Giving up the paper dollar for that good-looking gold coin would save the American taxpayer some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years, the government estimates.
Vending machine operators love the idea. Feeding paper money into their machines causes paper jams that are expensive to repair and vastly irritating to customers who get neither the merchandise they sought nor their money back.
But the reactionary American public will have nothing to do with logic or dollar coins. Over the past five years, the U.S. Mint has produced 2.4 billion Presidential $1 coins. Most remain in storage at the Federal Reserve. Production was suspended about a year ago because banks couldn’t get rid of them.
When was the last time — heck, when was the first time — you were given dollar coins back in change from a store?
The coins aren’t being used because Uncle Sam isn’t mean enough. All it would take to put them into universal use would be a government fiat to pull the $1 bills from circulation and, of course, to stop printing them. Will that happen? Only when it becomes a federal crime for any member of Congress to pledge support for the paper $1 bill.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
