6/30/2011

The Government Should Stop Wasting Money On Money

I can't believe the government is still trying to foist dollar coins on the American public. All of their PR and educational slant in trying to garner interest in the dollar coin has fallen flat on its face.

On more than one occasion I have bemoaned the doomed-to-fail attempts by the government to get us to switch over to the dollar coin from the paper dollar. But as long as the government keeps printing dollar bills, the coins will sit in bank vaults, unused.

So far the government has wasted billions minting coins that will never see the light of day because Congress is unwilling to act to end the printing of dollar bills and make the coins “the law of the land.” Vending machine companies say it will be too expensive to modify their machines in order to let them accept dollar coins. (I find that hard to believe considering they've been able to do it for machines in Canada, and for machines in the UK to accept the pound coin, and for machines in the rest of Europe to accept the euro coin. It's a specious argument about specie!)

Either the government should end the 'experiment' with the dollar coin and stop wasting money, or it should do away with the dollar bill...and stop wasting money. But by doing neither the government continues to waste money we can ill afford to waste.