Abolishing the Penny
Sebastian Mallaby weighs in on Senator Kolbe's proposal to abolish the penny by adding that we ought to abolish the nickel and dime as well.
I would go one better than Sebastian - keep the dime and abolish the quarter and the paper dollar then put George Washington on the Dollar Coin. What is my rationale for dumping the quarter? If you are dumping the penny, dump the entire decimal place and round to the nearest tenth of a dollar (so the dime must be kept). We may wish to make a smaller fifty cent piece and make the dollar larger, so that the new dollar has some heft to it.
Of course, our biggest challenge is not the format of the currency but its deterioration. We should strive for Euro-Dollar parity. Discussion on how to do that may be a more worthwhile endeavor.
I would go one better than Sebastian - keep the dime and abolish the quarter and the paper dollar then put George Washington on the Dollar Coin. What is my rationale for dumping the quarter? If you are dumping the penny, dump the entire decimal place and round to the nearest tenth of a dollar (so the dime must be kept). We may wish to make a smaller fifty cent piece and make the dollar larger, so that the new dollar has some heft to it.
Of course, our biggest challenge is not the format of the currency but its deterioration. We should strive for Euro-Dollar parity. Discussion on how to do that may be a more worthwhile endeavor.
posted by Michael Bindner at 10:40 AM
1 Comments:
We could replace the quarter with a 20-cent piece (similar to the 20 Euro cent piece) so you wouldn't need 5 dimes to make change for a half dollar.
While we're at it, a $2 coin should also be considered.
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