Would You Switch to $1 Coin If It Saved the U.S. From Wasting $1 Billion?

Switching to a $1 coin would save taxpayers about $5 billion in 30 years by not reprinting paper dollars every four years. It would create jobs for the people who make vending machines. It would save over $1 billion in dollar-coins from wasting away in a vault at the Federal Reserve.

What are we waiting for?

A joint inquiry by NPR's Planet Money and Investigations teams found that more than $1 billion of unused dollar coins are the wasteful byproducts of another failed congressional effort to replace the dollar bill in everyday commerce.

The coins have been made since 2007, but our government thinks that getting people to convert to coins has been and will be too hard and they haven't figured out how to get people to want to convert.

"We have no reason to expect demand to improve," the Fed said. "We also note that a 2008 Harris poll found that more than three fourths of people questioned continue to prefer the $1 note."

Giving them away to a financially strapped taxpaying community instead of letting them collect dust in a basement comes to mind as a good way to change people's minds.

Would you switch to a $1 coin, knowing it could save over a billion dollars from being wasted? (And while we're at it, should we ditch the penny? That's another SodaHead question altogether.)