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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17355 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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The penny is due to be eliminated in 2026. I think that does not go far enough. Here is my proposal for reforming the cash system:

  1. Eliminate all coins other than the quarter. Inflation has made pennies, nickels, and dimes worthless. Half dollars are extinct, and every attempt the government makes to introduce a dollar coin ends in failure because there is already a perfectly good dollar bill. But the quarter is still useful to pay for laundry.

  2. Pass a law that businesses must advertise after-tax prices, not before-tax prices. The United States is stuck in a shitty equilibrium where businesses advertise a fake price but nobody can break out of it because if you advertise the actual price your prices look higher and you lose costumers. Other countries have arrived at the correct equilibrium of advertising true, after-tax prices. Since coordinating the move from shitty equilibria to good equilibria is what the government is for, let's do that. As a corollary, prices must be advertised as multiples of $0.25. If for some reason a price ends up indivisible by quarters (e.g. a 30% off sale on a product worth $1.25), then round.

  3. Introduce a $200 bill. Inflation means that the $100 bill is no longer as useful as it once was. It is time to acknowledge this by creating a higher denomination note. Whose face should go on the bill? My preference would be Ronald Reagan, but if we absolutely must have a woman on the bill, let's go with Ayn Rand.

Thoughts?

Introduce a $200 bill. Inflation means that the $100 bill is no longer as useful as it once was. It is time to acknowledge this by creating a higher denomination note.

We need a $500 bill. The prior one had Cleveland, who served 2 non-consecutive terms, which means the new one should have Trump. Perhaps not ideal, but the precedent has been set.

Cleveland was on the $1000 bill. McKinley was on the $500.

We should put Denali (the mountain, currently back to being McKinley) on the $500.

I see from the $500 bill article I'm not the only nitwit to conflate the two:

In June 2024, Representative Paul Gosar introduced a bill into Congress which would, if passed, require the Treasury to issue $500 bills featuring President Donald Trump

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