Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 981 posts

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#81

Post by blendergeek »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

I honestly don't know why we don't get rid of nickels and dimes as well. What can you still buy that costs less than $0.25?

Bananas

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#82

Post by silisili »

basscomm wrote: post #13
Analemma_ wrote: post #5

Honestly nickels and dimes, and maybe even quarters, should go too. It's ridiculous that we don't have $1 and $2 coins in widespread circulation in the US (we have a $1 coin but nobody uses it).

We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason. I never understood the objections to the $1 coin, especially after the redesign to make it more distinct from a quarter. $1 coins are great for buying stuff out of vending machines since you don't have to fight with a dodgy bill acceptor or a mangled bill.

My only real objection I guess, and the reason I don't carry change of any sort, is because it's constantly falling out of my pockets. I'm rather tall, so many seating positions put my knees higher than my waist, which I think contributes to that.

Further, since I don't have enough pockets to have a dedicated change pocket, it's always getting caught up in my keys and/or pocket knife.

Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Lastly, they're just comparatively heavy.

I just carry cash around in either a clip or a "front pocket wallet" I think they're called, and it seems more convenient all around.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#83

Post by throwawaymaths »

delecti wrote: post #41
simonw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution: > Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.

If the US properly got rid of pennies (instead of Trump just doing another end-run around congress, by ordering the Mint to stop making them, on shaky legal ground), the legislation could easily supersede those state laws.

What exactly is the law?

Can you show me the statute requiring the treasury department to coin pennies?

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#84

Post by giantg2 »

delecti wrote: post #19
MrHeather wrote: post #6

>But with 20 million customers a year, and 17% of them paying with cash, the policy will eventually cost Kwik Trip a couple of million dollars a year, McHugh said. If we figure two-fifths of cash transactions need to be rounded up and the store is losing an average of 1.5 cents each time, their expected losses would be around $2,000, yeah?

> Kwik Trip, a family-owned convenience store chain that operates in the Midwest, decided to round down cash purchases in stores where it hasn’t been able to find pennies. They're rounding all cash transactions down to the nearest nickel, so an average of 2 cents per transaction, 3.4 million customers, gives me $68,000 assuming each "customer" makes a single transaction per year. If they mean that there are 20 millio…

I would bet they have a way to write it off.

Edit: why disagree? Can't the write it off as a loss, uncollected account, or promotional? Maybe even goodwill

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#85

Post by stetrain »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

I honestly don't know why we don't get rid of nickels and dimes as well. What can you still buy that costs less than $0.25?

Yes, the quarter is pretty much the smallest useful unit of US currency and even that usefulness is shrinking pretty quickly.

If we would adopt a policy of including local sales tax in advertised prices, skipping to whole dollars would be pretty painless.

The main reason to keep at least quarters is all of the various coin-op machines that are still in service.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#86

Post by [deleted] »

terminalshort wrote: post #30
MrHeather wrote: post #6

>But with 20 million customers a year, and 17% of them paying with cash, the policy will eventually cost Kwik Trip a couple of million dollars a year, McHugh said. If we figure two-fifths of cash transactions need to be rounded up and the store is losing an average of 1.5 cents each time, their expected losses would be around $2,000, yeah?

I get $20,400 (20m * 17% * 40% * 0.015). But that's still nothing for a company that does 20 million POS transactions a year.

[deleted]

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#87

Post by criddell »

simonw wrote: post #22
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

The linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution: > Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.

How do they deal with sales tax? Connecticut has a 6.35% sales tax so if I buy something for $1, the total will be $1.0635.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#88

Post by didgetmaster »

c22 wrote: post #29
didgetmaster wrote: post #18

Many are reporting this as if failing to mint new pennies each year is going to produce some kind of shortage. There are billions of pennies sitting in drawers or jars in homes across the nation (I certainly have one with about a thousand pennies in it). I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.

There's a cash-heavy business I work with that's already having a hard time sourcing the pennies they need. I guess they're all in a jar under your desk.

It seems to me that if there was truly a shortage of pennies, banks could offer to pay 2 cents for every penny someone turned in (still far cheaper than minting a new one) and enough people would pull out their penny jars and cash them in.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#89

Post by phantasmish »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

I honestly don't know why we don't get rid of nickels and dimes as well. What can you still buy that costs less than $0.25?

When we got rid of the half-penny, it was worth more in 2024 cents than the dime is now.

We waited so long past when we should have gotten rid of the penny that now a coin ten times as valuable is also worthless enough that we ought to get rid of it.

Post reply on HN