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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29356 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?

The thing about changing how US currency works is that most people have a really hard time getting used to new coins and bills. We tried to have a $2 bill but many people just couldn’t adjust to the new type of bill and it didn’t really catch on. Ditto with multiple attempts to have a $1 coin.

It’s almost as if a large part of our population learns how coins and bills work at a young age, and that knowledge becomes fossilized and doesn’t change.

Multiple countries have changed which side of the road they drive on, adopted the metric system, or switched the alphabet used to write their official language, so clearly such reforms are possible, even if they cause a great deal of temporary confusion. The question is simply whether the inconvenience is worth it and if the political will exists.

changed which side of the road they drive on, adopted the metric system, or switched the alphabet used to write their official language, so clearly such reforms are possible

Examples of big, dramatic changes. It is obvious to people that they need to adjust, so they will. You could do a same thing with US currency, reinvent all new coin and bill designs and issue them.

In comparison, it is not a surprise why introducing a singular new denomination won't catch on if it is not immediately needed and people can keep using the coins and banknotes they are used to.

The thing about changing how US currency works is that most people have a really hard time getting used to new coins and bills. We tried to have a $2 bill but many people just couldn’t adjust to the new type of bill and it didn’t really catch on. Ditto with multiple attempts to have a $1 coin.

That's why my proposal only eliminates coins. It doesn't add any. It does add a new bill, but one I think is easier to understand than a $2 note.

It’s almost as if a large part of our population learns how coins and bills work at a young age, and that knowledge becomes fossilized and doesn’t change.

I've noticed that, too. I mean, it doesn't help that American coins refuse to have a large Arabic numeral indicating their worth like most coins of the world do, instead using arcane terms like "dime", or spelling out the numbers in English. But I see foreigners have the same confusion with bills, which should be easy to read and use. That tells me they just memorize money by rote and cannot adjust to the slightest changes in design or denominations, the way most algebra students become completely lost if you change X and Y to A and B.

One sort of odd thing is that the $2 bill is not actually that uncommon, objectively: https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_currcircvolume.htm There are about half as many of them as the $5, and nobody would be especially surprised to see a $5. But people don't spend/circulate them for what I can only assume are reasons related to business cash drawers not having a dedicated slot, so you'll never get them as change.

The only place I've ever been that used $2 bills was a local strip club that gave them to you as change rather than singles.

anecdote but when i worked as a cashier 20 years ago, we were told to always keep one $2 billa the bottom and never give it out. That way, if someone robbed the cash register, it was relatively easy to trace the $2 bill. Maybe there's a lot of small businesses keeping them around for that purpose?

Honestly, I think most of them are probably sitting in desk drawers and piggy banks because people think they're uncommon enough to be cool and not worth spending over two $1 bills. I remember my parents often using $2 bills for fun little things like the tooth fairy or hiding them in easter eggs.

A long while back when I was a troll-y 20-something I walked into a drugstore and bought a newspaper. This was back in the days of 50¢ papers, to be clear.

I paid with a shiny new Susan B. Anthony dollar coin I just got as change from a post office.

The poor cashier.

She looked at the coin thinking that it's a quarter and looked up like I was stupid. Then she looked back down and realized it wasn't a quarter. She looked back up at me with a WTF expression. Back at the coin. Rung it up as a dollar. The register opened. She looked down at the drawer. Then back up at me with a "why did you do this to me?" look. Down at the drawer. I think she chucked it with the dollar bills. Back up at me with a scowl. Drawer to retrieve a couple quarters to hand to me.

This was easily 30 years ago and I still have it burnt into my memory.

I expect it would play out the same today.

I recall dealing with both that and the $2 bill a lot in college. The ticket machines for the train didn't take cards, and for some reason gave dollar coins as change, so if I only had $20s I now had 18 Susan B. Anthonys in my pocket. Then one of the officers in my frat had the bright idea of giving $2s as change at our parties, so people would associate us with those and I guess come to parties more. Must have annoyed the hell out of cashiers.

You just unearthed repressed memories of me trying to get home from college and my pants falling down from the weight of all those damn Susan B. Anthony and Sacagwea coins from the train station.

They figured out that a few million people said "it looks just like a quarter" and the modern dollar coins are colored gold so they can't be mistaken for quarters. They are still the same size and weight so vending machines can handle them.

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