Well, I guess he has a point

In response, the Treasury Department will issue new notes that blind citizens can distinguish more easily:

$1 bills will stay the same, because $1 bills suck.

$5 bills will now have the feel of alpaca fur and be shaped like ancient Chinese compass spoons.

$10 bills will have the texture of peanut butter and be shaped like the bullet that killed Alexander Hamilton.

$20 bills will feel like 5 o'clock shadow and be shaped like Andrew Jackson's fro.

$50 bills will feel like chewing tobacco and be shaped like Tom Hanks' mullet from "The Da Vinci Code".

$100 bills will feel like chrome and be shaped like ninja stars, as a method of promoting self-defense amongst citizens who are getting mugged.














Just in case nobody got it, I was kidding.  But the article is real.

I think that sounds reasonable...

Maybe I've just never noticed, but as far as I can tell, paper money has ALWAYS been about the same AFA look/feel/etc ???

Part of the "issue" is that by making money different in size and feel, it opens the door for more counterfeiting, which is kind of a copout, but whatever.

The issue IS that the money is the same feel and size, which is what the blind folks were complaining about.  It's a legitimate complaint and I'm curious to see what they will do about it to change the $$.

I would like to see the ninja star $100 though :D

I wonder how hard it would be to add braille to money.  I would think that it would also make it more difficult to counterfeit.

It would be hard to add the embossment and keep it stable if you want to make it bendable as well so the money could still go into wallets.  I suppose they could start making money out of plastic...or make a law that allowed blind folks to use a special "credit card" at cash only places.

Actually, I see this as yet another "non-issue".

For thousands of years, blind people have been adapting to their disability.  My late fiancee's aunt was blind, and she had absolutely no problem handling currency.  She had a slecial wallet, with multiple sections, one for each denomination of currency.  And she normally carried $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, and higher bills and never had a problem.  She would simply pull out the currency that was needed, and if change was given she insisted that she only be given $1 bills.

And there are actually some people that can tell the denomination of most currency by feeling where the "ridges" on it are.  I remember an article back in the 1990's when the new bills started to come out.  It was about how some blind people were protesting, because they were unable to tell which of the new bills was which.

Myself, I would rather see a solution closer to what Japan and other countries do:  eliminate the lower demonination bills, and use coins.

In Japan, the coins range from 1 Yen (almost never seen, it is small and made of aluminum) up to 500 Yen (around $5).  The various coins are easy to tell apart, both because of size, and the fact that some denominations (5 yen, 50 yen) have holes drilled in the center of them.

Before going to a new form of currency, I would rather see the lower denominations phased out, and replaced with coins.

Many, many years ago, I met a man from Australia who told me that he wished that U.S. would have different sizes for our bills so he can tell what they are when he reaches into his pocket. I never thought about the issue before that-I was just so used to our bills all being the same size. Over the years, I have dealt with many people in the blind and visually impaired world and the consensus is that they do wish the bills were different sizes.

BTW, I used to belong to the American Council of the Blind. (The article had the name wrong-it should be "OF the Blind" not "FOR the Blind"-the difference is that the council is made up mostly of visually impaired people doing stuff to improve their own world-not other people acting on their behalf.)



Cat

In England the bills are different sizes. A