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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ewomack, post: 4608062, member: 15588&quot;]The problem isn&#039;t convincing people that there is a problem. We&#039;ve had this same discussion over and over again for years now and the vast majority of people on this forum seem to agree that the US has kept to its current circulating denominations for far too long. That isn&#039;t the problem.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem is <i>making a new coinage a reality</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>We all know that it takes an act of congress to change coinage. We also know that the likelihood of Congress ever actually addressing this issue remains almost zero. They haven&#039;t yet and they don&#039;t seem too intent on addressing it anytime soon. They have far more important things to attend to.</p><p><br /></p><p>And yes, it&#039;s true that it costs more than a cent to make a cent. And it&#039;s true that it costs more than a nickel to make a nickel. But that doesn&#039;t cover the entire story. The mint more than makes up for those losses with the higher denominations, especially the quarter. So overall it&#039;s difficult to make anyone see an actual problem. There&#039;s nothing there so urgent that it would turn Congress away from other legislative matters and towards coinage. In the end, it&#039;s just not all that important in the grand scheme of things.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, coinage seems more important to coin collectors than it does to the public at large. Most people don&#039;t really care or even take the time to understand how it all works. More than once in the last decade I was the only one in a room of dozens of people who knew the person depicted on the dime. And some people didn&#039;t believe me and had to look it up. But far more people present simply didn&#039;t care.</p><p><br /></p><p>Plus, and this remains another hot topic of debate on this forum, electronic money continues to make headway in the economy. True, it may not fully replace tangible money anytime soon, but it has already diminished its importance overall, making it even less likely to appear on Congress&#039;s dockets. Congress would likely be far more interested in looking at some sort of e-money than redesigning or re-configuring the current coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Add to that the alleged lobby that a manufacturer of paper has with the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, people have mentioned this here before, and that makes the elimination of any banknotes politically unlikely. If the dollar bill doesn&#039;t get eliminated, a dollar coin will never circulate. And if the lobby remains powerful, then the BPE won&#039;t shift to polymer, either, which could also lessen the need for new coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the end, we can talk about the problem all we want. I think we all agree. But I also think anything happening anytime soon is probably unlikely because overall the country isn&#039;t losing money with the current configuration so the issue will probably never become important enough to address in the foreseeable future.</p><p><br /></p><p>Congress&#039;s direction of the mint would have to stop, making a situation similar to Canada, for anything to happen soon. Or more people would have to start to care about coinage for the issue to rise above its current status.</p><p><br /></p><p>So likely things will continue as they are until something happens to change them. Things do sometimes come along unexpectedly, so it could happen. But, barring that, things will likely remain the same for a while.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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