Debit cards, automatic deposits and electronic transfers can make money seem less like a tangible thing and more like a concept.Like love or time travel, it’s somewhere out there, just out of reach.Then, on the first cool day of fall, you reach for your jacket, put your hand in the pocket and you’ve found it. Or you open up a birthday card from someone special and it spills out in your lap.
And money is no longer just a theory; it’s cold, hard cash in your hot little hand.
Talk about the prime interest rate or the value of a dollar versus the euro and we all know it’s important, but it’s hard to feel interested. However, when it comes to changing the look and feel of currency, passions get heated.
A federal appeals court ruled last week that the government is discriminating against blind people because they cannot differentiate between bills.
A stronger argument could probably be made that poor people are discriminated against because they don’t have as much money. Is it the government’s job to make sure everyone has money and can use it properly?
What about all those people who can’t manage their finances and write rubber checks and rack up credit card debt? If the U.S. Mint could find a way to help those people, that would be quite an achievement.
Blind citizens, however, have made moving arguments about the frustration they feel at not being able to manage their own billfolds. In so many areas of their lives, they are dependent on others. They long to have some control in this area.
Financial independence is an idea I can get behind. The sticking point, however, is the cost of the solution. One proposal is to have different sizes for bills of different denominations. Every cash drawer, every pop machine, every ATM would have to be retrofitted to handle the new bills. The U.S. Treasury puts the cost estimate in the billions.
A different change in currency could really pay off for taxpayers, however. Congress is considering changing the penny from a copper-zinc coin to copper plated steel. The move would lower the cost of printing a penny from 1.3 cents a pop to less than one cent.
I’m delighted there seems to be reasonable solution to the penny problem. Some people have been clamoring for the penny’s demise because they cost more to make than they are worth. You could say the same thing about reality TV shows, yet there always seems to be a new version waltzing across the screen.
If the penny were eliminated, it would cause instant inflation of every product. Current inflation is bad enough, imagine if gas prices jumped a nickel every time they went up. On second thought, that might be an improvement.
Most of us would like to keep the penny and dollar bills. All of us wish we could just keep a little more of them
