171–180 of 428 posts
As we've moved to zinc with a thinner and thinner copper jacket the US penny has drifted in that direction, but the relief is much more pronounced and makes it look more 'real'. Probably more expensive to make though.
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The US dollar was designed to be subdivided into cents (hundreds) and mills (thousands). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage
Practical reality in 2020 is different than whatever the intended design was. There is no possible way to pay with a fraction of a penny.
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…
And they also hate change.
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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.
Everyone uses an electronic POS system and it will round however the manufacturer told it to round (which will be correctly). The only people you have to worry about cheating you out of 3-4 cents in a world without pennies (the maximum you can be cheated) would be people without electronic systems. Which is to say, no one.
3-4 cents isn't a lot. Unless it's added up by all of the people shopping in those places over the course of a year. The incentive to cheat the system is there, therefore the system will 100% be cheated. That's The American Way, in my experience.
This propaganda is part of the inflationary process, which is intended to increase economic velocity at or faster than the rate of savings, at the expense of savings.
Soon, a dollar will be thought of the way we think of a quarter, and the quarter will become the new dime. Decent family homes will cost north of $2.5MM, and people will say, “back when I was a kid...”.
And the nickel, and the dime... and maybe the quarter
That kind of stinks... individual fruits and other produce currently cost less than $0.50. I think $0.10 should be the minimum because then you can just drop the hundredths digit and prices will be, i.e. "$3.2", "$99.9", etc.
The nickel then becomes the new penny. This propaganda is part of the inflationary process, which is intended to increase economic velocity at or faster than the rate of savings, at the expense of savings. Soon, a dollar will be thought of the way we think of a quarter, and the quarter will become the new dime. Decent family homes will cost north of $2.5MM, and people will say, “back when I was a kid...”.
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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…
That was kind of the point OP was trying to make - in the US there are quite a few states that would do this without blushing. Without the Federal government instituting a framework and legal mechanism to prevent it, there is no way any individual state can do it on their own.
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> 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.
You already have this in some sense on gas pumps: the price advertised has taxes included so you are not always playing guess-the-final-total with your money. Just pass a law that requires fair advertising of the actual amount the purchaser will pay, taxes etc. included. If there are special circumstances that might make certain people exempt from a tax -- SNAP is sales-tax free, for instance -- there are several ways to handle that but it's clearer when phrased as a discount rather than as an evasion of a tax.