131–140 of 428 posts
All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel that plastic cash would make more of a difference. CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U
“Paper” cash is actually linen. You can wash it with hot water no problem
Yes. Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky didn't fall. There was no great debate, no public opinion polls and politicians swearing heartily about the demise of our great nation. (Ok that's probably not true. For too many politicians that's all they do.) There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour of a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People bitched abo…
>There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour of a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People bitched about having too much change in there pocket, pockets became too heavy, etc. I do however see more coins in tip & donation jars now then I ever saw paper money. Sounds like you know why that is, because people don't want to be stuck carrying around big coins. >Side note: If you drop t…
If you're paying in plastic then there's no rounding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction This assertion is wrong. If the item you buy is $1.00, then after your 14% tax it will be $1.14, which is rounded up to $1.15. If the item is $2.00, then after tax it is $2.28, which also rounds up to $2.30. But if the item is $3.00,…
>If the item is $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which rounds down to $4.55. Everybody who lived the transition to the Euro knows that this is not what will happen. Prices will be always rounded up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction This assertion is wrong. If the item you buy is $1.00, then after your 14% tax it will be $1.14, which is rounded up to $1.15. If the item is $2.00, then after tax it is $2.28, which also rounds up to $2.30. But if the item is $3.00,…
>If the item is $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which rounds down to $4.55. Everybody who lived the transition to the Euro knows that this is not what will happen. Prices will be always rounded up.
I don't understand the big fuss over rounding in the discussion of eliminating the penny. Rounding happens. We already round sales tax up or down to the nearest penny--this would just round up or down to the nearest nickel.
But while we are on the subject, I think we should eliminate nickels and quarters at the same time as the penny and just round to the nearest dime. (Let's put the 50 cent piece of of its misery while we are at it too--just dollars and dimes). Rounding to the nearest ten cents is plenty specific enough given the accumulated inflation/devaluation of currency over the years and you basically get to simply knock off one decimal digit of precision for each transaction which makes things more straightforward. Also, US dimes are small and lightweight, making them easy to carry relative to other coins.
As an American living in Canada, I gotta say. Pennies and dollar bills SUCK. We have $1 and $2 coins and they're actually useful. Every time I visit home, I end up with piles of pennies and wads of stinky, tattered, overcirculated garbage bills. If you accumulate a pile $1 and $2 coins, nobody looks askance if you plunk down a stack of them. But god, the glares if you want to spend $20 in dollar bills. I say take it…
It wasn't until I went to the UK in my late 20s that I realized how badly America needs coins in the dollar and two dollar denomination. Having spare coins with weight and mass rather than loose dollar bills helped me get a sense of how many loose singles I had, and being able to drop a couple coins on a counter to pay for cheap items (a bag of M&Ms, a cup of coffee) is somehow, I don't know how, but somehow more erg…
The US penny is perhaps the most illustrative example of why I am wary that the US government can do ANYTHING efficiently. The continued existence of the penny is absolutely ludicrous. Here we have something that has almost zero economic value to everyone involved. It costs more to mint them than they're worth. It likely costs more to even transport or count them than they're worth. It is almost entirely just economi…
One might wonder whether the problem isn't bureaucracy per se, but rather that there are actually many larger dead-weight losses in the government that are being focused on, such that this one is comparatively trivial and doesn't even register on the priorities list.
For everything else you can say about it, the current administration has been heavily focused on "ways the government can be improved by doing less" (i.e. "red-tape reduction.") And yet, it has still not even mentioned considering doing this. I'm guessing the elimination of pennies is just not the low-hanging fruit it seems to be — there are fruit even lower.
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I feel like we missed an opportunity to also drop the nickel and round everything to 10 cent intervals and just forget about the extra level of precision entirely. I imagine I will see this in my lifetime.
What about the 25 cent piece (the quarter)?
I'm old enough to remember halfpenny coins here in the UK. I've got a few someplace that I kept. When they were withdrawn in 1984, they were worth more than 1.5p in today's money. The country survived, so I dare say we could safely discontinue 1p (and 2p) coins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm totally with us ditching the penny, but I really wish we had a paper (plastic) $1. Any time you break a $5 bill you're left with a pocket full of change!
I honestly can't understand why any country on Earth is still using paper for notes. Is basic materials science some bizarre foreign concept? And for anyone who thinks otherwise, I'm going for a swim with $300 in my pocket.
All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel that plastic cash would make more of a difference. CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U
“Paper” cash is actually linen. You can wash it with hot water no problem