Rely on what that couldn't be better served by $1 coins?
I'd rather have ten coins. They'll easily fit in the bottom of my pocket, and when I pull out change there's likely to be a useful amount of money in it.
Do you get yours from selling drugs? Mine are usually fine, very rarely in 'terrible' condition.
The fed has calculated that the seignorage vs. printing costs of switching to coins about balance out for dollars.
Pennies however: we keep them just for nostalgia.
[0] The $1 notes also go through a lot more use in their life so they degrade much quicker iirc and a bit over 40% of the bills in circulation are $1 bills too so switching over to a coin that lasts decades instead of 6-7 years (https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...) would really cut down on printing costs.
Give it 15-40 years and we'll think about it again!
Of course, by then, so much of commerce will be electronic that I don't think anyone will care about what notes still circulate, other than the $100, which is used more outside the US than inside.
1. Switching costs. There are a ton of vending machines and other automated stuff that takes dollar bills but not coins. You can say “oh they’d switch”, and maybe, but they don’t want to because it’s expense and complexity for little/no benefit.
2. Critical mass. Similar problem: nobody will invest in supporting dollar coins as long as their customers don’t use dollar coins. Customers won’t use them because they won’t accept them from banks and stores. And they won’t accept them because they know lots of infra doesn’t support them.
3. US psychology sees coins as “change”, not money. If you see someone buying lunch with change, the assumption is they’re homeless or something. It’s irrational, but so what? And it would change… if we ever got over the hump.
Don’t think of the problem like a technocrat, where any 5% improvement is obviously worth it. Think of it like a marketer, where you have to change customer behavior, and that needs a 10x value prop.
Or I guess we can think like autocrats: we know what’s good for ‘em and they’ll just have to accept it.
If modernising things is so scary you better not do it, other people will force the change on you, for better or worse, but you’re out of the loop.
Sure, someone may force the change to dollar coins on those who oppose it because it costs them money and offers them no benefit.
They're already switching because it allows them to charge higher prices with less friction. You'll likely grumble a bit while you're feeding the 4th dollar bill into the machine but a card swipe or tap is the same level of customer effort regardless of cost.
Vending machines will continue to move towards electronic payment as the preferred and eventually only widely available option, and will no longer have relevance to what a physical dollar looks like.
That's a very different thing in terms of switching costs than an immediate switch that demands replacement all at one time.
> "Customers have told me firsthand how thrilled they are to receive bills as change instead of dollar coins," said Mike Gallagher, service manager for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. "Sales on those machines have increased, and the technology has been extremely reliable." [2]
[1] I did see one coin mech in the wild that took Anthony dollars; but it was a spendy arcade game and had a dispenser next to it to get the dollar coins you needed from bills or quarters. And there were big signs about it, at the Disneyland StarCade in the 90s.
[2] https://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/technology/article/102518...
I'd much rather have £1/£2 notes instead
Specifically, it says "we haven't redenominated our currency in a while".