Comment by nayuki

> the transition was a non-issue

I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom.

Last I checked, there are plenty of restaurants open in the state, and things are going fine. In fact, just before the MCIAA went into effect, I had a newborn, and we went out to eat one time with him in tow. We asked for a non-smoking area but were placed immediately next to a family chain smoking. We decided to never go out to eat again until we could do so without risk of second-hand smoke.

My point is that there are frequently these predictions of things being impossible or even just incredibly difficult and not worth the effort, and in the end, it's not a big deal.

I'll agree on all but one point. The cotton/linen notes feel so much better in the hand than the candy wrapper plastic of Canadian bills. I know it's a dumb reason, but I just hate the feeling.

I am suspicious of any claims about relative cleanliness. As with wooden vs plastic cutting boards, our intuitions are likely misleading.

To be an effective fomite the currency has to not kill the microbe, and it has to readily give up the microbe to the next recipient. Organic materials like cotton or linen seem more likely to simply absorb a viral envelope or bacterial cell wall, thereby rendering it ineffective. Furthermore, the porous nature makes it more difficult for the note to give up any microbe that isn't immediately killed before it naturally dies over time.

A brief search of the scientific literature doesn't seem to show any conclusive results, but it does seem like the relative performance is pathogen specific.

The linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution:

> Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.

American banknotes have numbers on them to easily distinguish the different values!

Having $1 bills is so much nicer than having $1 coins. I don't want more coins, thanks.

>Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: [...] $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills).

I especially liked that the $2 coin breaks into 2 $1 coins if you drop it right. ;-)

(j/k, IIRC that was an early manufacturing defect)

Paying by card doesn't round, the amount charged is exact cents, or at least that's the way it worked last time I was in Canada.

Very similar to the Australian system. We eliminated the 1 and 2 cent coins in 1992 without issue.

Also has the polymer based colouful bank notes. Far easier to tell what you are handing over. Also given us some good names.

$5 (Pink) = Prawn/Piglet

$10 (Blue) = Bluey

$20 (Red) = Lobster/Red back

$50 (Yellow) = Pineapple/Banana

$100 (Green) = Avacado

So you get sentences like "They needed cash so I threw a pineapple at them".

All green notes are barely there anymore... the dollar bill itself. Even the five has some color now.

US $1 coins are available at banks but most Americans don't know they exist and if you hand one to a service person as a tip they sneer at you as though you handed them a quarter or foreign money.

Canadian Tire Company should be the ones designing the bills, however…

In my country they round up if you pay in cash but they keep the cents for electronic payments.

So for instance 1.69 in cash would be 1.70 but if you pay with your phone it stays at 1.69

Canadian banknotes being different physical dimensions from each other makes them distinguishable to the visually impaired too.

There are several US states where, by law, retailers are not allowed to give preferential treatment to credit card paying customers over cash paying ones. Which means, in those states, retailers will be required to always round transactions to the cash paying customer's benefit, where in other states the retailer is allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents. This is going to cost large retailers millions.

Interestingly many of them had already put the work into updating the cash register software to allow for this due to the penny shortages during covid.

I simply don’t like coins because they are heavy. I will continue to prefer $1 bills over $1 coins. Agree with the rest of your points though.

I honestly don't know why we don't get rid of nickels and dimes as well. What can you still buy that costs less than $0.25?

That's because in Canada you actually prepared for the transition, instead of just proclaiming it in a tweet.

Same in UK but we also size each face value differently.

Which helps partially sighted people and is a good visual check.

Even though I never use cash, I’m really not a fan of coins, so I wish we did have $1 bills.

> $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills).

This has its own pros/cons...

One advantage of $1 bill over coin is the majority of people in US don't need a wallet with zipper to hold coins. Five $1 bills is much less bulky and much lighter than five $1 CAD or five 1€ coins

The US has been moving to colored denominations for awhile now.

Are they different sizes so the blind can easily use them?

I mean. I can't remember last time I used cash. Not in the last 5 years that is for sure. Once I paid someone with Venmo as that was the only way they could take it. Other than that time, I don't remember using cash at all. In SF the two only moments I can recall needing cash for is either some old self-service laundromats or funnily, chinatown where most of it is still cash. In fact recently a bunch of locations I go to often have become cashless. So you wouldn't be able to pay cash even if you wanted to. Business that are cash only do it for one reason, and one reason only, and we all know what that reason is. Slowly but steadily the volume of retail consumer cashflow is turning to digital. Cash is not going away today. Many seniors don't want / know how to use digital payments. Trends show we are moving toward all-digital. Probably 10 years from now +95% of retail will be cash-less.

> We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue.

That's because Canada had a plan, thought it through, and rolled it out.

In the US...

“We had a social media post (by Trump) during Super Bowl Sunday, but no real plan for what retailers would have to do,” he said, referring to the president’s February announcement.

We have a deranged old man posting random shit on social media determining federal policy, so of course it's a chaotic shitshow.

We elected a clown, we got a circus.

US notes also stink.

Better is very subjective here. I hate the colorful, plastic, canadian money. It feels toyish, like monopoly money. Whereas USD feels much more nice to deal with.