The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year • Hacker News Board

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#211

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 12:35 PM UTC

rland wrote: post #182

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim this, but cash has its own costs. Such as running the risk of getting robbed, wrong change (and the retailer losing out), a safe, the costs and time included in physically getting the cash to the bank - either by employees driving it or paying a service to do it. Having enough change on hand can be an issue. Now, I don't know if all of this equals out to the same as the credit card fees, but it isn't like c…

Cash also has very diffuse benefits. It is anonymous, private, untraceable, and not able to be stolen or compromised without physical access.

So are prepaid credit cards - the type you do not register. They can theoretically be hacked, but so can your bank account.

And it depends on what you are buying. Most stores have cameras. There are a slew of transactions that require ID as well. You generally need to show some sort of ID to get your cash as well - few employers will pay in cash. Major cash purchases are sometimes either refused or require ID and forms to finish.

And you are simply out of luck if you happen to lose it somehow. It can get damaged to the point of being worthless as well.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#212

Post by james-skemp » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 12:40 PM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #191

mikestew wrote: post #3

So get rid of them. At one point in my life, a long time ago, things could be purchased for a penny. That time has long passed. Now pennies are used just to make the math work out. Round everything up a nickel ($0.05) and call it a day. Or look at it another way: inflation has made the nickel from my youth into today's penny.

But, but but ... what will all the gas stations do with their 99.9¢/gal signs? ;-> The same argument could be made for the nickel and the dime. (How many of us collect them in a jar, and pay a 10% royalty to turn them into dollars?) We all know that the real reason we hold on is that we know the price of everything will go up. Skinflints!

10%? Try a bank; at least in the US I've never been charged, and for how often those jars fill up it's worth a Saturday drive to the bank once or twice a year.

I also admittedly rarely use cash.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#213

Post by speg » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

boromi wrote: post #78

I think Canada has got rid of pennies; US should also follow that lead, hopefully.

I don’t get why the USA struggles with this and tap to pay. I thought 🇺🇸 was supposed to be advanced?

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#214

Post by Too » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

rbritton wrote: post #91

mikestew wrote: post #3

So get rid of them. At one point in my life, a long time ago, things could be purchased for a penny. That time has long passed. Now pennies are used just to make the math work out. Round everything up a nickel ($0.05) and call it a day. Or look at it another way: inflation has made the nickel from my youth into today's penny.

Coins seem largely used anymore for tax. How common would any coin smaller than a quarter be without a percentage-based sales tax? Virtually every price is close to either the $.50 or the $.00 mark -- it's the tax that creates the need for more combinations of change.

With that argument you could be loosing fractions of cents even today! Why don't we have coins for fractions of cents?

round(total price + tax) is the obvious solution to this. If you gain or loose 3 cents in the round off who cares.

Here is how other countries solved this ages ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#215

Post by Too » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

linkmotif wrote: post #112

The value of pennies to the economy must be much greater than $69M right? My reasoning is: if you get rid of them, who’ll get short changed? The consumer. And by how much throughout the entire cash economy? A lot.

Why do you assume the consumer will always be short changed? Just use mathematical rounding which is fair. It's hard for merchants to price items so that the total ends up rounding upwards if you buy multiple items. People already subcontiously read 99c as $1 and will apply that thought even more if they know rounding will happen so it's not exactly like you are being cheated. For larger purchases even more so, would you consider $99, $99.99 or $100 different prices? No, the difference is irrelevant since the competitor across the street sells the same item for $89.

Even if you were being short changed at every purchase, assume 10c being the smallest coin available, you loose worst case 9c per transaction, assume you make 2 transactions per day. That's total $5.4 lost per month, I can live with that. Especially since it's a worse case scenario, realistically it's +/-0 and even if merchants have a special secret method for winning they can probably only win 5c on average making the loss half of my worst case scenario.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#216

Post by BenjiWiebe » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

JaceLightning wrote: post #207

cornellwright wrote: post #154

Personally, I'd like to get rid of all coins, and introduce a $0.25 note and call it a day. Round all cash payments up to the next quarter and no more metal money. Egypt has a 0.25 Egyptian Pound note. The last time I was there it was only worth about US$0.06.

This. Though there is already a $0 .25 coin... Called a quarter.

Read again. He wants a $.25 paper bill, and then get rid of all coins.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#217

Post by acdha » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 11:09 PM UTC

xstartup wrote: post #199

ceejayoz wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had clients in the early 2000s with 1.9% rates, as well as one with 2.5% and no fixed per-transaction fee, and these were small mom-and-pop businesses - the Targets, Costcos, Apples, etc. of the world likely go way lower on volume. Stripe's selling point was never low fees. It was "you can be up and accepting cards in just a few minutes of coding", and that was well worth paying an extra percent or so.

You both can be right at the same time. CNP transactions (which stripe does) cost bit higher than CP transactions which require POS machine at mom/pop shops.

That’s probably it: I never had a client who saw rates that low but these were also online sales with presumably higher fraud risk

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#218

Post by antcas » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

los_angeles wrote: post #186

antcas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the best terrible ideas I've ever heard.

In Hong Kong paper money is designed and issued by private banks. Works fine.

Are consumer brands advertised on those notes?

Having private banks print money is a lot different than selling ad space to McDonald's on your dollar bill.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#219

Post by kthejoker2 » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

InternetUser wrote: post #208

mikestew wrote: post #3

So get rid of them. At one point in my life, a long time ago, things could be purchased for a penny. That time has long passed. Now pennies are used just to make the math work out. Round everything up a nickel ($0.05) and call it a day. Or look at it another way: inflation has made the nickel from my youth into today's penny.

> At one point in my life, a long time ago, things could be purchased for a penny. What were 3 or 4 such things?

Penny candy. Penny press. Penny stocks.

These things used to literally cost one penny, hence their name.

Re: The US Mint lost $69M making pennies last year

#220

Post by ttsda » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #191

mikestew wrote: post #3

So get rid of them. At one point in my life, a long time ago, things could be purchased for a penny. That time has long passed. Now pennies are used just to make the math work out. Round everything up a nickel ($0.05) and call it a day. Or look at it another way: inflation has made the nickel from my youth into today's penny.

But, but but ... what will all the gas stations do with their 99.9¢/gal signs? ;-> The same argument could be made for the nickel and the dime. (How many of us collect them in a jar, and pay a 10% royalty to turn them into dollars?) We all know that the real reason we hold on is that we know the price of everything will go up. Skinflints!

Gas is a fluid, so it doesn't matter. Even if it costed $99.999, rounding is made after multiplying by the volume purchased, compounding that insignificant value into a real change.