- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
I think I know why not. (source)
The euro isn’t even a month old but there’s already some grumbling about it. Among the stranger complainers is this: 1eurobanknote.org, a site that wants to ditch €1 and €2 coins for banknotes. They’ve put up a long rant about it, in English, here. The basic idea is this:
Paying by coins will be considered as payment by „change“, everybody will try to get rid of them, feeling that the two most valuable coins 1€ and 2€ are „only“ change. That is the exact excuse for the unjustified price increases. Issuing both bancnotes of 1€ and 2€ would give back the honour and dignity to the basic units of our money.
There are so many problems with this that I don’t know where to begin. To start with, it ignores the fact that many, no, most Europeans have been perfectly comfortable with the idea of high-value coins for a long time. Germany’s Deutschmarks started with the ten-mark bill — except for those really rare, really awesome five-mark beauties. But the Germans primarily used a 5-mark coin, the equivalent of €2.50. The French had 10-franc coins, the equivalent of €1.52, before taking the euro. The Dutch 5-Guilder coin was worth more than 2 euros. The Spanish also minted coins worth about three euros. Ditto for Austria and their 50-schilling piece. Among the big economies, only Italy failed to mint coins worth more than 50 cents.
But this site seems to suggest that because some Slovenes are having trouble with the idea that coins can be valuable, then the ECB should accommodate them. Ahh, the spirit of Europe.
The petition, despite being an online one, already has about 2,388 signatures, including names like D4rt3r and Tomaž F. It’s certain to impress.
But the other problem (and the reason why there are no 1 or 2 euro bills) is that it’s expensive. That’s why the U.S. government has been trying for a long time now to ditch the one-dollar bill. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated in this report (pdf) that replacing one-dollar bills with coins would save the U.S. government $522 million a year. The report explains:
“Because $1 notes last only about 18 months before having to be replaced, the government has to produce about 5 billion of them per year to maintain the pool of 7.5 billion $1 notes now in circulation. At a per unit production cost of $0.035, this costs $175.0 million, and it also costs the Federal Reserve about $49.7 million to process the $1 notes each year — for a combined production and processing cost of $224.7 million.”
Coins, on the other hand, are more expensive to produce but can last for up to 30 years. That’s why the U.S. will give dollar coins yet another try this year. And why the ECB will ignore attempts like this to go back to paper.
(Via Miami Dreams)
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
I do have problems with 1 € and 2€ coins.
But I also know it’s just my problem.
typically Slovenian…
It is also my problem *lol* I wouldn’t mind having banknotes, really.
And I really thought I was used to euro, I have been using it since its beginning.
I kind of like the idea that the change is actually worth something, for a change. If you don’t want to use coins, use the credit cards instead.
I frequently drive to the airport in Trieste, so I would like to see the EU introduce a .30 Euro note. It would be convenient for paying the toll.
Who wants to sign my petition?
Not sure about the argument that says “we’re getting confused” by the coins, but I definitely agree that notes are better than coins. Back in England you end up with your pockets bulging… it’s easy to end up with about 30 euros worth of change crashing about. Ruins the pockets…
I remember the petition suggesting the introduction of €1 and €2 notes made of plastic (like Australian and NZ dollars among others) so that they would last longer.
I heard, that the Italians had/have the same problem with euro-coins. This would also explain, why life is more expensive in Italy than in Slovenia or Austria
But I had some problems with the Tolar-coins … I never found out what they were really good for. It seemed to me, that you would have needed half a day counting to buy anything with coins…
I don’t know why complaining about coins. How about complaining about 100 and 200 tolar bills? How difficult it is to pay with them in machines? It was one of my annoyances when I came to Slovenia. And getting rid of all those no-value coins
My wallet is now lighter actually than before, as you do use coins now to pay larger amounts. Besides the 1 eurocent is much lighter than the 1 tolar.
My biggest problem with 1 € and 2 € coins is that I occasionaly mail small amounts of money and putting coins in an envelope is neither practical nor safe.
One thing I noticed since the introduction of the euro here is that the Slovene obsession with having the correct change has changed. It used to be something of a game: if the bill came to, say 2350 SIT and you didn’t have any 1000 SIT notes, the cashier more or less expected you to present her with 350 SIT on top of the 5000 SIT note you gave her (god help you if you gave her a 10,000 SIT note!). If you didn’t have the small change, they you were expected to be very, very apolegetic about it. But now, when the other day my bill came to something like 8.30 EUR, and I started to rummage through my change for 30 cents, the cashier told me not to bother. I was astounded! But then I figured that it probably is taking much longer these days for Slovenes to distinguish the different eurocoins, so it’s just holding up the line.
:))) you will now be forced to use Western Union
As I’ve said before - it’s very hard to tip strippers with coind and I doubt people will go ahead and splooge on 5 euro notes. Will somebody think of the strippers?
I had been quite sure I know how to deal with Euro until that fateful Saturday last year: after having searched and found the right amount of coins to pay for the pizza delivery, I said to the friendly pizza guy “Do keep the change” and closed the door.
Only later did it occur to me that the price was 13,10 Euro and I had given him … 11,30 Euro.
Well, they say with euro that now they’re not able to make exact change…
Which is strange because the number values of coins are exactly the same ( 1 2 5 10 20 50 cents / tolar), so I don’t see the difference.
In any case, coin or paper, I don’t care, what I do not understand was having both at the same time (from 10 tolars up, there were both coins and notes)
When my paycheck is as high as my collegues in Germany, Italy, Austria, Netherlands and Spain, I will have no problem being compared to them. Until then, this is another attempt at devaluating money and one step up to higher rates of consumerism.
@rolig: Well I had my correct change experience in Slovenia last year. Took one of my little cousins to see a movie at the Kolosej in Ljubljana and paid w/ a 5000 tolar bill. I think the price was 2250 or 2350. At any rate I was asked if I had anything smaller or if I had any change.
Funny thing is I have never had any trouble paying at the local grocery stores, but maybe the clerks there recognize me after all the years of being there on vacation.
@Michael M: Well one downside to coinage, there is a large tendency for people to lose coins, as well as have them fall out of your pockets, especially when sitting down (car seats are a big culprit of that phenomenon). And that can become rather expensive when you have 1 & 2 Euro coins.
Problems with coins? Use debit cards.
Problems mailing money? Use e-banking.
Life can be so much simpler. On the other hand, if coins are a problem, one can always adapt
Money is not money if it is no possible to pay for a beer with a coin or two.
@Michael N:
You can also lose notes very easy. In the last months i saw twice how people lost a note. Both times they had their money in the pocket, no wallet. They didn’t notice, they’ve just dropped a piece of paper and walked away. When I had a closer look on what they lost it was once 20€ and the second time 5€. At least one good thing about wannabe cool city-checkaz
In case you didn’t know - there were also coins for 500 tolars. They were quite rare, but they in fact existed in circulation.
O.
Bills instead of coins were actually suggested in the European parliament so it’s not typically a Slovene problem. I’d rather have bills than coins.