If the Fed would put Coinstar type machines in Post Offices without charging a fee or taking a cut, I think they would find a lot more people who are willing to get their coins back into circulation.
It would have to be cheaper on an ongoing basis than constantly minting coins.
Wrapping coins and exchanging them at a bank is just too tedious and time consuming.
A large number of banks have coin machines inside that will take unrolled coins and deposit them into your account for free. Coinstar unfortunately largely targets people that don't have bank accounts.
Pro tip: Coinstar wont take a cut if you get it as a gift card. The times I've used them I just opt for an Amazon Gift card or one for the local grocery chain that I'm already going to be spending money at.
That's, uh, taking a cut, albeit a smaller one. You'll lose the cashback or other rewards that you would've gotten for using a credit card. Gift cards can also commonly be obtained for under face value.
If you don't have a bank account then it is a good deal to change for free. I doubt those without a bank account have credit cards with good cashback deals.
Yup. Last year I got rid of a whole bunch of coins that were lying around. I took it as a gift card for the local hardware, then went over to the hardware and spent the money.
Not anymore since many got sued a few years ago for being inaccurate or simply costing too much to maintain. Your bank should provide coin sleeves for free, though rolling them manually can be a hassle.
It really comes down to cost. Managing change, and cash in general is a huge time and risk bucket, so some banks eat the cost, and some pass it on to you directly through fees or hoops to jump. Most branches removed individual branch coin counters for the larger banks, using centralized processing places to manage coins. Smaller banks may distribute more load to branches by having machines in larger branches or making customers roll.
But yes, the lawsuits raised the risk profile of in-branch machines so away they went in most cases. And so did dealing with massive, heavy bags of coins, which are much harder to move than they appear from bank heist movies.
TD Bank was esp. loved by kids... but also lawyers, as it was a great story to tell: kids losing their hard won pennies through a miscounting machines, and since the machines only undercounted, "gasp, must be malicious evil banks again after our money". After multiple suits, bye bye to the machines, and bye bye to yet another way to teach folks that saving can be fun, even if it's less fun than spending.
Often separating the coins isn’t necessary either. Because the value of a coin was historically the value of the metal it contained, many modern coin sizes still have a volume proportional to their value. US dimes, quarters, half dollars, and the old Eisenhower dollar coins are all $20/lb, for instance.
On earth they readily convert. The size (historically) was determined by the volume needed to get that much mass. At one time payment was measured in weight as you could never trust the other person (or the person who fooled them) to not mix some less valuable metal on with their coins. Those days are mostly gone but the history is weight (which on earth is the same as mass) is important not volume.
> You could never trust the other person (or the person who fooled them) to not mix some less valuable metal on with their coins
Another major problem was people taking shavings from the edge of coins and trying to pass them off as unaltered; it's the reason many coins have some kind of pattern imprinted around the edge.
Hence the partially empty cereal boxes and snack bags which sell by weight but package to maximize visual perceived volume. I still recall the disappointment as a kid when I got a new box of cereal only to see that a huge portion was "already gone".
I've had the opposite experience like the person you're replying to. They wouldn't accept rolled coins, I guess because they have to break them to recount anyhow. And it's easier to commit fraud.
The last time I tried to deposit pre-rolled coins, the bank told me I could only deposit a maximum number per visit w/o a coin counting fee, and that number was really low.
Now when I'm dealing with a lot of cash transactions & the coins are piling up, I just keep them with me, and make sure to spend them when I can. Or I donate them to a charity box.
Ya know, that’s what I would’ve thought as well, but a year or two ago Chase Bank refused to take my loose change. They sent me away with the paper to roll the coins myself to bring back to them
Banks I used back in the midwest growing up always had change machines and it was a routine to bring in our change whenever the container got full, they'd turn it into cash or deposit it free of charge.
It seems way less common in CA, at least according to my experience.
The Congress has directed the Fed to conduct the nation's monetary policy to support three specific goals:
* maximum sustainable employment,
* stable prices, and
* moderate long-term interest rates.
These goals are sometimes referred to as the Fed's "mandate." [hn formatting added]
Who uses cash? The unbanked and underbanked, about 55 million adults in the USA, approximately 22% of the US households, according to the US Federal Reserve. In the USA that often includes folks like the homeless, or people from drastically lower socioeconomic classes, as well as undocumented workers, those who don't trust the banking system, and those without government IDs. [1]
This also includes anyone with strong needs for transactional anonymity, such as the Hong Kong protesters who bought transit tickets with cash so the police wouldn't be able to trace their ticket purchases/rides and arrest them based on their having gone to the protest location. [2]
Then there are other countries, such as Germany and India, where the majority of transactions are cash---though the past few years it would seem governments are increasingly trying to eliminate cash or cast suspicion on those who prefer Cash's anonymity. [3]
My mom took change into her metro area bank last week because they were giving 10% over face value for change. She got an extra $9.
Nobody keeps change as an investment, but compared to interest rates the bank was offering on savings accounts, this was an incredible return. I'm curious if anybody with accounts at other banks tried withdrawing change to deposit in this bank?
Yup. Father in-law had this quarter collection. For whatever reason he spent decades collections quarters from each of the states and had well over $500 worth of quarters. None of us wanted his quarters. He was able to sell them at 3 quarters per dollar, a 25% profit!
As a percent it was a great return, but as an absolute number it's rather poor. How long did the whole process take her (including collecting the coins and getting to the bank)? Half an hour? Longer?
There's just not enough money in that to be worth it.
For sure, it's not a business model by any means, really just a quirk of the times.
In this specific case, she had all the coins that accumulated over a year or so, and just took the big jar in on her errands. Probably added 10 minutes or so.
$9 isn't a big deal for her, but for someone who is unemployed with low earning potential, $9 (or milking the incentive structure) would mean a lot more.
Don't expect any help from the govt fixing this, it's a win/win from their perspective.
No coins means more businesses forcing credit/debit use. More credit/debit use means it's harder to hide cash transactions and therefore means more tax revenue for the govt. As an added benefit, it creates permanent paper trails that can be utilized when convenient.
I go out of my way to pay cash, now just need to make sure I bring enough change.
Here in the UK, this practice is so common it has a name: "paying cash in hand". Its literal meaning is just paying cash for something, but its implied meaning is that the recipient won't declare it to the tax authority (HMRC), and you often get a discount for paying cash in hand (so I've heard, I've never actually been offered this myself). Of course we're talking about individual tradesmen here, like plumbers or handimen, not big or even medium businesses.
Being paid cash in hand is usually how most teenagers get their first job too. If govt. clamped down on this then you'd see a lot of youngsters struggling to get onto the market, and I believe that's why they let it slide.
I'm not sure I totally buy this argument - the logic being that teenagers are only employed because employers can get away with paying them less due to lack of tax. But there are already lower minimum wages for these ages, so it'd still be cheaper than hiring older employees. Plus a lot of these jobs would be part time, so could potentially result in an income lower than the personal allowance (currently £12.5k) and be tax-free anyway
Yep, I'm in the UK too, I'm familiar with the practice - my point is just that it doesn't seem like a legitimate argument to be anti-electronic payments
Yea. But the paper trail argument is a good one. Banks holding minutely detailed info of your purchase history. A PII goldmine waiting to be exploited.
PII is more than just the classic SSN, name, and address etc. The IRS uses your last years tax data when verifying your identity for example. Your transaction history is PII as someone can correlate specific transactions to your identity.
It is personal data because it can be correlated to PII. It is not by itself PII. This is one of the most important differences between the US and EU regimes, regulating PII vs. all personal data.
It depends on context, but the US does recognize financial data as PII.
“Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
The term “PII,” as defined in OMB Memorandum M-07-1616 refers to information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual. The definition of PII is not anchored to any single category of information or technology. Rather, it requires a case-by-case assessment of the specific risk that an individual can be identified. In performing this assessment, it is important for an agency to recognize that non-PII can become PII whenever additional information is made publicly available - in any medium and from any source - that, when combined with other available information, could be used to identify an individual.“ https://www.gsa.gov/reference/gsa-privacy-program/rules-and-...
We (a country not the US) get the opposite argument. For some reason US Treasury Secretaries publicly complain that we have a 1'000 bill in circulation (not accepted at petrol stations). Luckily these days they're motzing more about our central bank purchases than about our cash, and have never bothered with unsolicited opinions on our coinage.
It makes sense if you are immoral, amoral, or has started to actively distrust what you get for your money and try to "vote with your dollars". Some of that I'd call bad morals, but not necessarily morally inconsistent.
It's my opinion that the web page is a non-answer.
It's unclear to me from the page how the supply of coins is disrupted by the pandemic. Perhaps it's because the mint is shut down, but they don't say that.
If coinage isn't an 'essential' business, that seems odd.
The first of the related links has the full answer
"The primary issue with coin is a dramatic deceleration of coin circulation through the supply chain. As of April 2020, the U.S. Treasury estimates that the total value of coin in circulation is $47.8 billion, up from $47.4 billion as of April 2019. While there is adequate coin in the economy, the slowed pace of circulation has meant that sufficient quantities of coin are not readily available where needed. With establishments like retail shops, bank branches, transit authorities and laundromats closed, the typical places where coin enters our society have slowed or even stopped the normal circulation of coin. The coin supply chain includes many participants, from the U.S. Mint who produces new coin, to the Federal Reserve who distributes coin on the U.S. Mint’s behalf, to armored carriers, banks, retailers and consumers, all of whom have a role to play in helping to resolve this issue."
What does a shortage of coins look like today? Difficulty paying for a parking space or a gumball? Is it just difficulty giving change in a cash transaction? Wouldn't stores have access to banks that arent closed to be able to give change? What's the role that coins play today that would be noticeable?
Coin shortages make it harder to pay for things in cash. Transportation like ferries, light rail, commuter rail, etc often are accepting bills and returning coins as change. If they don't have coins to provide change, you may need to provide exact change, pay more and accept the loss (this is common on buses when paying with bills), not be able to purchase a ticket, or have to use a credit/debit card. In my area, the county bus system decided to make the buses free to avoid handling money and they didn't make change anyway, and the state ferries notified people to be prepared to make exact change and/or use cards.
Same thing happens if coin operated machines with bill accepters don't have coins to make change. It might not be obvious, but the coins inserted into most machines aren't directly dispensable as change, so if it runs out of change, it won't be able to make change until the operator comes to service it, which might be longer intervals these days.
It sounds like the coin requests from banks to the federal reserve can't all be filled, and the federal reserve is rationing coins until that changes. I suspect some of the usually net coin receiving businesses aren't open, or aren't receiving the same number of coins, making it harder for the net coin giving businesses to get the supplies they need.
I can answer the "wouldn't stores have access to banks that aren't closed?" question.
I work in a niche industry that enables stores to order coin from banks. The issue is that stores can't get coins from banks because the banks don't have them either. Banks order coins (and notes) from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is shorting the shipment of coins to all major banks.
So, when a store like Target orders coin from its bank, they may order $500 in pennies. The bank then may ship them no pennies or a fraction of the order, depending on the bank vault the coin is coming from, what inventory they have, and formulas in place.
Look for this issue to go on through at least Christmas.
There’s some businesses like laundromats serving areas where many folks don’t have washer/dryer in unit that are still coin operated. It’s a real impact for those since people now need to go further to wash/dry or find friends or family who will help out.
Many pay-to-use(coin or card) laundry rooms in apartment complexes are entirely contracted out to a third party company that handles everything; payment collection, machine leasing, service/repairs, etc. On the whole I think it's easier for them this way.
The small apartment building I live in is set up this way. I don't really mind, but I wish they would find a way to accept cards (credit and/or reloadable) rather than only coins because as it stands right now, I have to go to the bank and get $50 worth of "laundry tokens" (quarters) every few months, since I don't spend enough cash day-to-day to naturally collect enough change for the laundry.
That's very interesting. In my MCOL of city I've been looking at buying some apartment buildings and many of them advertise the W/D in the building as a source of revenue.
Charging per-use prevents inefficient use (very small loads in large machines) and tenants letting their friends use the machines, eventually turning the laundry room into the free neighborhood laundromat.
Some buildings have switched (decades ago) to reloadable laundry cards to avoid having to deal with change.
It's to subsidize the cost of the machines and the electricity and water.
The machines are commercial grade, depending on the amount of tenants they will have high wear and will cost to purchase $3000 each. Minimum of a set is 2 so $6000.
If you use a management company that deals in laundromat and repair, the capex is not there but you'll ave a monthly opex of about $50-100 that should include a guarantee and onsite tech. Per set.
It scales up pretty quickly because you can, maybe, push a one set onto 4 units.
--
But it's also a sign of cheaper locations and landlords to not have your own washer/dryer inside.
Up front purchase price doesn't matter since it amortizes out over the life of the machine. All you're doing is paying up front for the downtime for service it won't need compared to cheaper consumer grade stuff.
I used to do facilities maintenance for a hotel. We weren't space constrained in terms of laundry so we ran a fleet of cheapo consumer machines. One was down at any given time but it was still cheaper than introducing fewer high grade commercial machines. We had some commercial stuff that was ancient and still worked. Didn't break much less but it was easier to work on (primarily because age) when it did.
Obviously if you want to minimize downtime because you're an absentee landlord who has to pay a PM company to do a visit every time a lid sensor fucks off then having commercial machines makes sense. In terms of dollars per load the cheap consumer stuff is in fact cheaper, assuming you don't live in a regulatory capture hellscape where you are supposed to have a plumber connect your drains and gas lines (or are willing to ignore those rules).
The commercial grade machines I've dealt with in SF apartment and condo buildings were worse overall than the non-commercial ones in Victorians and townhomes. They could take larger loads and washed/dried faster, but they had worse sensors, distributed detergent worse, ran too hot for drying, and slightly damaged some of my clothes.
Having some additional charge/busywork helps to throttle demand so people don't hog them as much and make some effort to economize usage. Depending on the people served, that may or may not be necessary.
I think in CA, such charges are limited by the same laws as rent control, so at least they tend to be under-priced. At one I lived at (if SF's Tenderloin), it charged well below what nearby laundromats did per load ($1.25 vs much more for similar size).
I use a laundry service to pick up my laundry, do it for me, and drop it off. (I wouldn't pay for it if I had a machine in my apartment, but I don't, so this is the tradeoff.)
I'm glad the cost of laundry isn't included in my rent, because I'd just be paying extra.
I use a wash-and-fold service[1] at a laundromat that serves a mainly Hispanic neighborhood, and they recently started rounding my charges to the nearest dollar.
Well, take the store I work at, for example -- we've been told, by our bank that is open, that they're now limiting change orders to one roll of each denomination (for a total of $17.50), as they themselves are limited in what change they can get.
Usually, on a per week basis, we do one change order of at least over $100. Over $100 vs $17.50... The difference adds up rather quick, even if you do a run every other day (not quite sure how frequent change orders can be before they limit that too, though).
Stores are unable to handle cash transactions because they can't make change, because they can't get enough from their banks, because the banks aren't getting enough supply, apparently.
As long as that charity isn't the owner of the grocery store's yacht club I like this idea. In practice, though, the types of charities usually offered are a) the business themselves like Goodwill, or b) controversial at best (say, a Komen-eqsue figure). If there was a way to make this choice with less friction I'd be much more willing to give up change entirely.
In the past month I've received four half-dollar coins as change, which is four more than I've seen in the past decade. It seems like stores are reaching the bottom of their coin drawers; using coins they normally wouldn't.
At work, we've all basically agreed that if we run out of change and can't get any more, that we'll bring in our own jars, count it out, and exchange it for cash.
It's a last resort, for sure, but we've already discussed it. As of right now, we're limited to one roll of each denomination ($17.50) by our bank, so the need may very well eventually arise, and that means that some of my collection might just end up as someone else's change.
Or don't declare your collection. In fact, as the value of coins continues to rise, I would try to maximize (but not horde) my influx of coins, not willfully exchange them for a less-demand form of currency.
Remember, the concept of supply and demand is still valid even for currency marked with an official denomination. You could think of that marking as the _minimum_ value of the currency, as guaranteed by the state.
I think everywhere else I've travelled, someone (or a machine) giving change will optimize it to the fewest coins. £3.85 would be £2, £1, 50p, 20p, 10p, 5p.
The only exception is something like a food stall that's set all their prices to multiples of €1 (I've seen this several times in Germany), they might keep plenty of €1 and €2 coins for change. If someone pays with smaller coins, they have no use for them and will give them as change.
Having lived in Japan, I was a big fan of larger denomination coins. In Japan, the smallest bill is worth about $10 USD, and they have coins worth about $1 and $5. Having a pocket full of change could actually get you something nice! I actually treated two of my friends to a night out at our local izakaya for ~$100 with 20 coins.
In an effort to promote the use of different coins and bills in the US, I would take all of the one dollar bills I accumulated over X amount of time, and I would buy $1 coins (Sacajaweas and Susan Bs) and $2 bills so that I could circulate them and try to get people accustomed to them.
I ran into three issueus:
1. Cashiers would give me the wrong change for the $2 bill. They usually treated it like a $1 bill, but at times I got change for a $20.
2. Cashiers would be mildly annoyed that there was not a slot in their register for $2 bills or $1 coins.
3. I actually had one subway worker (at the T in Cambridge) actually throw the coins back at me and yell at me and my friends that she wouldn’t take our “circus money” while pounding the plexiglass. We were all in business causal and (I hope) didn’t look like circus performers, so it was an odd reaction to say the least.
Anyway, I do all of my banking remotely now, so it’s harder to make exchanges like that, but I still do it sometimes.
I really wish my fellow Americans would embrace the use of larger coins and maybe even ditch the penny and maybe even the nickel.
I think it's dictated from up top; I'd use them if they were common in circulation, but I'm not to go out of my way to request rolls of them from a bank.
Presumably a business can request them from a bank?
I would expect 50¢ and $1 coins to be especially popular with people running vending machines or other machines giving change. 50¢ coins means refilling it less frequently, and encouraging $1 coins means less trouble recognizing paper money.
I wondered how the coin mechanisms on pool tables work in the USA, since nowadays it's probably not unusual for the price to be more than $1 or $1.50 (depending whether the mechanism has 4 or 6 slots). In Europe they just take whatever mixture of coins is appropriate, an image search suggests in the USA one must buy metal tokens to feed the machine.
I remember trying to feed about $6 in quarters into a payphone in the USA, when there was some issue with travel insurance and we had to make a call to Britain. We couldn't put them in fast enough. Eventually, the cheap motel let us use their normal phone.
(The first two are still in widespread use in the UK, although I haven't seen them much in Denmark or Sweden. Here, they're more likely to have replaced the coin slot with a contactless card reader.)
I've heard that some banks will no longer take large amounts of change from people. I'm not sure if they got rid of the change counting machines, or just don't want to deal with it. This could have some effect on the amount of change in circulation. People then have jars/ashtrays/drawers of change that they can't easily put back into supply.
Yep, same in rural North Dakota. All the self serves are card only. Screws up a lot of people here, but we already almost forced a lot of people to get Walmart Money Card or the equivalent because they were required to switch to direct deposit during the stay at home, or have their checks mailed. Welcome to more pain for the unbanked.
Is this a uniquely US issue, and if so, why? Other countries have enacted similar lockdowns, wouldn't a coin shortage show up elsewhere given similar circumstances?
In Europe it is generally cheaper as a merchant to take credit vs cash, because they have low credit processing fees. Because of this they take credit for pretty much any transaction.
In the US, it's not uncommon to see places only take credit for purchases over $20, especially restaurants.
Have you been to Germany? Good luck with getting any cards accepted. And I think you misuse credit for debit - in UK many online retailers only accept debit cards and until the lockdown many mom and pops still really seemed to hate getting out that card machine.
I lived in the UK for decades, and I don't recall a place that only accepted debit cards. The fees are slightly lower for debit vs credit cards, but they're low for both types of card.
Plenty of places in Europe don't accept AmEx, it still has high fees.
It's true that Germans prefer cash, but that's not necessarily because of the cost of processing cards. Most supermarkets accept cards, but the average German uses a card slightly more than once a week.
> In the US, it's not uncommon to see places only take credit for purchases over $20, especially restaurants.
This must be semi-regional because it's definitely not the case in the Minneapolis area (or the Midwest in general as far as I've seen). Even mom and pop restaurants will gladly take your credit card. If it exists at all, the minimum I've seen is $5, I've never seen a $20 minimum (not saying it doesn't exist, but it's definitely not "common"). Of course, the US is a huge place, so it definitely could be a regional thing.
This minimum card payment is not uncommon in Switzerland at mom-and-pop shops, in my experience. Chain stores and larger businesses always accept card payments, but I still need cash once in a while. I haven't actually seen this in restaurants in the US in a long time, although I have at some other small businesses, so maybe it's also somewhat regional.
Payment networks are relatively expensive in Switzerland and some contracts still charge a flat fee + percentage on every transaction, that's why you see these minimums at bakery shops and the like. Hopefully they'll eventually go away.
It's not unique to the US. Last month I was at a shop in Barcelona, Spain, and the shopkeeper told me she was glad I was paying with coins because they were running out of them.
Did you get a sense for whether the higher denomination coins like €1 and €2 are getting impacted as much as lower ones? I'm trying to think of a reason that this effect would be coin-specific and not just, for instance, a function of the denomination.
The numbers are kind of all over the place depending on the source, and I'd imagine the ~40 million people on unemployment would be holding on to hard currency pretty tightly too.
So I went to this store yesterday. The cashier asked me if I wanted to donate the change to the Childrens' Hospital. By either brilliance or great timing, they started doing this about the time the coin shortage started.
It's odd how the article dances around the true problem: when push comes to shove, there's not enough supply to go around.
On the one hand, it's a pattern that's played out over and over again this year. Toilet Paper. Paper Towels. Meat. Canned goods. Flour. Even yeast.
On the other hand, the Fed is the sole agency in charge of US currency. It swears up and down that there is plenty of physical currency to satisfy all needs. And it can't deliver on the simple promise of supplying coins.
For the past 4 weeks I was in North West Florida and it was almost impossible to get coins. I went to 3 grocery stores and they all denied me. Gas stations even had signs warning customers to use exact change. The credit unions in my network wouldn’t give anything out either.
Thankfully Loomis dropped a bunch off at my condo’s property management office. Most places told me they were only accepting new coins from the cash delivery companies due to COVID.
Will this hasten the, presumably, eventual move to a 100% digital economy? I’d like to see statistics on how often people use analog money. Is there correlation by certain socio economic classes? I imagine drug dealers are 100% analog while CEOs are 100% digital. Where does everyone in between land?
Can I be that guy and point out that "analog money" is a horrible misnomer? There is nothing analog about coins and notes - you cannot split a note in arbitrary fractions.
Not everyone. I personally have not touched cash in 15 years or so. I really haven’t had any need to. In all that time I haven’t had a single experience where card was not accepted.
I once had a friend who was bleeding from a head wound from getting attacked on the street. Not life threatening, but messy.
The complication was that it was 1am, new year’s day (NYE night, an hour after midnight), on Union Square in NYC, and it was raining.
Not ideal conditions in the pre-Uber world.
Had I not had $400 in cash to flag down a limo(!) and dissuade him from his scheduled appointment, she would have spent the next 3 hours bleeding either on the subway or on foot as we walked back to Brooklyn.
Another time, I got stopped on the highway to the Cancun airport driving back from Tulum. The cop kept saying something about how he would have to write me a ticket, over and over again. Eventually it clicked, and I asked “is it okay if I just pay the fine here?”
Well, there’s the issue. I’m a middle class person who has never (in nearly 50 years) interacted with coat check, valet, bellhops, delivery runners, etc. As for grease/bribes... I’ve definitely never even considered doing such a thing. I think you live an entirely different lifestyle than us poor peons.
Tipping sustenance wage earners (bartenders, wait staff in restaurants, et c) in anything but cash in the US is also quite a dick move.
Sure, cards are convenient, but you are in effect tipping 15% less for your own convenience.
Additionally, most of the big food delivery apps have a history of skimming or outright stealing in-app tips, so it’s best to always tip delivery drivers in cash, too.
Always tip in cash. It’s the only way to make sure they get all of it, without a portion being skimmed off to pay for bombs to mass murder Afghan kids.
Yeah, I’ve never interacted with a bartender, and the kind of restaurants I frequent don’t expect cash tips. McDs is still considered a high end restaurant, right?
In 50 years I’ve never interacted with those professions, much less 15. I don’t think I’ve even met anyone who lives the kind of lifestyle that would interact with bell hops, coat check, etc.
> I’d like to see statistics on how often people use analog money.
Probably heavily skewed right now compared to normal. As of a week ago, my grocery store does not accept cash (at least at the self-serve lanes, which seem to take about 1/3 of customers) because they don't have the coins to make change.
Low level weed dealers are almost never arrested, and if they are it’s because they made a mistake in a car or someone ratted them out. It may leave a paper trail, but if no one ever looks.. A series of Venmo payments with “food” and “rent” in the subject lines will likely not raise eyebrows.
The actual risk of selling weed is far lower than the perceived risk of selling it.
I think it might be worth it to consider what coins we use nowadays. When the half-penny was abolished, it had more purchasing power than a dime. [1] Could we get rid of at least the penny so there is less waste?
Why are coins more impacted than bills? Shouldn't a slowdown in the movement of cash throughout the economy affect both coins and bills roughly equally?
Tha article states that closure of bank premises is driving the shortage. You can get new coins at banks. You can't get coins from ATMs or grocery store cash-back.
My bank told me the reason is the feds are capacity limited on coin decontamination. Bills they just burn and print more, but coins cost too much to re-smelt.
I cannot speak to the specific challenges in the banking industry, but from a manufacturing perspective, you can't just add a week of inventory without a ton of headache.
For most supply chains, adding a week of inventory would mean bringing on additional warehousing space and filling everything they have to the gills. I'm familiar with a factory who has a few hours of inventory on-site, and no more than ~3 days in the accompanying warehouse. They'd need about 2 more equal size warehouses to add a week of inventory.
A quarter today is worth less than a penny in 1900. Maybe this is a good time to get rid of all coins except maybe the quarter. It is frankly ridiculous to be dealing with pennies, nickels, and dimes, worthless coins.
when is the last time someone used a coin to pay for something that wasn't a coin operated machine. Just get rid of them, or make coins that are worth >= $1
Canceling refunds the extra amount to my balance. The app only charges the balance once a month.
You can't leave it for the next guy, because it's not a parking spot that's paid for. Instead, you pay to park a certain car in any spot in a larger parking zone.
Personally I see this as a good thing. The less availability means the less usage. Hopefully this can eventually usher in an era of no coins what so ever.
Not all smart people want a no-currency economy. Having all transactions being electronic means that it's super easy for financial institutions and the feds to track every single purchase you make. It's none of their business to know that much detail.
Who says it has to be all-or-nothing? I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to pay with bills, just that more people would use electronic means of payment of it were free, and that the government might come out ahead. I'm not thrilled by taxes going to pay for all the logistics of dealing with pennies and quarters, which are evidently nontrivial.
This sounds like a problem with immediate impact which will eventually (1-2 years?) go away. Creating a new payment system, deploying it widely, getting people to use it, all takes way longer than that time period.
They could build on the Direct Express debit Mastercard system that already exists to give social security (and other federal payers) a place to direct deposit funds for people who don't have a bank account.
You'd need a way to get money on the card, but that could be ATM deposits, presumably.
You're going to have to give us more information than this. Sure, lots of business models "prey on poor people", but which ones of those are threatened by electronic wallets?
Depending on what that phrase "universal banking" entails, sure. It is the case that some good loans are not being made because of the perceived risks of particular potential borrowers. I don't think free electronic wallets are going to help with that, however. Lots of bad loans are also avoided due to the perceived risk of the potential borrowers. An electronic wallet isn't going to help differentiate this.
In college, I was one of the people dependent on coin-operated laundry. If I couldn't have gotten coins, I would've been forced to drive several blocks at a minimum and spend more time and money on laundry. Inconvenient for me, but especially bad for the old lady downstairs without a car.
Judging from this rando laundromat youtuber I saw a few months back, that's basically a closed circular coin economy: you put bills in the money changer, then coins in the washers and dryers. The owner then takes the coins out of the machines and puts them back in the money changer. In that scenario, bills are what enter and leave the laundromat.
But in a regional coin shortage, someone with spare time might just choose to loot the coin machine, and gum up the internal coin economy. Banks are apparently offering an extra 5 percent on coins: https://www.kctv5.com/a-bank-is-paying-people-to-bring-in-th...
This does remind me of the stories a few years back about credit card churners buying coins from the us mint in bulk for the cash back, then depositing at the bank before the bills came due.
In laundromats, sure. But many smaller apartment complexes might have one or two sets of coin operated washers and dryers. I've never seen places like that have change machines available.
The obvious solution is to make everything digital, but that impacts people who aren't digital. Never mind the anonymity aspect.
The other solution could be to get rid of cents all together.
This is what Vietnam has done and it is fantastic not having to deal with small metal change. Although, this created a new problem, they need to lose a few 0's. Being a dong millionaire (largest bill is 500k) means you've got about $45 in your pocket. Heh.
I wasn't discounting it being a huge deal, which is why I mentioned it. But we don't need metal change for that when we can use 'paper' bills (airquotes because in Vietnam they use plastic bills).
There’s a phenomenal amount of double-think going on in this sentence.
“While there is an adequate overall amount of coins in the economy, the slowed pace of circulation has reduced available inventories in some areas of the country.”
Literally the second clause contradicts the claim of the first.
How so? The first is speaking broadly, the second refers to specific localities.
Some areas face a shortage because there is an oversupply in others, with a total supply that is adequate. Were they circulating more, the concentrations would presumably level out (or so the argument reads to me).
The economy isn’t a concept that can be separated from the rate of circulation. If there are shortages, there aren’t enough coins. If there were enough, the problem could be solved by booking a couple of lorries to move them around.
"Overall" vs. "in some areas". "The average is fine, but the standard deviation is high" is how I read that sentence, which is not a self-contradicting claim.
I believe it is implying that there is enough coins in the country for everyone. However, unequal distribution due to COVID means some specific areas are lacking.
You can have enough coins, but if they aren't circulating, then it doesn't really matter. If I'm hording a thousand dollars of coins, those coins are part of the inventory but aren't helping anyone.
It would have to be cheaper on an ongoing basis than constantly minting coins.
Wrapping coins and exchanging them at a bank is just too tedious and time consuming.