Mo' Money

Why do we even still have a $1 bill? Even before the Euro, coins usually covered everything up to about $2. If you pulled out a bill, it was 5 marks or 10 francs or 20 billion lire or something of similar value.

People always say the same thing: "Americans just can't get used to a $1 coin." More conservative-minded folks will claim it's because the $1 coin always has someone forgettable (code word for "female") like Susan B. Anthony or Sakajewia.

Bullshit. Americans can't get used to a $1 coin because we still have a $1 bill. Get rid of it, and people will use the coins. Nobody's going to magnanimously say "keep the change" and wave away $4.25 because they don't want to carry coins. Or, if they do, it'll be a major change in American consciousness that's probably for the better.

Speaking of coins, some of them are cool. I've always liked the sub-penny-sized dime. (This is a holdover from the days when they contained measurable quantities of copper and silver. As every D&D player knows, 1 gold = 10 silver = 100 copper. And something called electrum comes in there somewhere.)

But other countries have cool coins. Most of the Scandinavian countries--you know, the ones that are 20 years ahead of us in cellphone technology--have at least one coin with a hole in it. Round coins with square holes, triangular coins with round holes, maybe even sawblade coins with intricate holes that can be used as a stencil to spraypaint the prime minister's face on a wall, although I haven't actually seen that one.

If you go far enough north into Scandinavia, the Sami used to have half-ton coins made of stone, probably because of their inherent value as something you could roll down the hill to kill reindeer. OK, I don't want to try to put these in the bus exact-change slot, but I suspect it makes money seem more real.