I just got back from Ireland and Northern Ireland and I see one of the discussions in the U.S. involves replacing Alexander Hamilton on the ten dollar bill with a woman (see #TheNewTen on twitter). And there are several woman candidates but we haven’t settled on one yet.

Well, I don’t think the ten dollar bill is the right place for at least 2 reasons. I also don’t see a clear reason to pick one of the suggested women over the other suggestions for this honor.

First to the ten. Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers. He never became president but is very important. He probably had more to do with getting the country off on a sound financial footing than anyone else. For this reason, it seems that keeping him on a bill is appropriate.

If we are to free-up a bill to honor a woman, I’d suggest the twenty dollar bill is more suitable. After all although Andrew Jackson was a President, we have quite a few Presidents not honored on our currency. Furthermore, he is not known for any financial achievements or as an especially good President.

And then the 20 is seen a lot more than the 10. So if the goal is to honor a woman, why not on the bill we see more of.

But I have an alternate suggestion. As mentioned I’ve recently been to both the Euro-zone and the pound-zone. What the 2 currencies share is that both the one pound and 1 euro (worth about a dollar and a half and a bit over a dollar) are coins rather than bills.

Could we not replace our dollar bills with dollar coins? And like the bicentennial quarters we could have many designs. All the coins would be similar in size, weight, shape, etc but each design could honor various historical figures of importance (including both men and women).

I have no quarrel with placing a women on a bill. But if we do, I suggest the 20 is more appropriate.

If we replace our paper dollar with a coin, there could be many more places to honor those of importance to our county and society.

We tried dollar coins before but did not do a good job of it. As I remember, a major problem was the new coin was to similar to the quarter. The only place I remember getting many of the dollar coins was the stamp vending machine in the Post Office. It was annoying to make a small purchase and get 12 or 15 coins as change.