Why is it that the U.S. Treasury Department can mandate modifications for vending machines to accept the latest rendition of $1 coins (that most folks will probably collect instead of circulate), but feels that similar adjustments on behalf of the blind or visually impaired is an undue hardship?
WASHINGTON – An effort to force a redesign of the nation’s currency so paper money could be more easily used by the blind would be too expensive and could cause undue hardships on the vending machine industry, the Bush administration says.
The administration asked an appeals court on Tuesday to overturn a ruling that could require the introduction of such features as Braille lettering, micro-perforations or varying the sizes of denominations to aid the blind and visually impaired.
Looks like a strawman to me.
In the last fifteen years, our paper currency has undergone several expensive changes, with more to come. Some might think that in the course of these revisions, modifications for the blind would have been incorporated. This is not, after all, a new problem…. but nope. It didn’t happen. From the US Treasury’s FAQ’s online:
You may be aware that over the years, the Congress considered several legislative initiatives to incorporate such features in United States currency. However, it never enacted any of them into law.
That seems to have been a tad… umm…. short-sighted, wouldn’t you say?
Added: The Houston Chronicle has an editorial on the subject today, and local blogger Matt Bramanti takes issue with it. Like the administration, he seems to be very concerned about those vending machine operators. Will he come out against the Presidential Coin Series, too?
I’m not so worried about the vending machine operators (heck, most machines won’t take the perfectly good bills I try to feed them, so why would the new ones be any different) – OTOH, I remember when the new bills came out the slot machines in the casinos couldn’t handle them – OH THE HUGE MANATEE!
Seriously, before we go off and redesign (yet again) our currency, I think someone should look at what they are trying to accomplish, and what is the right way to accomplish it. To the best of my knowledge, very few countries have bills that have special accessibility features for the visually impaired. OTOH, it would seem that a ‘bill reader’ such as the one that Matt mentions in his post is a very reasonable alternative, and probably far fewer of those would be needed than if you were to revamp every bill accepting device in the country. Heck the government could GIVE every legally-blind resident one of those things (along with their hunting license and a high-power laser sight, maybe?) cheaper than it would cost to redesign and reprint all the currency we have out there.
~EdT.
Like the administration, he seems to be very concerned about those vending machine operators.
If you think I’m just standing up for Big Vending, you’re mistaken, though there are a whole lot more vending machines (4 million, and that’s just refrigerated ones) than blind people (1.3 million) in the U.S.
It’s not just vending machines, as I discussed in the post. It’s the entire paper-money infrastructure of the country. Bills of different sizes would require retooling of everything from printing presses to bill-counting machines to cash-register tills to ATMs to the paper bands used to bind bundles of cash. Bill acceptors run about $250 a pop, and there are millions of them. Thus, the proposed answer is expensive, certainly more expensive than just buying every blind person a bill reader.
The existing technology — hand-held electronic bill readers — works just fine, and even works in Spanish. What’s more, it works right now. Buy one today and it works today. If you re-work the currency, you potentially have a lag time of years before you can be assured that all the old, “discriminatory” money is removed from circulation. Remember that the Treasury Department has never recalled currency when issuing a new design. The replacement is gradual as banks turn in old, tattered cash for new bills. So, the proposed answer is expensive and slow.
The Chron is getting all bent out of shape because blind folks might get short-changed by a scumbag clerk at the grocery store. Until Campbell’s starts printing tomato soup labels in Braille, I think the problem is completely overblown.
Besides, we’d still have the unacceptable bigotry of resized or Braille money being discriminatory against blind double amputees.
Uh, someone may need to tell the Chron that lots of us non-blind folk get short-changed by
scumbag clerks‘customer payment accepters’ at the grocery store (and other stores, too.)How about redesigning the bills for our benefit?
~EdT.
To the best of my knowledge, very few countries have bills that have special accessibility features for the visually impaired.
Actually, varying sizes all by themselves make bills distinguishable from one another… and those that don’t have varying sizes (like Japan) do indeed have accessibility features.
Matt — you can, of course, limit the discussion to the numbers of the totally blind — but there are millions more who have vision so bad they can’t tell the difference either… but this yammer about the vending machines it pure-d silliness all the way around. You’re assuming the only solution is different sizes… but that’s not the only answer at all. There are a number of other methods.
And neither of you (Ed or Matt) thinks the retrofitting for the new $1 coin is problematic? Or that while we were busily revamping the paper $ over the last fifteen years, we couldn’t have incorporated something for this?
It was stupid to have let this slide for so long, for no reason. We’ve spent many millions overhauling the currency; that was the time to do it, and whimpery whineys on behalf of the vending machines shouldn’t be part of the debate, particularly when they have to re-fit for other changes when they are made anyway.
And neither of you (Ed or Matt) thinks the retrofitting for the new $1 coin is problematic?
Bringing that up seemed like a red herring, but I’m game. Yeah, the dollar coin was dumb, too. The Susan B. Anthony dollars performed underwhelmingly, and so did the SackOPotatoes or whatever her name was, possibly because they resemble Chuck E. Cheese tokens and are taken about as seriously. Besides, a whole lot of machines were never retrofitted for the new dollar coins, because vending machine owners, like most Americans, knew the coin wouldn’t take off. Dollar bills, though, are here to stay, and changing them would require vastly more retrofitting.
I limited discussion to the totally blind because U.S. currency already has a feature for those with limited sight. The bottom right corner on the reverse of the $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes has a large, boldface numeral indicating its value. No scrollwork, no color around it, just a big ol’ number in dark green on an off-white background.
Again, you’re fixated on the vending machine bit, while ignoring the other legitimate problems with the proposal.
The big one that sticks out in my mind is the Campbell’s soup reference I brought up in my last comment. The vast majority of consumer products aren’t blind-guy-friendly, and this fact runs through every element of consumer society.
Here’s the scenario proposed by the change-the-money crowd: A blind guy gets up, gets dressed, feeds himself and the German shepherd, leaves his house, goes to the store, finds and collects the products he needs and gets to the cash register (dunno how he’s supposed to know which lanes are open).
We’re expected to believe that the one thing holding him back is the fact that his money isn’t specially designed for him?
As for the notion that we could have done this while we revamped the currency a few years ago…so what? “We could have done it then” doesn’t come close to an argument for why we should do it now. My car has cloth seats, but I could’ve gotten leather. It doesn’t follow that I should now go get the thing reupholstered.
You are right about “varying methods” being available, however. I like the “use a bill reader” method, and I’ve noticed you haven’t been able to find fault with it.
The biggest problem I can see with that method is that blind people have to incur a cost that sighted people don’t. Fortunately, Congress gives them an extra $1,250 as a standard deduction on their income taxes. At an average effective tax rate of around 20 percent, your average blind guy can get a taxpayer-subsidized brand-new bill reader every 18 months, with plenty of discriminatory cash left over each year for AA batteries.
Again, you’re fixated on the vending machine bit, while ignoring the other legitimate problems with the proposal.
Matt — I am fixated there; I admit it. It has to be the most ridiculous reason I ever heard of, particularly in light of other adjustments they make. The Treasury Dept’s use of that as a partial basis for their appeal ticked me right off.
I don’t disagree about the money reader, however. It is available now and I gather it works. But I’m sighted, and I don’t know enough about it. I’ve never seen one, personally, so I haven’t a clue about it’s portability, weight, etc. And while I saw your cost estimate of $250, that’s the lowest I’ve seen cited. Others say 300 to 350.
Unfortunately, I read that something like 70% of the blind (as in… actually blind rather than seriously impaired) are unemployed. If that’s correct (and i have no reason to doubt it (link to source), then I don’t see how a tax deduction would be helpful.
I’m not trying to advocate federal hoop-jumping for every imaginable scenario. This particular problem, though, has been in the wings for decades. I knew that our money was a problem for the blind 30 years ago, and I also knew that every other country on the planet using paper money had figured out a solution. Only the US is stumped.
Nor am I advocating a complete and immediate departure from the today’s norm. However, I do think we can — and should — work in a tactile identifier. It’s not rocket science, and the costs can be worked into other modifications.
Maybe over the course of time it was thought that plastic cards, either credit cards or checking account cards, had taken care of this issue.
And while I saw your cost estimate of $250, that’s the lowest I’ve seen cited. Others say 300 to 350.
Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. That $250 was for a bill acceptor, meaning the piece on a vending machine that sucks in your dollar bills (then spits them back out). My point was to illustrate the massive aggregate cost in replacing all of those.
I’m not sure why you think it’s such a bad argument. Yeah, it’s a bit silly to keep discussing the nuances of vending-machine capital finance, but it’s basically a “costs too damn much” argument, and I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with that kind of argument.
Aside: it would be interesting to see the IRS’s take on this. I wonder what time schedule they’d let you use for depreciating bill acceptors? Can you segregate costs on a vending machine? (/accounting geekery)
Unfortunately, I read that something like 70% of the blind (as in… actually blind rather than seriously impaired) are unemployed. If that’s correct (and i have no reason to doubt it (link to source), then I don’t see how a tax deduction would be helpful.
Well, you gotta remember that unemployed doesn’t mean they have no taxable income. Remember, social security disability payments are still taxable.
But even if you’re right, and they have no income, then this whole question is moot, isn’t it? 🙂
Did banknote vending machines have to change with the last 2 redesigns (the bigger heads, the addition of color) of our paper currency? If so, how is that any different, and if not, then a small tactile change like used in Canada or in Tanzania shouldn’t really affect the visual cues used by such machines.
I’ve been wondering the same thing, Glenn. I don’t have a clue how the machines work, unfortunately, but I do know that some read via an electronic “eye”, and that there were problems after at least the first redesign.
Great links, btw. Thanks.
Of the four blind-friendly features of Canadian currency — tactile element, high-contrast numeral, distinguishing color and machine-readability — three are currently in use on U.S. currency.
There is machine readability, and based on the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, there is also the low vision feature of the high-contrast numeral, but the color differences to me seem too subtle to be of any use.
That is an understatement – the new bills drove the casinos crazy, since none of the slot machines would accept them!
As to the issue with the vending machines and the new dollar coins: there is an even more insidious problem with those. The standard cash drawer has coin bins for pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters – and bill containers for $1, $5, $10, and $20. Which goes a long way toward explaining why such things as the half-dollar coin, the dollar coin (in its various incarnations), and the $2 bill just don’t ever take off.
In fact, once I tried to pay for something with a $1 coin – and the merchant not only wouldn’t accept the coin (as they had no place to put it), they called the police – and the cop threatened to arrest me for attempted theft if I didn’t pay for the merchandise with ‘approved’ currency. Only in California…
~EdT.
Ed’s last comment pretty much sums up why I think the administration’s full of you-know-what with its “poor vending machine operators” excuse. They make changes all the time, but aren’t worried about it… right up until here.
And Matt… Sure am glad the lack of $ for the blind worked out well for your argument… sort of.
And Matt… Sure am glad the lack of $ for the blind worked out well for your argument… sort of.
I don’t follow you…would you expound on that a bit?
But even if you’re right, and they have no income, then this whole question is moot, isn’t it? 🙂
🙂
What is interesting is that the ‘vending machine’ argument is something of a red herring. Simply leave the $1 bill the same size, as most machines don’t take larger denominations (some to take $5 bills, though the majority of them do not.) A more rational explanation for opposition to resizing the bills is that it screws up everything – cash registers, bill changers, all those slot machines (which is one type of machine which takes pretty much every denomination around), even the wallet you carry in your pocket/purse has been designed around the common size of the currency. And, while currently the Treasury can inject new bills into the money supply gradually, and simply retire older bills as they wear out, once such a radical change is made the swap-out would have to be pretty much instantaneous – otherwise we would have virtual chaos during the time that both formats had to be supported, thanks to the need to maintain dual infrastructures (again, think about bill accepting mechanisms and cash register drawers, as well as the counting machines in all the banks etc.)
~EdT.
But even if you’re right, and they have no income, then this whole question is moot, isn’t it? 🙂
Ah, that. Well, it is a valid point.
If blind people have income, as they do, they can use their tax deduction to buy a bill reader. If they haven’t income, they don’t need one. 🙂