I guess Safire has a column in the NYT today going on about getting rid of the penny. They’re taking this on over at the Corner (various links, you’ll find them).
One guy has opined to Ramesh Ponnuru:
It would make our coin system much simpler to have two coins only: the dime, which would still be worth one-tenth of a dollar and a half dollar coin (the size of a quarter). No more pennies, nickels, or quarters. Everything would round to a tenth of a dollar instead of a hundredth. What costs less than 10 cents these days that could not be sold as two for a dime?”
That’s not the problem. How many items that cost 6 to 9 cents today would cost a dime tomorrow because nobody is going to sell them 2 for a dime?
How many merchants will round your total down to the nearest dime (or nickel) if the tax makes the bill come out to something like $2.32?
Don’t answer all at once. But you know the answer. Zip, zero, nada.
I have to say that I personally don’t have a problem with getting rid of the dollar bill. I like what Canada did — they have a $1 and a $2 coin (the loonie and the twoie). We were in Canada last year and I wondered why none of the vending machines had bill changers…and then I realized it’s because their smallest paper money is a $5 bill. Suddenly you don’t NEED thousand-dollar assets — bill acceptors — sitting in your already-expensive vending machine just so people don’t have to go find small change…and that really ought to cut the cost of what you’re vending, even if it throws a few people out of business in the bill acceptor industry.