Friday, June 26, 2015

New US Money

With the possibility of saving a few billion dollars a year and joining the rest of the world why don't we update our currency and coinage.

In my youth (1930s and 1940s) a nickel would buy about what a dollar will today. Even as children we carried a few coins around for an occasional coke or some penny suckers. Movies on Saturday were a dime.  A first class postage stamp was three cents (See an earlier blog on raising the postage). Lets first go with a factor of 20. Recent calculations for common items shows a factor of 25 would be more realistic. That means todays dollar is worth about 5 cents. Just try and buy a cup of coffee for a dollar though.

In places like Great Britain you seldom see anything in the stores or markets not priced to the nearest 5p (7.8c US). You seldom see pennies. Even here in the US you dont find many pennies in peoples pockets. They are usually in jars or saucers near cash registers free for the taking when needed to complete a purchase.

What I, and I hope others, will propose is the following: eventually issue a new system of coins and notes as follows - Coins: Nickels (5c), Quarters (25c), Dollars (100c). Paper (or plastic) notes: Fives ($5), Twenties ($20), Hundreds ($100).

The only actions really required at the present, and they are real savings to the government, are (1) cease printing one, ten and fifty dollar bills and release the billions of dollar coins that exist into public use and (2) stop minting pennies and dimes. I haven't seen a fifty cent piece in ages so maybe they've stopped minting those already.

Write or Tweet your congressman today.