In Time of Great Upheaval, the Dollar Bill Remains Stalwart

Fun fact for your Wednesday afternoon, courtesy of Quartz! The $1 bill has not been changed since 1929, and will not be changing anytime soon. As has been the case for the past several years, the 2014 budget specifically said that the Treasury Department isn’t allowed to spend any money redesigning it, either. So don’t even try!

But why, you might ask, can’t the poor old dollar bill get a makeover of its own after all these years? For one, no one is really trying to counterfeit the $1 bill, because a dollar can’t buy you shit. Secondly, and more awesomely, VENDING MACHINES:

The vending industry has argued that the costs of redesigning its machines to recognize the new bills would be prohibitive. The National Automatic Merchandising Association estimated in 2008 that 20 million Americans use one of the nation’s 7 million vending machines every work day.

Apparently NAMA, aka Big Vending Machine, god love ’em, blocked the Bush administration from a dollar redesign in the early 2000s, and they are not backing down:

“As long as the $1 bill is around, NAMA will work to preserve the current design of the bill, the same design we’ve had since 1929. Redesign would be very costly to our operator members. And equally important, we will work with the Federal Reserve to improve the quality of the circulating greenback,” Thomas McMahon, then-senior vice president for the vending industry’s top lobbying group, wrote in 2006.

Obviously we should all be focusing our efforts on eliminating the penny, but this is fun, too.

Photo: reubeningber

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