that works out to just $183 million a year. That's hardly going to make a dent in our $14.6 trillion national debt.
The American people should tell Congress to tackle real spending cuts. Instead of trying to get rid of the dollar bill, the government should stop minting dollar coins.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment