Or, alternatively, we could cut defense spending by 1% and save that much money every year.

Better yet, lets cut defense spending by 50% and save $300B per year. Honestly, other than the big defense contractors, nobody would ever notice or care (well, people would notice that our economy suddenly had 300B of extra cash in it every year).

Academics love to get a taste of that defense budget via research grants, but yeah, agreed. Lots of waste inherent in the military-industrial complex.

Plus there’s the whole killing people thing.

The actual costs of defending the United States against Canadian aggression is probably only 10% of what we now spend.

One has to wonder how much we'd save if we simply had term limits, proportional representation or instant runoff voting.

We need representation that actually represents our actual interests instead of being so easily bought and sold.

Yup, that's the same savings as ending the Iraq war 5.5 days earlier.

We already have $1 coins. There was a recent push to get people to accept them. Didn't seem to work.

At this point, we should move to contactless cash cards that can be used like some credit cards but without transaction fees. Reducing the need to carry cash will also save money, and time. Wait, I've got a penny here somewhere.

Get rid of the dollar bill and those coins will take off real quick. After 18 months no one would miss having to jam a few dollar bills into a machine to buy a Coke.

Absolutely. Additionally, wider use of large coins would enable vending machines to sell more goods without accepting bills. We could do without the $2 and $5 if we really wanted.

You aren't thinking 'washington'

- it's undignified to slip coins into a striper's panties

As Marie Antoinette almost certainly didn't say, let them use tens.

I'm not sure what's stupider, people's attachment to one dollar bills or the idea that we need to get them to accept coins before pulling the paper ones.

I've been spending a lot of time in London recently, and it's shocking how much better things work with coins up to £2 and paper only for £5 and above. First of all, change suddenly is useful again, second of all, if you have paper money it's actually worth something. It used to be this way in the US too, I mean you actually used to buy things with a nickel or dime. Doing away with paper ones should not be such a big deal, it should be thought of as maintaining the status quo in light of inflation, but I guess it's a boiling frog situation.

It's a real nuisance to have US currency where there's stacks of identical looking bills that have wildly varying amounts, though usually after shopping they end up being heaps of $1 bills. You look like a gangster, but you only have $30.

Coins might be heavier, but they fit in parking meters, vending machines, and so on. Ten dollars in change isn't a whole bucket any more.

We got rid of anything paper below 10. So now 1, 2, 5 coins (and some for cents) and bills 10 and up. We used to have paper bills for 1, 2 and 5 before, nobody misses them.

Is that Euro?

Sadly, not yet. It's Litas. Only one of the three "Baltic sisters" (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) has joined Euro zone yet: Estonia.

I would love to know who had the brilliant idea of making the $1 coin so very similar to the quarter.

It's not that similar. There are no ridges, I've never had a hard time telling them apart. The Susan B Anthony coin was pretty badly designed, with both ridges and silver color.

A $1 coin should be more along the lines of the British Pound. It needs a nice, reassuring heft that tells you, "yes, guy who won't adopt metric, this really is a dollar."

Agreed. They should square, triangular or spherical so there is no confusion. :-)

Spherical coins would be interesting.

Oooh. 5.5 billion /pinky raised to mouth/. Add a zero or two and cut the years in half and you may have something. That kind of money in this kind of economy is rather inconsequential.

Anonymous electro cash. That's the win. I am not a fan of a cashless future if we lose our anonymity in the process.

You're right. Coins are cheaper than bills, but $183M per year isn't going to balance the budget. Basically, keeping the $1 in bill form is costing 60 cents per American per year.

It probably costs that much in gasoline carting the things around.

After the 700 billion TARP bailout that our government minted on a whim, I've never looked at Federal money the same way. If it's not 12 digits, it's definitely inconsequential.

coins work well for us here in England, might not be so great for strippers though.

If you want to save more?? switch to debit/plastic. It would be greener then paper OR coins and harder to steal (although only slightly)

Oh good--- I still have a change purse!

In 30 years, we'll be having this conversation about getting rid of the $100 bill.

We'll be in a heap of trouble, because there are no larger denominations.

5.5 billion, that's a LOT of money, that's almost 0.2% of the annual federal budget.

sigh

Hey, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to some real money.