What's in Your Wallet?

For years US paper currency has been essentially unchanged. Oh there have been changes recently. A few new colors have been added. Most changes have been in an attempt to make it harder to counterfeit the currency.

A US Appeals court ruling may change all that making the government make major changes to the way paper currency is designed.

A case was brought against the federal government stating that US paper currency is discriminatory. When I first saw the article I thought is had something to do with the old "God in We Trust" issue. But the suit claimed that US paper currency discriminates against the blind and the Appeals Court agreed.

With US coins the exact denomination can be determined by size and feel. Not so with the paper currency. There is no way to determine whether a bill is a twenty, ten or hundred. They are all the same size and all feel the same. So a blind person is at the mercy of the clerk to see that the correct amount is paid and that they receive the correct change when making a purchase.

Not being blind I would have never thought of this loop hole in our currency. It may cost me money (estimates are 100 billion to re-design and produce replacement cash) in terms of taxes but I applaud the Appeals Court ruling.

One person left a comment on a news sight stating that the blind people should use debit cards for all purchases. Well aside from the fact that requiring blind people to use debit cause is discriminatory in its own right, there is still the issue that the blind consumer is still at the mercy of the cashier to tell them the honest purchase total and that the card is debited the correct amount.

I think the paper money issue is just the tip of the ice burg. How do blind people know that the total that the cashier tells them is correct. Even if they can do math in their head they have no idea how much an item costs. That bar code ain't in braille.

Should we make changes to our paper currency just to make it easier on 10 million Americans? I say yes we should. What do you say?