Brother can you spare a...dollar?

So it has come to this. Our dollar is literally not worth the paper it's printed on anymore. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) along with the US Treasury Department estimates that a newly minted dollar bill stays in circulation for around 21 months compared to around 30 years for coins. The savings to US taxpayers for switching over to the new Presidential Series coins is $522 million a year. What? Why didn't we stick with this years ago during the Eisenhower, Susan B, and most recent Sacajawea incarnations? Countries everywhere have coined denominations equivalent to a dollar -- Canada, The European Union, Japan, and Mexico to name a few. The most common response is that Americans don't like carrying a lot of change. I can't wrap my brain around that reasoning. Every year a half a billion dollars goes down the drain so our pockets don't rip. Now this blogger is well aware of the apparent contradiction to a previous post where he didn't want 99 cents change, but let's not focus on the wrong thing.