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Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

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Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#151

Post by lostapathy »

eumenides1 wrote: post #146
lostapathy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial inter-state mobility is a big obstacle for states doing grand social programs individually. If a state provided universal healthcare for residents, it'd quickly be overwhelmed with "hard cases" from other states where coverage is a problem. Which would drive up costs, and taxes, and drive productive/healthy people out. See the current inter-state shipping of homeless people, especially those who suffer mental…

Canada it is a "state"/provincial system. All provinces manage their own. Canada doesn't get inundated with Americans because if they do come, patients will be charged like private health care. If the patient's home province has universal health care, both province's will just work it out. In general, we don't dump problems on to other provinces. It's bad form and federal courts will fix that quick especially with so…

Americans going to Canada for care is a totally different thing, and not relevant to my prior point.

All of Canada has universal healthcare, which again makes Canada a completely different discussion from my earlier comment. There isn't the kind of huge discrepancy between provinces as we'd have if some US states had universal healthcare and some had the status quo.

To your argument about states suing one another - we literally already have localities giving mentally ill people bus tickets out of state, and that's been unable to be stopped via the court system. I'm not dealing in hypotheticals here, I'm talking about things that already happen.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#152

Post by pixelbath »

torgoguys wrote: post #134
bzb3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That would probably be illegal in most jurisdictions in the US. 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 th…

What ludicrous talk! You may as well suggest something equally as insane, like converting to metric units! /s

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#153

Post by [deleted] »

Loughla wrote: post #148
nayuki wrote: post #90

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,…

Regardless of what the practice is in Canada, I have zero faith in literally any US business to round down on anything, at anytime, for any reason at all. It will, I guarantee, be round up on everything.

[deleted]

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#154

Post by nine_k »

snarf21 wrote: post #99
klyrs wrote: post #46

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…

Exactly. When we retired the half-penny, it had a purchasing power that would equate to 10-15 cents today. Someone just needs to have the political will to do this. We should just have quarters and move dollar bills to coin only. So much cheaper to make and they last forever. The reason we don't is that people hate change and politicians don't like to rock the boat. A lot of our issues today are not that we don't kno…

This sounds a little bit like the politicians are not "we" but are imported from Mars or something.

The majority of people seems to like it this way, or rather doesn't care. There's even no vocal enough minority to demand the change (pun not intended).

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#155

Post by stewjacks »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #5

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…

You're missing the obvious way to exploit this: all consumers stand to benefit a maximum of two cents from each purchase they make by carrying both cash AND card. Since rounding only happens when paying cash, simply pay cash if the purchase could be rounded down ($_._1 or $_._2), and pay card if it could rounded up ($_._3 and $_._4).

In practice, no one gives a shit because it's a penny and no one cares about the penny. QED

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#156

Post by unethical_ban »

harryh wrote: post #109
Cerium wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full benefits could phase in over time. You could get increasing discounts on public services until you reach full state membership. This would be no different than out of state school fees.

The Supreme Court has ruled ideas like this unconstitutional. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-may-18-mn-38325...

Just another example of the failures of the Constitution in the modern era. The Federal government is the only one that can reasonably do Universal Healthcare, or any kind of economic stimulus in crisis, but it fails. States are powerless to try to fix it on their own.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#157

Post by isk517 »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #115
hinoki wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case paper means polymer. Canada uses the same bills as Australia (and that the U.K. is switching to). Much better than in the USA, where their cloth money always feels like dirty laundry.

How am I supposed to light my cigar with a burning $100 when it's plastic?

I thought the same thing when Canada made the switch, but soon found out that while tracking down a hold paper $100 is a bit frustrating at times the added opulence from destroying something that will never be replaced brings my cigar experience to the next level.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#158

Post by hagy »

harryh wrote: post #109
Cerium wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full benefits could phase in over time. You could get increasing discounts on public services until you reach full state membership. This would be no different than out of state school fees.

The Supreme Court has ruled ideas like this unconstitutional. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-may-18-mn-38325...

Durational-residence requirements still exists. E.g., paying in state vs. out of state tuition at a state university, which commonly requires a year of residency. [0, 1] State-provided healthcare could be provided in a similar fashion through state-administrated health insurance that has different rates for in state and out of state. There could be a durational-residence requirements for in state pricing.

[0] https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol104/iss3/5/ [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#159

Post by stan_rogers »

paulie_a wrote: post #62
ShorsHammer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

American currency isn't paper. It's more akin to cloth than anything else. And you can go swimming with 300 in bills in the USA. They are not going to melt and will be just fine even if submerged for hours. There are absolutely better materials to use, no argument there. But US paper currency are not even close to being fragile.

It's paper. It just happens to be a cotton/linen long-fibre pulp blend rather than, say, wood pulp. That's how most paper was made from the origins of the stuff, in the West at least; wood pulp and so forth are relatively new in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#160

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #132
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> I'd really hate my 6% sales tax to be raised to 10% so that we could kill a coin I don't even use (last paid cash probably a year ago). If you're paying in plastic then there's no rounding.

Well OP did say

>If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc.

Which I assumed wouldn't be just for paying with cash. I don't know if a 'cash tax' would even be legal.

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