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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   21607 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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Treasury Secretary Bessent confirms limited steps toward a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that his department has prepared the design for a $250 bill featuring President Donald Trump, anticipating the passage of stalled legislation in Congress to put the president on a new denomination of legal tender.

“The president doesn’t do it; the House and the Senate have to do it,” Bessent said at the White House, referring to legislation, introduced by Representative Joe Wilson, R-S.C., that would direct the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to put Trump’s face on the new bill to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Wilson’s legislation, which so far has languished in Congress, is intended to create an exception to existing law that bars any living person from appearing on U.S. currency; the bill would allow current and former presidents to be featured.

Large denomination currency & Trump were joked about in a Friday Fun Thread at some point, but we all know jokes-->reality is a short pipeline these days. Do I expect Congress to actually pass the bill necessary to carve out an exception? No. This seems more like Bessent (who looks like a cheap clone of Donald Rumsfeld in some of the photos) doing what his boss told him to do while knowing the project is probably DOA.

Even if the stars aligned and they did pass the exception, the bills would be not be that useful. Considering how many businesses there are now that refuse to take $50 or $100 bills, a $250 would be even more limited. Aside from collectors and usual unsavory types that caused the original high denomination bills to go out of circulation, I don't imagine the average American would have much use for these.

Clearly the right person to put on it is Ron Paul

I was going to suggest Nixon.

Not a bad choice either

Really, you'd put the Watergate guy on the US's highest denominational bill? If you want real spice you put George Washington Carver on the $250 bill, that way there's a George Washington on both the lowest and highest denomination notes. And plus the seethe it would generate would be legendary.

Why would that generate seethe?

And Nixon famously took us off the gold standard. So the reason we need 250 bill is due to Nixon (ie it is mocking)

Actually competent Black guy who's been used heavily by progressives as a DEI model on the highest denomination US bill? Why wouldn't it generate seethe is the more apt question. I'd expect a red state boycott which would come to loggerheads with subgroups of themselves as they are also the types of people who prefer to keep using notes vs going to a cashless society, the tension there would also be popcorn worthy.

Nah, if you really want to generate seethe, put a gun-wielding Harriet Tubman on the bill. The black woman part will upset some part of the right, but the gun-loving Republican will piss off far more on the left. Trump’s already said that he’d like to see her likeness on a new bill, and putting her there would complicate the push to have her replace the slave-owning Jackson on the $20.

Honestly that's a good image. I approve. Seethe here, seethe there, seethe everywhere!

Maybe. It wasn’t like Carver was progressive or anything.

Nixon is only getting more and more rehabilitated as time goes on. In hindsight, Watergate was clearly a Turkey-style “paper coup”, a more subtle alternative to blowing the President’s head off in the middle of a parade in Dallas. Woodward and Bernstein had a long history of being used by the CIA to leak information they wanted leaked. Mark Felt (“Deep Throat”) was a Machiavellian little social climber who resented Nixon for not making him Queen of the FBI after Hoover died on the throne.

As long as every $250 bill is coated with peanut residue. Let's put some eugenics into the mix.

I campaigned for him in 2008 and my parents laughed at me because the stuff he was saying was outside the Overton window. I'd say I had the last laugh but actually they're comfortably retired while inflation ravages every aspect of my finances.

Inflation is getting bad enough that weekly grocery haul for a family of five can easily cost hundreds of dollars. We’ve needed larger denomination bills for a while, the only reason we don’t have them is that it makes life easier for drug dealers.

I remember seeing a study that the largest holders of US cash was Russia and then Argentina. Neither are drug dealers and both have legitimate reasons to hold dollars. I think this was not state actors but individuals so even if Russia bad actual Russians are holding dollars for different reasons.

Both those countries have a long and storied history of total economic and monetary collapse, so it would make sense their citizens would hold a lot of foreign currency. And due to sanctions the ruble in particular is toilet paper outside of Russia.

Groceries have gone up, but every time I see people on the internet quoting some ludicrous grocery budget for a small family it always turns out to be 'well we eat ribeyes and lobster for our meals, drink cokes instead of water and need enough oreos to snack on'. Normal staples just don't cost that much.

I think it depends. Yes a lot of it is “high end” stuff going higher, but I think the general point is also valid that if I want my groceries to cost about what they did a year ago, im only going to get there by downgrading my purchases. And I don’t blame people for complaining that a budget that a year ago included fresh chicken and beef is now downgraded to frozen chicken and ground beef. Or that a budget that could include the occasional treat of bakery cookies is now downgrading to Oreos.

The general point is valid for most people is absolutely true — most people are being forced by inflation to downgrade their lifestyle. Travel is definitely taking a hit as well. People who a year or two ago were flying to Florida and maybe booking a cruise are now looking for cheap local things to do because they simply can’t afford that anymore. Restaurants are definitely feeling the pinch when people look at the cost of living and realize that they don’t have the same amount of discretionary money they did last year.

A paper bag of general groceries (some meat, some produce, some dairy, some canned good maybe a bag of coffee or something etc) peaked at about $50 at large brand name groceries this year.

It dropped to about $40, but is back near that again with recent price increases post the energy price increases.

It's true that my food budget is higher than it needs to be, but also true that it's been going up without my changing my purchasing habits.

Beef is undeniably high. And yeah beef consumption in America was not always as high as it is currently, but it's not a rebuttal to claims of inflation to say "well maybe we should return to humbler lifestyles." In fact that's a concession with finger-wagging attached.

Yes beef is high, but nobody ever thought eating steak very often was a reasonable expectation for normal people.

Steak no, but pot roast or ground beef? Those were staples for my family growing up, and we were not well-to-do.

Just looking at my own grocery bill, the prices of a lot of common staples like beans, eggs, rice, milk, flour, ground beef, etc... have all gone up 100-200% in the last 10 years and my gross income has not.

When my eldest was first starting to eat solid food a log of ground beef typically went for around $2.50/lb, today I feel lucky if I can find it for $6.

Eggs are about where they were 10 years ago. Rice is 46% higher. Beans are 21% higher. Milk is 35% higher. Flour is 2.6% higher. Ground beef is up 85% -- that's the big one.

Source

ItemPrice increase from April 2016 to April 2026, not seasonally adjusted (%)
Rice, white, long grain, uncooked, per pound+53
Beans, dried, any type, all sizes, per pound+16
Milk, fresh, whole, fortified, per gallon+31
Flour, white, all purpose, per pound+4.2
Ground beef, 100 percent beef, per pound+81

Chuck roast used to be around $4/lb. pre-Covid, and now I'm lucky if I can find it for $10/lb. on sale

Just remember that meat eating is bad, so pricing beef out of the range of ordinary people is all for the greater good in the long term.

Even over here, beef prices are going up and it's harder to find the usual cuts. The fancy stuff is still there, but no way in Hell I'm paying €59.99/kg ($35/lb) for the most expensive stuff (it really is gorgeous meat, but who can afford that?)

What I'd call decent mince (not full of fat and gristle) is around $8.82/lb. The supermarket range of what is on offer has shrunk, and they are selling more mince, meatballs, diced beef, and those kinds of products.

Just remember that meat eating is bad, so pricing beef out of the range of ordinary people is all for the greater good in the long term.

I expect thinking like that in the Biden administration is the big reason for the increase (keeping in mind the market is global). It's very easy to make policies which increase the price of things. And even if Trump has found and removed them, it takes years to grow cattle for market.

But ground beef in my area is about $6.00/lb for 80% lean.

More comments

Roast tough cuts and stew meat should be though.

The problem is even ground beef is ridiculously expensive now.

M impression is that it isn't necessarily more expensive relative to incomes than in the past (well, it is compared to the immediately pre-Covid past, but the generational past), but more that we've been sold a story of getting richer, and are not richer relative to the price of ground beef.

The price of ground beef really has significantly gone up, even in the last three years. The average income hasn't anywhere near as much.

Yes, that's why I said that it was worse than seven years ago.

I don't imagine the average American would have much use for these.

A lot of the time tradesmen prefer to be paid in cash, for example a plumber who charges $3000 to put a new boiler in. I suppose this qualifies as "unsavory," since it is likely that a lot of them are cheating on their taxes. But also, there are legitimate reasons -- they don't have to worry about a check bouncing and they don't have to pay any credit card fees. Having $250 bills would be handy in that type of situation.

It would also be useful if you didn't feel comfortable giving a credit card to a business. For example if I were organizing a bachelor party or some kind of boys' night out where we all planned to get completely drunk, I would prefer to bring a bunch of cash, knowing that my maximum exposure is the amount of cash in my wallet, as opposed to the limit on my credit card. It would be much easier to carry a couple thousand in $250s than $100s for such a purpose. I suppose this also counts as "unsavory."

Last, cash has emotional impact which is lacking in checks and similar instruments. If you are giving someone a gift or a bonus or the like, it has more impact to hand them cash. For example, the annual Christmas tips to building service workers.

I guess we are headed towards a cashless society, which is great in many respects but I certainly would miss cash.

No tradesman doing sidework will be reporting it to anyone(either his boss who might write him up or to the IRS) if he can possibly avoid it. I've been 100% commercial at my day job for years, but most people I talk to who work for residential companies describe accepting checks.

I suppose this qualifies as "unsavory," since it is likely that a lot of them are cheating on their taxes.

That was the reason my local roadside egg & veggie farmer gave for why he didn't accept Venmo or anything electronic: "because then the banks know exactly how much money you're getting."

Best damn eggs I've ever had, though.

Last, cash has emotional impact which is lacking in checks and similar instruments. If you are giving someone a gift or a bonus or the like, it has more impact to hand them cash. For example, the annual Christmas tips to building service workers.

I'm always reminded of a point in my pro betting career where the best way to bet certain markets was to go to the physical cash kiosks and split bets up across them in order to stay under the radar. Betting $2000 with a click feels considerably less weighty than when you're feeding $50 notes one at a time into a machine then scuttling off after doing $400 on the first one to go to the next pub.

Would it really? IME carrying around $100 and $50 bills is just a pain. Half the places don't take them, and it's a pain in the ass to make change. The cash meta for me seems to be carrying loads of $20s and a few $5s and $1s.

I think we're overdue for a $250 bill. From 1969 when the $100 became the largest banknote, we've seen inflation to where the $100 in 1969 was worth about $800 today.

Large cash transactions are becoming difficult. If you sell an old car for $5,000 cash, just the act of accurately counting to 50 is difficult and introduces easy honest errors, which are impossible to distinguish from easy dishonest errors. Counting to 20 is much more reliably accurate.

A $100 bill in an inside jacket pocket or folded up in a cubby in your car were enough to get gas dinner and a cheap motel room in an emergency when I was a kid, now it's barely enough for the gas depending on your vehicle. A single $250 bill would serve a similar purpose today.

So it should be a Donald. After he's dead.

While there has certainly been inflation, people also don't use cash as much as they used to. I'm an outlier among my friends in that I usually have a couple hundred dollars in cash on me, but 20s are much more convenient for everyday purchases, I still make larger purchases with a credit card, and it would be a very rare situation indeed where even a $100 would make sense to carry. If people were still going to the bank every week and getting cash to cover most of their purchases, then it might make sense to create a $250 bill. But even in the 90s when a lot of people were still doing it, $100s were rare enough.

Considering it'll mostly be used for tax evasion and drug dealing, it should feature Jean Lafitte- the pirate king who lead half the gulf coast into the USA after meeting with Andrew Jackson.

I agree, except it shouldn't be Donald Trump. Why not John Marshall, who was on the $500 bill earlier?

They should make that one again, but put Al Gore on it.

I mean who cares? The annoying thing about this is getting dragged into a Trump discussion when it's a "$100 bills aren't big enough" discussion we need.

Trump's ego is the only reason this is even in the Overton window. Governments hate large bills, because cash is outside their control. No other politician has a reason to advocate for this, because they don't benefit from it. Trump benefits from it.

If having Trump's face on the bill is what it takes to make a $250 note, then all praise the God Emperor (though I still think Ronald Reagan or Ayn Rand would have been better choices).

How about George Marshall? Send a message about American power and finance to Europe.

I’m just waiting for my Ed Meese bill

It seems to me that if the Democrats want an increase in the federal minimum wage, they could probably get Trump (and MAGA Republican congressmen) on board if they agreed to the $250 bill with Trump's picture on it. Edit: Probably they could get more concessions if they agreed to make the $250 gold in color.

Or here's an idea: A $250 bill with half of the bills printed with Trump's picture on it and half of anyone else of the Democrats' choosing. (I have some thoughts about whom they would choose, but they are a bit too "boo outgroup" to include.)

I don’t think that you should have two different people on the same bills, as it introduces the threat of fraud as people cannot tell at a glance whether the bill is real enough to consider as real. If one bill has a person no one recognizes, they’d probably treat the bill as potentially fake. It also opens the weird political situation where MAGA types accept only the Trump bill and Blues only accept the other bill.

I mean have you seen what quarters look like?

Quarters are low-value enough (approximately 0.25 USD, if my math is correct) that fraud detection by humans is probably a very low priority. A counterfeiter would have to make a truly large mass of them to make it worth the production costs, and laundering all that without arousing suspicion has got to be some back-breaking labor, which defeats the purpose of counterfeiting. So given the low chance of loss and the low amount of loss from letting a counterfeit quarter through, most people don't find it worth the effort to try to detect it, unless some other alarms get raised.

Or seen the number of people who think $2 bills are fake?

Surprised they're expanding cash denominations most economies have been doing the opposite in recent decades to mitigate cash economy

Clearly he’s preparing for hyperinflation.

Technically I think it's actually staying stable. The administration removed the penny, after all.

Maybe It will Happen this year and they won't need to change the law to create a $250 bill with Trump's likeness!

I was going to say "I don't think it's particularly likely that Donald Trump will pull a successful auto-coup and establish his administration as above the law", but then I realized you were instead talking about him dying (or being killed) in office.

Both will be amusing

usual unsavory types that caused the original high denomination bills to go out of circulation, I don't imagine the average American would have much use for these.

I feel like this might be part of the point. Because the USD is so popular and the 100 dollar bill is the highest value denomination, it has become one of the de facto standards for criminal financial transactions and thus featured heavily in films and TV shows and music. As a result, Benjamin Franklin has become even more immortalized, to the point that his first name is used interchangeably with $100 in some contexts. The $250 bill would likely supplant that, and thus Donald Trump's face would be featured heavily in future films and shows about crime, and perhaps there would even be a song called "All About the Donalds." All of which would probably make Trump's ego very happy.

As a result, Benjamin Franklin has become even more immortalized, to the point that his first name is used interchangeably with $100 in some contexts.

I’ve always liked to think Ben Franklin would enjoy knowing this.

As opposed to Andrew Jackson, who is presumably spinning continually in his grave at being featured on the most-used bill issued by an institution he vehemently hated (a federal Bank of the United States).

Considering how many businesses there are now that refuse to take $50 or $100 bills, a $250 would be even more limited.

No problem, Trump is working on that, the inflation rate for April was 3.8%. (Yes, I know that it will still take 19 years for the currency to lose half its value, but I for one have trust in the man to speed this process along even more.)

Considering the eye-watering loss in value since 1969 (when the prior large bills were officially discontinued), I think The Powers That Be are fine with Americans only having bills with weak purchasing power. If you believe the official numbers, a $100 bill in 1969 had the purchasing power of $900 now. It doesn't seem like that loss ever prompted the Treasury to consider re-printing $500 and $1000 bills to try to match the former purchasing power.

If you believe the official numbers, a $100 bill in 1969 had the purchasing power of $900 now

Historical purchasing power always seems skewed to me. Like, you'll see media or historical documents from the past, and people will talk about the sheer amount of wealth, but then the calculated purchasing power isn’t as much as it feels like everyone is acting. Is it just that we as a society have been getting so much wealthier?

cigarettes

1969 — about $0.33 per pack $100 ÷ $0.33 ≈ 303 packs ≈ 6,060 cigarettes

2026 — about $10.15 per pack on average (average of $10.15 in the United States)

$100 ÷ $10.15 ≈ 9.8 packs ≈ 197 cigarettes

6,060 cigarettes = 303 packs.

At the 2026 average of about $10.15/pack: 303 × $10.15 ≈ $3,076

I think there a lot going on that doesn’t get mentioned. First the advance of technology— in 1940, a state of the art entertainment system was a radio. In 1980, it was a color TV and maybe an Atari or later a Nintendo game system with a couple of cartridges. By 1990, you have cable, vcrs, better game systems, and so on. Food is much the same. In the early twentieth century, mustard was spicy, and now it’s like not even comparable to the mild spicy food that you eat all the time. The sheer amount and variety that we expect is different. They felt rich if they had a nice family car, a color TV, and simple food in a fridge that didn’t automatically make ice cubes was plenty. We’d consider that poverty, but they felt rich because technology was moving fast and they could afford to partake. We see a decline where things that used to be things the average person could expect are gradually becoming unaffordable. The mid century saw people able to afford to eat out more, and in the 2020s people can’t afford to eat out as much as they could have 20 years ago. The same is happening with other stuff. The standard of living for most average people is declining.

Like, you'll see media or historical documents from the past, and people will talk about the sheer amount of wealth, but then the calculated purchasing power isn’t as much as it feels like everyone is acting.

Based on talking to my grandparents (very long-lived, so I heard many stories), the inflation numbers downplay the skew. There's no way a working class guy making the inflation-adjusted equivalent of what my grandfather made in 1950/60/70 could ever purchase the quality of life that he was able to afford for his family with a stay at home wife and passel of kids.

I suspect this is a skewed recounting. My grandparents married as teenagers, and would not have been able to afford the life that they had today(rent prices would be out of reach), but they also describe working long and undesirable hours, eating cuts of meat that contemporary Americans largely consider beneath them(as a minority of the meal; they ate mostly rice and pasta), relying on family and church assistance, etc.

When people talk about postwar prosperity in general there's a tendency to overstate it and align it with contemporary values, which doesn't work. Primarily for the reason that a typical 1960s lifestyle involved an amount of thrift that would seem foreign to the average young person talking about how we used to be able to get ahead. The first time my mother ate in a restaurant was on her first date with my father. What was my grandfather's job? He owned an HVAC company. Granted, it was a small residential HVAC company with just him and his brother, but the idea of someone like that not eating in restaurants would be completely foreign to contemporary society. Even when I was a kid in the 90s, eating in a restaurant was a rare treat. Nowadays I cannot even go to McDonald's on a Sunday morning unless I want to wait for an hour due to the sheer number of Doordash orders from people willing to spend $30 on an egg McMuffin because they're too damn lazy to leave the house. The same people who rhapsodize about how much better things must have been in the 60s are the same ones who give me funny looks when I tell them I haven't done any international travel. Growing up, I felt rich because we went on a big family beach vacation every year. For most kids I knew, a vacation wasn't a yearly thing. For some, it was a never thing. Now it seems like people take their kids on multiple trips per year. A paralegal at work flies with his wife and kids to Disney World multiple times per year. Either his wife is pulling in big bucks or they just live on the cusp of nothing because I make significantly more than him, but I wouldn't dream of spending that much on travel.

With respect, I think that you are veering close to the "if you didn't buy so much avocado toast, you could afford a home" meme, both by overestimating other people's frivolous spending and by underestimating the amount it costs to get ahead.

The vast majority of people are not ordering doordash McDonalds for breakfast. For the few who are, it doesn't cost $30. It costs $10 max including coffee, and maybe another $5 for delivery. The people I know who travel regularly and aren't rich and established do so as cheaply as possible - they're staying in fleabag hostels in grubby parts of town, taking budget redeye flights, etc. My acquaintances who live like your paralegal are rich as hell.

Then on the other side. I've had a big and maybe temporary salary boost lately, but before I was on a pretty decent above-median income. I could probably have bought a house by being very thrifty over ten, twelve years. That's with a PhD and a good upper-middle-class job, and for a very mid-tier house in a very mid area.

I don't think that the ordinary middle class, let alone the working class, can aspire to own a nice place with a picket fence just from cutting down on restaurants and vacations. Especially if they're not DINKs. If anything, the shift towards 'buying experiences' stems from assuming that our standard of life as children was normal rather than a freak bubble, and a deep skepticism that scrimping and saving will result in achieving goals that seem to accelerate away faster than one approaches them (b/c a lot of them are limited and competitive goods).

No, you will not buy a house through extreme thrift- my grandparents could not do what they did back then today, because housing costs are too high. But there really is a strain that thinks people in the past could doordash regularly and take multiple vacations a year on normal working class incomes, whereas realistically the mid to late twenthieth century American experience was, except for the very wealthy, one of extreme thrift to maintain far lower consumption standards than the zoomers feel entitled to.

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there, and like any foreign country Symbols of wealth aren't necessarily easily translated. The great Agatha Christie quote applies:

I never thought I would be so rich as to afford an automobile, or so poor as to be unable to afford a maid.

Considering how many businesses there are now that refuse to take $50 or $100 bills,

Is this really a thing anymore? I remember it from back in the 90s, but I haven't seen it in practice for years now.

Yes, lots of businesses have signs saying they won't take hundreds or fifties.

Like most people, I've not found out because I use a credit card for most transactions.

I do see those, but I think I've seen "no cash" more frequently within the last few years. For better or worse, IMO, a new $250 and the obsolescence of the penny and nickel seem to be in a race with the functional end of cash as a medium of exchange. Credit cards, Venmo, et al are just too convenient, and one less thing to carry.

The end of cash is also one of those things that seems to waffle politically/culture-war-wise. I think currently the "vague left" is pro-cash, while the "vague right" is pro-digital, based on Facebook posts, but I honestly can't tell anymore.

I suspect it aligns pretty well with opinions on license plate scanners. And probably both align with making occasional (federally, at least) illicit recreational purchases.

The conspiracy theory right is pro cash.

That's wild. I don't think I've seen a sign like that outside a farmer's market in quite a while, and even then they'll usually play ball if you're spending enough.

Counterfeit risk is part of it, no?

And it's increasingly just not relevant for customers. I basically never carry cash unless I have recently had to go get some to send to my kids' school. What need would I ever have to carry hundreds unless I am at a restaurant that charges substantial card fees or dodges taxes?

Final shift employees hate making bank runs, and businesses hate theft risk and working capital costs.

I stopped using cash many years ago because my wallet was getting overloaded with change, and there never seemed to be an opportunity to use exact change for anything (having only the wrong denomination bills).

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