[HN Gopher] Why did US $2 bill fail to become commonplace, unlik...
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Why did US $2 bill fail to become commonplace, unlike in Canada and
elsewhere?
Author : thunderbong
Score : 18 points
Date : 2023-11-12 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| n1b0m wrote:
| Due to a mistaken belief that they might be valuable as
| collector's items which results in them being hoarded and so not
| widely circulated.
| ksaj wrote:
| That's like 50c coins. Both USA and Canada have them, but they
| tend to be collected instead of spent. Afaik they have only
| ever kept their worth at 50c.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| i wonder what the economic impact was of all those 50 State
| Quarters books kept in people's closets
| crazygringo wrote:
| The real question is more why it _became_ popular anywhere else.
|
| Currency denominations seem to be efficient* when they follow
| roughly half-an-order-of-manitude increases -- e.g. $0.05 to
| $0.25 to $1 to $5 to $20 to $100.
|
| Adding mere doublings in there just complicates things for no
| good reason. There's already no particularly good functional
| reason for dimes or $10 bills, except we seem to want a
| denomination for every power of 10 -- it's more of an aesthetic
| thing.
|
| But there's _absolutely_ no practical reason for a $2. There 's
| no functional reason and no aesthetic reason either.
|
| * Finding a practical balance between carrying a minimal number
| of bills for any given total value (where powers of 2 would win),
| versus minimizing infrastructure like sizes of cash registers
| (where powers of 10 would save space in layout).
|
| (Edit: maybe the case is different for heavy coins though? E.g.
| $10 in $2 coins will weigh significantly less than in $1 coins in
| your pocket. On the other hand, the US already mainly uses bills
| for $1, which is why $2 makes no sense in the US.)
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't know, we have 2EUR coins and they aren't such of an
| issue, they are handy.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Would it be any less useful if the coin were 2,5 Euros?
| epolanski wrote:
| It would definitely complicate mental math for most people.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| How so? Prices are rarely fixed even integers so people
| are used to floats anyway.
| epolanski wrote:
| You need to understand how people do math mentally,
| especially cashiers.
|
| When someone pays, say 6.80 euros and gives you a 10 what
| virtually every cashier does is:
|
| - tell you it's 6.80
|
| - add 20 cents to get to 7 and put them on the table
| while saying "seven"
|
| - add 1 euro to get to 8 and put them on the table saying
| "eight"
|
| - add 2 euros to get to 10, put them on the table "and
| ten, thank you good bye"
|
| Now add 2.50 euros to the mix. It gets complex and slower
| which is what you want to avoid when counting money.
|
| Same reason why we have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50c coins but no
| 25c one.
|
| Some shops have the machines do the calculation and even
| give you the change automatically, but that's not most of
| the businesses, it's more common in supermarkets than say
| a diner, a gas station or your auntie's garage.
| mlyle wrote:
| Imagine if Coke had gotten their way and had gotten a 7.5
| cent coin issued in the US...
| mlyle wrote:
| 1 to 5 is .7 orders of magnitude; 1 to 2 is 0.3; both are
| roughly equidistant from half an order of magnitude.
|
| Clearly we need $1, $3, $9, $27 bills ;)
|
| An interesting thing to think about is-- assuming the
| distribution of transaction values follows a power law--
| where's the point of diminishing returns on having more
| denominations? I know this isn't well-posed; we'd also have to
| quantify the downside in having more denominations.
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| Exactly equidistant, in fact. 5x2 = 10 [?] log(5) + log(2) =
| log(10) [?] 0.5log(10) - log(2) = log(5) - 0.5log(10).
| mlyle wrote:
| Good point-- I should have thought that through a little
| more :)
| jltsiren wrote:
| The 1, 2, 5 scheme is simple and consistent. You use the same
| algorithm for giving back change, regardless of the sum. There
| are other similar schemes, but 1, 2, 5 seems to be the most
| popular. The US scheme, on the other hand, is unnecessarily
| complex. For some weird reason, there are $0.25 coins but $20
| bills. For the sake of consistency and simplicity, one of them
| should be replaced by either a $0.20 coin or a $25 bill.
| jorvi wrote:
| > Currency denominations seem to be efficient* when they follow
| roughly half-an-order-of-manitude increases -- e.g. $0.05 to
| $0.25 to $1 to $5 to $20 to $100.
|
| Thanks but no. I'm not gonna carry around four bills ($5 x2,
| $20 x2) if I just want to carry $50.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why would you need to carry $50 exactly?
|
| You'd just carry three $20's.
|
| Cashiers and stores hate it when you break $50's anyways.
| cameldrv wrote:
| By that argument though the $20 should also not be popular and
| we should just use $10s and $50s, but the $20 is very common
| and the default bill given out at ATMs.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| It's a half measure. We need full notes and permit quarter notes.
| Even half notes exist but are rarely used.
| keep_reading wrote:
| Canada doesn't have a $2 bill it has a coin. This isn't a good
| comparison.
|
| We shouldn't have $1 or $2 bills because they fall out of
| circulation too fast, but everybody interested in this topic
| knows it already.
|
| It's bizarre how antiquated our cash is and how there is no
| appetite for removing the penny from circulation either. I really
| thought we were going to pursue this like 20 years ago but
| nope... our government is too dysfunctional for even these types
| of changes
| tredre3 wrote:
| Canada withdrew its $2 bill in 1996 (when it introduced the
| coin) but it was still pretty common until 2000.
|
| Canada also withdrew its penny in 2012. There's been talks of
| withdrawing the 5c coin recently but I doubt it will happen
| soon.
| avidiax wrote:
| Related: What This Country Needs is an 18C/ Piece[1]
|
| [1] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/change2.pdf
| ianburrell wrote:
| One reason is that registers don't have a spot for $2. It sounds
| like they have slots for $1, $5, $10, $20. The result is that
| people never get $2 as change. Which means that they never
| circulate. Any $2 that are spent are sent to the bank.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| Every register I've seen has five unlabeled slots for bills and
| five trays for coins. That usually means you have a slot for
| 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, then everything else. Coins are the same: 1,
| 5, 10, 25, then whatever else shows up.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| To be frank, I don't understand why the USD 1 bill exists either.
|
| In Europe, we tend to have coins up to the value of approximately
| USD 2, included. The eurozone obviously has 1 and 2 euro coin.
| Czechia has 20 CZK and 50 CZK coin. Poland is slightly bucking
| the trend, because 5 PLN is a coin (of value more than 1 USD),
| but 10 PLN is already a bill. Bulgarian has 1 BGN and 2 BGN
| coins...
|
| Coins can take a lot more daily use than paper money, and are
| handy to use in parking automats etc.
|
| I wonder of one of the reasons for this difference is that US WCs
| tend to be free?
|
| Toilets are paid in much of Europe, and you generally use a
| suitable coin for access, though lately some of the facilities
| started accepting contactless cards as well. Paying for a toilet
| with a bill would be very impractical. That is a frequent use
| case in Europe, which necessitates existence of suitable coins.
| But in the US, this use case seems to be rare, if extant at all.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| One thing about these free washrooms is that they're hard to
| find, they're often dirty, and a lot of them have restrictive
| opening hours. Frankly paying a small sum for use, and finding
| reliable, clean facilities might be a good tradeoff.
|
| As for coins being useful for parking, around here (Canada)
| we've already moved beyond the pay-and-display machines (which
| don't even accept cash) to - horrors - a sign with a QR code.
| Nothing worse than wanting to do a quick 15 minute stop to show
| visitors something, scanning the QR code and being greeted with
| an account signup page that demands a ton of information. But
| cash? Hardly used at all any more.
|
| The only US$2 bill I've ever encountered - and of course I kept
| it as a souvenir - was in the change for a $5 in Tanzania, of
| all places. The Plattsburgh ferry used to give either 50 cent
| or $1 coins in change for $10 - this dates me!
|
| The pre-loonie Canadian $1 coins obviously never gained any
| collector value. I got a sheet of a whole bunch of different
| years at a garage sale for face value!
| pupppet wrote:
| Personally I don't love the $1/2 coins. Bills are better for
| those of us who only carry a wallet.
| drpgq wrote:
| I remember hearing as a kid that $2 bills in weren't popular in
| Western Canada as that was the common price prostitutes charged
| and the stigma stuck around.
| the-dude wrote:
| Steve Wozniak likes his $2 bills.
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