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Comment by basscomm | Hacker News Reader

We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason.

I never understood the objections to the $1 coin, especially after the redesign to make it more distinct from a quarter. $1 coins are great for buying stuff out of vending machines since you don't have to fight with a dodgy bill acceptor or a mangled bill.

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My only real objection I guess, and the reason I don't carry change of any sort, is because it's constantly falling out of my pockets. I'm rather tall, so many seating positions put my knees higher than my waist, which I think contributes to that.

Further, since I don't have enough pockets to have a dedicated change pocket, it's always getting caught up in my keys and/or pocket knife.

Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Lastly, they're just comparatively heavy.

I just carry cash around in either a clip or a "front pocket wallet" I think they're called, and it seems more convenient all around.

> Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Americans also use coin purses or rubber coin pouches, but I mostly only see older generations using them.

This was a whole thing in the 70s. There was a 3 step plan:

1) Bring back the $2 bill (it had not been printed for a decade+)

2) Redesign the $1 coin (Eisenhowers being too big and heavy)

3) Stop printing $1 bills

Unfortunately they never got to step 3, which made 1 and 2 pointless, and here we are.

Yeah. My proposal would be to have 10 cent, 50 cent, and $1 coins (rounding everything to the nearest 10 cents), with $2 the smallest bill. And probably you could drop the $5 bill at that point.

There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters, and it's probably not worth giving that up for slightly improved coinage. Just drop all the coins smaller than a quarter.

That only works if you completely reconfigure sales tax

There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters

Very good point and I think I'm convinced.

There's also the 3rd amendment. It would be worthless to say soldiers can't demand change for the vending machine, when nobody at all can get quarters.

> We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason.

It’s because retailers wont accept them - they think they’re counterfeit because no one uses them. A catch-22 situation, really.

I've never had a retailer refuse to accept a $2 bill, although a couple of times the clerk summoned the manager about it.

But I've never found a retailer willing to give a $2 bill as change.

The resistance to the $2 bill is a very weird cultural thing.

Dispensaries in OR/WA love $2 bills, for some chains they're as unremarkable as a $1 and must special request them in bulk to keep on hand for making change.

> But I've never found a retailer willing to give a $2 bill as change.

Mostly retailers don't stock $2 bills (because they're weird), so if a customer brings a $2, the cashier will put it in their their exceptional bills area, which usually is just large bills. No change is made with exceptional bills, so twos don't get recirculated.

It's hard to even get $10 bills in change these days because of the ways that retailers handle putting larger bills into the safe, and getting smaller bills for change out of the safe.

"Alright. Your total is $25.13. You're paying with $100? No, no, it's fine; I just hope you like fives and ones."

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