Let's save ourselves with 'change you can believe in.' Anyway, it's something to do.
According to David Owen of the The New Yorker ;
The average life span of American pocket change is thirty years. During the past thirty years, the U.S. Mint has produced something like a half trillion coins, most of them cents, yet the Mint estimates that only about three hundred billion coins are currently in circulation. This estimate is probably high, since it includes coins that haven’t budged from their coffee cans in years. Even so, the missing change is worth billions. Where is it? Except in rare cases, old coins, unlike old banknotes, aren’t withdrawn from circulation by the Federal Reserve. People simply mislay them, eventually, in one way or another, and in most cases they disappear as permanently as if they had been dropped into the sea. Pocket change leaks from the economy the way air leaks from a balloon, and most of what leaks is pennies.
Seems to me the US economy could use an infusion of cash - an economic stimulus if you will - these days. And while it may not amount to the $150 billion coming from Washington, it wouldn't be anything to sneeze at.
So here's what I'm going to do beginning August 1st. I'm going to empty all my penny jars, cups and banks and use the proceeds as discretionary income - mostly in the form of Star Wars action figures in the case of my household. Then throughout August I will save all my pennies, stop to pick up pennies I find on the ground and return them to circulation and encourage others around me to do the same.
Alone, this exercise will be a sad and pathetic attempt to use an undervalued and unappreciated currency to jumpstart the world's largest economy. But if I can get each node in my network to do it and each node can get each node in their network to try it and so on and so - well it could be kind of a cool experiment.
And who knows, it might just keep us all occupied until the January inauguration when the new guy can figure out something better.
It's a good thought but....
Your attempts to jumpstart the economy (IF you can get a mass amount of people to also participate) will only assist inflation.
The U.S. Mint accounts for this money slipping through the cracks. They then print more coins to account for this missing money. We all learned in school that printing more money doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it worse.
I mean, I think it's a good thought, I really do. But if this caught on at a mass scale, the value of the dollar will just decrease. (If the value of the dollar even exists. Is there really gold in Fort Knox anymore, anyways?)
I save all my change because I know that cents add up quickly in mass amounts. But if every american busted out all of their piggy banks at once though, we might be paying a wheelbarrow full of cash for a loaf of bread.
inflation
i agree, this is a terrible idea in the long term. anyone who can pass a high school economics class can tell you that inflation is only a short term solution that will create long term problems. if the guys at the treasury have accounted for all these lost coins, we shouldn't mess with their system. leave those lost pennies right where they are unless you need a few extra cents for your starbucks mocha java frappa grande or whatever.
Except...
We're nearing DEflation because of the lack of people buying.
A good influx is what we need.