Tuesday, February 19, 2013

U.S. needs to stop printing $1 bills

The main reason $1 U.S. coins have failed is because the federal government hasn’t had the will to stop printing one-dollar bills.
Given a choice, most Americans will stick with what they know. One-dollar coins seem strange, but people would get used to them if that was their only option. Instead, they cling to their one-dollar paper currency.
The inability to make the tough decisions is perhaps the U.S. government’s biggest failing. Occasionally the federal government needs to take a hard stand on common sense issues, like it eventually did with the analog-to-digital TV transition. If they had more backbone, we’d be on the metric system like the rest of the world.
As recently as last November, Congress was considering whether to eliminate the $1 bill. Doing so could save taxpayers $4.4 billion over the next 30 years, the AP reported.
A $1 coin can stay in circulation for 30 years, while paper bills must be replaced every four or five years on average, the AP said.
The federal government needs to buckle down and make the change.

Related reading:
Wikipedia entry on United States one-dollar bill.

Photo: U.S. $1 bill by Wikimedia Commons

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