HeyBub wrote:
AL wrote:

The problem is there is no need for a dollar coin since we already
have a dollar bill. The idea was obviously conceived by the US
Department of Redundancy Department...


At the risk of coining a new phrase, "It's about the money."

Dollar bills are the creation of, and owned by, the Federal Reserve System.
Coins are produced by the Bureau of the Mint.

HUGE difference.

Coins are government specie - when the government mints coins, they are
minting money. When the Fed prints a dollar bill, they are producing a
promise to pay. Not the same thing at all.

All the coins produced by the mint are new, free, money that the government
can spend without borrowing. Not so with paper.



It's pretty much an academic distinction. As long as someone is willing to
accept the representation of value it matters not what backs up the perceived
value. In the days when coins were made of silver and gold, they had a value
distinct from the pretty pictures upon them. Now that they're all made of
dross, a coin isn't much different from a piece of paper. In a few cases it
actually costs more than the defined value to produce the coin (1 cent being
a case in point).