• grue@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    We should’ve discontinued the dollar bill so that these coins would get used in the US, too.

    • hightrix@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I disagree. I hate carrying any coins, while dollars of any denomination fit nicely in my wallet.

      I have a hunch that if we were to swap to these instead of paper dollars for $1, prices would go up simply because retailers would you d everything up to the nearest $5 increment.

      • bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Canadian here, between electronic payments and coins being more durable than paper or polymer money, retailers don’t have any incentive to charge a less competitive price.

      • AscendantSquid@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Isn’t the wallet thing kinda backwards though? Like, it’s not as if we all had wallets perfectly sized to carry this kind of paper money before the paper dollar was introduced.

        I figure that if coins had been the predominant form of currency for at least the past century, we’d have a great way to carry coins other than a pouch, and paper money would be inconvenient.

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        That didn’t happen in Australia when we replaced our $1 note with a $1 coin.

        But these days, it’s a non issue, because as a country, we basically don’t use cash at all

    • jonwyattphillips@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      I lived in Ecuador for a bit and it’s pretty terrible when you pay for a $5 item with a twenty dollar bill and the cashier hands you back fifteen of these coins, which has happened to me on multiple occasions.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This has been studied. The US uses a higher quality paper that lasts an average of 7 years. So it is actually cheaper than minting coins. In other countries that switched to coins, singles only lasted a year or two.

      There is nothing stopping people from using coins now. People just don’t like them.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        They’re also heavy in your pocket and don’t fit in a standard cashier’s drawer. There aren’t enough slots.

        The real good idea would be getting rid of pennies and nickels. Those are only useful for giving stores a few extra cents in profit. They set prices at $4.99 instead of $5 so you buy more. Without pennies, they’d have to set the price at $4.90 and lose 9 cents.

        • derf82@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Yeah, the US once has a half penny. Adjusted for inflation, it is worth more than a nickel is today when it was eliminated.

          But I don’t think that will give us a 9 cent discount.