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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

cnn.com

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

#201

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

paxys wrote: post #169

Too early to say "ever", considering there has been no act of congress on this matter and the penny continues to be legal tender. The decision to stop minting it is a (legally debatable) executive order, and the next president or even the current one can change their mind about it tomorrow.

lets hope not. This is long overdue and should pose relatively little issue compared to most other recent questionable executive orders.

stop minting and stop accepting is commonly separated to allow adjustment. so likely a later president will just add the second phaseout step.

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

#202

Post by warmwaffles »

phantasmish wrote: post #103
thayne wrote: post #56

I'm a little worried this will encourage vendors to increases prices up to the next 5 cent mark, which will cause inflation that we really don't need more of right now.

Gas stations price to the tenth of a penny per gallon. There is no 1/10 cent coin. Works fine.

That's because the law requires them to charge that extra 9/10. It's silly.

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

#203

Post by chawco »

spiderice wrote: post #189
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…

Better is very subjective here. I hate the colorful, plastic, canadian money. It feels toyish, like monopoly money. Whereas USD feels much more nice to deal with.

As a Canadian with kids who recently bought Monopoly, I can you tell you that American money objectively feels much more like Monopoly money...

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

#204

Post by UncleSlacky »

criddell wrote: post #87
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.

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.

They could do what every other country does, and include the sales tax in the shelf label price.

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

#205

Post by dmd »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #3

I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.

> not one person stopped to pick any up.

Isn't that the old joke about the economist?

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

#206

Post by redfern314 »

nostrademons wrote: post #191
binarymax wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0.67 coin is on the way

$0.666. Half the population would think it's the mark of the beast, the other half rounds up to 6-7.

and the third half of the population thinks it's egregious that a repeating fraction has been truncated!

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

#207

Post by UncleSlacky »

phantom784 wrote: post #170
bongodongobob wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't cost anyone anything. They can just raise prices 3 cents or whatever.

It gets tricky because sales tax is added on top of the sticker price.

Then include the sales tax in the sticker price, like every other country does.

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

#208

Post by mjd »

delecti wrote: post #181
mjd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is wrong. As far as I can tell the relevant statute is 31 USC §5112, and it does not require the minting of all authorized coins: “(a) The Secretary of the Treasury *may mint* and issue only the following coins: ... (6) ... a one-cent coin that is 0.75 inch in diameter and weighs 3.11 grams.” (Emphasis mine) There may be another clause somewhere that requires the Treasury to issue all coins, but that see…

I addressed in another reply that "'none' is all that's necessary" is probably a defensible interpretation of the law (the more relevant portion being in 5111 rather than 5112), but the penny being explicitly listed makes it clearly not the intention of congress. That's why I said it's a "shaky" and not "baseless" legal ground. The law is clearly written with the expectation that there will be some , which is why Con…

You're right, 5111 is more pertinent here.

5111(a)(1) says “shall mint and issue coins” but qualifies it explicitly with “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”. This is a clear delegation of authority.

If you don't think zero pennies is a permissible amount, what about one penny? Two? What minimum number are you arguing for here, and what's your justification for it?

If Congress had wanted to set a minimum number, they could have done so.

Reading it as ”shall mint” is wrong, I think. “Shall” qualifies the whole clause “mint in amounts the Secretary decides (etc.)”.

Understood that way, 5111 makes it unlawful to mint any pennies if the Secretary decides that none are necessary.

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

#209

Post by darth_avocado »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #177
datadrivenangel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But add a $3.50 coin so that we can strongly incentivize coffee to stay below a certain price.

Just take a zero out of everything and change the name from dollar to something else!

*dllar*

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

#210

Post by justsomehnguy »

Maxion wrote: post #145
SoftTalker wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit odd that the mint doesn't emboss the denomination in braille on each note. I'd think that there would be a way to do that and have it hold up pretty well in circulation?

Braille does not help everyone. Most people with vision issues are not legally lind and do not know braille.

You need a week of low-key exposure to learn how each bill is marked.
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