A Modest Proposal

So I was going over my credit card statements for the last several months, and I noticed something interesting. The overwhelming majority of my purchases seemed to average about $40 a piece. Dinner out with my lovely wife, about 40 smackers. Gassing up the car, make it 40 bucks. Grocery shopping to stock up the old larder, you guessed it, forty clams. Of course, there were other expenses that were more or less than forty, but a remarkable majority hovered right around the forty dollar mark. Seems to me that forty is quickly becoming the new twenty. I mean, think about it, you stop by your local ATM and hit the quick cash button and what does the machine hand you? Bingo! Forty beans. So here's my idea...

I think the U.S. Treasury should issue a new 40 dollar bill with...oh, I don't know, let's say Millard Fillmore on it. After all, with a name like Millard Fillmore, the guy needs every break he can get.

I'm also a big proponent of getting rid of the dollar bill and using those nifty new presidential dollar coins we've been minting, finally putting us on a par with more sophisticated countries like Canada and Great Britain which both replaced their single bills with cool-looking coins. But, knowing the general intractability of the American public, that's a slippery slope I'm not quite ready to start climbing at this moment.

Spare change, anyone?