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“Use $1 coins: They last for decades and save our nation money.” Okay, but…

March 1, 2009, 5:27 PM

So I saw this advertisement as I was leaving the Metro on Friday:

Dollar coin advertisement

This advertisement is 100% correct. Coins in general, not just dollar coins, last for decades, and for that, they save the country money because coins, being made of metal, don’t wear out like bills do, and thus don’t have to be replaced as often as bills do.

However, in issuing dollar coins the way they do now, the United States is wasting its time and money on a project that will never catch on. What needs to happen is that the United States needs to officially get rid of the $1 bill once and for all and replace it with a dollar coin. That’s how you do it. Otherwise, the government can just bend over and place those dollar coins right where the sun don’t shine, because people will never give up their dollar bills unless they have to. And it’s about time for the $1 bill to go away. After all, the $1 bill has not seen a redesign over the course of two cycles of bill redesigns in the 1990s and 2000s.

Now of course, making sure that the dollar looks like a dollar is crucial. No one should forget that the Susan B. Anthony dollar looked and felt like a quarter. The Sacagawea dollar seemed to fix that, and I for one liked the Sacagaweas. But because the $1 bill was still circulating alongside it, it quickly tanked. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I think that idea applies here as well. With two different forms of the same thing, one is going to win out, and the one that people are more accustomed to will win, if nothing else but for simple inertia – why change?

Then of course, there’s the politics of it. I’m sure that some politician would raise holy hell over discontinuing the $1 bill. I wonder if there would be a way to make everyone happy. Hell, I’d even suggest putting Ronald Reagan on the coin to appease the conservatives (since after all, Ronald Reagan seems to have deity-like status in those circles) if it will mean success in getting rid of the $1 bill.

But regardless, the $1 bill has got to go if the $1 coin is to have any chance of success. Write your congressman today and tell him or her so.

Web site: See, this is some of what you would have to deal with and what we would need to overcome to get rid of the $1 bill, seen here in a letter from 1990. But I say it's probably doable if enough people push for it.

Song: Metro Introduces the new $1 Coin. Metro should get behind doing away with the $1 bill, especially when you consider the effort they've put into promoting the coin...

Quote: So yeah, write your congressman...

Categories: National politics