US Comems to change

Tying up resources? I’d say the whole program has been a cash cow for the government. Although abused, I appreciate commems and don’t mind one bit giving a little to charity.

 

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Opinion? I'm giving you facts, hard to say the war debt or the decline in middleclass wealth or the rise in the top 1%'s wealth is an opinion, lol. Okay, back to the commem legislation.

 

ok, in the past 2 days i've read a thread about guns, a zombie invansion, car parts, and now polotics!

what happened to "coin talk"

 

Still alive and well my friend. We sometimes get sidetracked but rest assured we remain true to the hobby.....

 

oh good, i was worried coin talk became random talk, or somthing.:thumb:

 

Its not mandatory to read every post of every thread.

 

Oh yes it is........:devil:

 

You guys want to discuss the Legislation as it pertains to the commemorative program, that's fine.

You want to complain about what's wrong with the government or anything else government related, take it to the political part of the forum!

 

That is really funny. The good ole days when crime and graft were still obvious and exciting!

 

We can read just yours, give them a 'like', and skip the rest? That makes things much easier.

Mandy

 

The funding may be "paltry" compared to the Federal budget, but in most cases it is NOT paltry in the view of the organization. And I supposed if the government decides to keep all the money themselves (talk about an injection of paltry funding) they will NOT be employing or tying up US government resources? 482 million dollars for these private organizations has probably done some real good. 482 million dollars deposited into the governments general fund will reduce it's deficit for five minutes. And it took 30 years to raise that five minute deficit reduction. Not to mention that several of the commemoratives we have issued, and the surcharges raised, were for the benefit of the Federal government not private interests.

Frankly the only way I would support this legislation would be it it also eliminated the surcharges.

 

I don't see the surcharges eliminated. And if that ends up being the case, I doubt I will ever purchase one from the mint again.

 

Yeah - I disagree. There are other ways to fund organizations which are better than a coin program that has created so many poor coin designs. Removing this obstacle from serious commemorative design would be a positive thing. For one thing, the subject matter will be much better. To me, the Smithsonian should be in charge of commemerative coin designs.

 

"Frankly the only way I would support this legislation would be [if] it also eliminated the surcharges."

Could not agree more. I only pay the surcharges because I collect and enjoy these coins.

 

And some people by them so they can support the organization. Would they be as likely to buy the coin in order to simply give the government more money to spend?

 

the way they sell out I can not possibly see how that can be the case.

 

Er you do realize this would defeat the entire point of commemorative coins right? Or at least their original purpose. Notwithstanding we are not in fact, broke in the literal sense that we are unable to make payments on our debts, the amount of money raised by selling commemorative coins would barely be a drop in the bucket. We're not going to make any significant headway in deficit reduction selling coins. Without getting too much into the politics of it, balancing the budget is in theory simple: quit spending more money than we take in (so take in more and/or spend less).

The original point, and for the most part it still is (in theory at least), of commemorative coins is to raise money for the organization/cause/whatever that the coin is intended to promote. Take that away and the only commems. that will ever get made are whatever the government can dream up, and I think most will agree their imagination is rather limited. Passing this legislation would basically guarantee that organizations have almost zero motive to bother trying to get any recognition, and the commems will be based on the ideas that the government can be bothered to dream up. Commems would die off very quickly. Look t the classic commems; had this proposed legislation been in place then, almost none of them would now exist. How would that be a good thing, especially from a coin collecting standpoint? And since commem coins are produced almost entirely for the sake of collectors, that's a very important consideration. This legislation actually passes, the government would actually get LESS money from commemorative coin programs, because the sales of them would drop through the floor as soon as they ran out of ideas of what to commemorate, which wouldn't take them long.

P.S. Couldn't figure out how to work that in there, but it should also be mentioned that just about every commemorative coin from 1892 to the present has been a net profit for the government anyway absent this legislation. At worst the government basically broke even. They're at least supposed to be compensated for the cost of production and/or the face value of the coins out of the sales proceeds already, which unless it just doesn't sell, already happens anyway.

P.P.S. Er didn't realize this was that old a thread lol... was looking for a different thread, this came up somehow, and I didn't notice the date until I already posted. But as long as I'm here anyway... last I heard this legislation basically died in committee without ever even being voted on, and likely won't be brought up again by the new congress, so I guess it's basically a moot point for now. However those who supported this legislation should read the article posted by the OP more thoroughly; the government doesn't give a single cent to organizations that are promoted on these coins until they recoup 100% of the cost for minting them first. The worst off the government ever is for minting these is breaking even. They usually make a profit anyway from the seigniorage.

 

Better late than never!

Chris