Paying with plastic? That doesn't mean putting the bill on a credit card anymore. You see, with the new Canadian polymer bills, paying with cash IS paying with plastic.
The Globe and Mail reports what a focus group said about Canada's new $100 bill. I'm tickled with the bit about Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden's mustache:
7. Some respondents felt that Mr. Borden's moustache was poorly groomed. Some of the former prime minister's whiskers fall well below his upper lip in the Bank of Canada's final version of the $100 polymer bill.
8. One focus group in Vancouver thought the double-helix DNA strand on the new $100 bill looked like sex beads, while others saw the Big Dipper.
9. Some groups compared the bills to "Monopoly money," noting the polymer they're made out of felt less real than paper money.
Canada is not the first, actually - polymer notes have been around since the 1990s (Australia was the first country)
Really, the money just /looks/ nicer here. You don't get many ratty old bills, or the gross ones you barely want to accept from a till. Pretty much every bill here looks new and crisp. And the cost to produce is extremely lower because we don't have to replace anywhere near the amount of 'dead' money as the US does.
The US licensed the tech back around when AU was putting it into place, but sadly never ran with it. Apparently they felt Americans are too dumb to accept money that isn't expensive green paper.
I prefer our paper money and question the polymers ingredients: are they made using their highly injurious tar sands?
Interestingly, the Bank of Canada was originally planning to use actual sex beads as their replacement for the paper bills, but decided against it when they realized not every Canadian could be counted on to sterilize the beads before spending them.
"Interestingly, the Bank of Canada was originally planning to use actual sex beads as their replacement for the paper bills, but decided against it when they realized not every Canadian could be counted on to sterilize the beads before spending them."
Hilarious! LOL
Not sure what a sex bead actually is.
Manticore, the Big Dipper looks waaay different at these latitudes.