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I see that liberal bloggers from Balloon Juice to TPM are in high dudgeon because the Tea Party supports a bill to withdraw 1$ bills from circulation and replace them with dollar coins. For some reason they consider this idea to be outrageous. John Cole denounces it as "just weird" and Josh Marshall claims that such a change would be "a huge pain in the butt (perhaps literally) for every American."The criticism, you see, is that dollar coins are a huge waste of money because nobody uses them, and consequently $1 billion worth are stockpiled in vaults where they do no work but cost tax dollars to store and secure. It must be true: even NPR said so back in June!
Critics of the dollar coin seem to think that eliminating the greenback would force them to carry several pounds of coins in their pockets from now on. Why exactly would that happen? Can you think of any reason why a person would have to carry more than four dollar coins at one time? One, maybe: when the 7-11 cashier or bartender has no fives in the register. Happens every day, doesn't it?
If you've fed a parking meter or vending machine lately, you know that neither provides much of a service or product for less than a dollar. To get a few hours of parking or a plastic bottle of Dr. Pepper you need to have 6 or 8 quarters handy. In my experience, vending machines spit out a used dollar bill about as often as they accept it.
Needless to say, this looks to me like some pointless piling onto the Tea Party by some self-righteous nincompoops. I've often said that liberal ideas are too important to entrust to liberals. Likewise, dumb ideas can easily find a new home in a liberal skull.
Last night I emailed Josh Marshall about his post to ask if he was serious, and to explain what exactly would be the drawback of widely circulating $1 coins. He broke my heart with no reply. Because there isn't a good one, if these ninnies were to think about it for two minutes. So you say a cashier doesn't want to accept 1$ coins? Tell the shift manager you'll shop at Walmart until their policy changes. And if you, the shopper, doesn't want to accept a $1 coin as part of your change, then leave it in the jar for Jerry's Kids! Oh, but your change includes four 1$ coins? If you're not rich enough to leave them in the tip jar, then I guess you'll become an eager adopter of this strange new monetary artifact, just like everyone else.
As an alternative approach, you could ask the cashier for a whole roll of dollar coins, then take it home and fuck yourself to sleep with it! (And by "you," I mean "the indefinite you." Thank you for your attention in this matter.)
Interesting. This story bothered me too, for the same reason. People will very well use dollar coin when there are no more dollar bills. Just take them away, period. No choice. A dollar buys no more now than the quarters we've always carried around. Shit, it buys less. Too many quarters, you dump them into a jar then eventually cash them in. We did it in 1965, we do it now. You don't carry every single damned one you own around with you every day.
ReplyDeleteCanada and Australia have used dollar coins (Canada even has an excellent $2 coin) for years and years. If you spend any time there you'd find you prefer it. Period. The only "problem" here is making the switch in the first place.
Frankly they should have taken away the English measurements we have to use here and replaced with metric system back in the 60s. Some things just need to change. No voting necessary. No nostalgia considered. But don't look for Eric Cantor to suggest this.
So, good idea Tea Party people. I hope you succeed with this. But you're still ignorant assholes.
I think the Chinese and others are coming around to the idea that the dollar is a waste of money.
ReplyDeleteOil Can: for purposes of concision I left out my own comparison of dollar bill issue with idiotic US resistance to the metric system---totally agree.
ReplyDeleteMarginalia: what the Chinese (and others) say and what they do are, for now, two different things. Long-term US debt continues to "sell like hotcakes" at historically low yields. However, I have little doubt that our right-wing pols will find a way to queer Treasuries as a global safe haven for capital... because we're implementing our new medium of exchange (i.e., stupidity).
From out of the market place of "ideas" that currently passes for public discourse I propose a new world reserve currency denominated in lame ideas that are daily marked to market relative to hundred weights of bombastic political hot air. Given the incessant attention drawn these simply must be some kind of store of value, yes?
ReplyDeleteRicardo (Ricki that is)
Ricky: that sounds like a good first draft. I'd also propose making a derivative market denominated in Evil. It wouldn't even be very speculative---we could count on it always increasing by a compound factor because that already seems baked into the initial run of postmodern history.
ReplyDelete