Not Worth a Dime

Wasted, sacrifice for a new nirvana
Night time, send us on our way
--Icicle Works

When I first saw the title of this article, "Congress Looks At Doing Away With $1 Bill," I presumed it meant that, like the penny, the dollar isn't worth much any more so why keep it around. Just today, in fact, Judge Nap observed that the value of the dollar has declined 93% since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

But the point of the article wasn't to suggest the devaluation of the dollar. Instead it was the cost of maintaining paper dollars that deteriorate and wreak havoc on payments systems such as vending machines. the laughable thing about such an initiative is that the estimated cost savings to tax payers, about $4.4 billion over 30 years, is miniscule compared to the $trillions of dollar depreciation done courtesy of federal government monetary printing presses.

So the idea is to make coins. Not from precious metal, of course, but from alloys similar to those that comprise the cheap euro coins.

Were we to return to 90% silver-based dollars last struck in 1935, then the new $1 coins would be about half the size of current dimes.