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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

#211

Post by jjmarr »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #185
Night_Thastus wrote: post #141

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a c…

A noticeable number of places around me in an urban area in the USA already now have signs up saying they won't make any coin change at all! Pay with a card, or exact change, or they'll round up to the dollar keep the difference. Sometimes the sign says "due to the penny shortage" and has been up for a year or whatever, I dunno. But they aren't just not giving you pennies in your change, they are refusing any coins i…

You can either put payments into the register or the safe.

If it goes into the safe, it's nearly impossible to steal because there's a time lock preventing the cashier from accessing it. But you can't make change.

This means you have a optimization problem to have the minimum possible cash in the register to meet all change needs.

Eliminating denominations makes the optimization problem easier, if nothing else.

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

#212

Post by nayuki »

afavour wrote: post #100
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American banknotes have numbers on them to easily distinguish the different values!

> The United States is the only country that prints all denominations of currency in the same size. The US and Switzerland are the only two countries that use the same colors for all of their various bills. Needless to say, this sameness of size and color make it impossible for a blind person to locate the correct bills to make a purchase without some sort of assistance, or confirm that he or she has been given the c…

> The United States is the only country that prints all denominations of currency in the same size

Let me assure you that all Canadian banknotes are the same size too, 6.00 inch × 2.75 inch (152.40 mm × 69.85 mm). I'm not sure how the article got this fact wrong.

As a side note, Canadian banknotes don't have braille, but have an ad hoc system of bumps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_currency_tactile_feat...

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

#213

Post by allknowingfrog »

didgetmaster wrote: post #88
c22 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That...actually seems economically sound, but it's also a strong argument for the idea that pennies are effectively worthless.

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

#214

Post by revicon »

bongodongobob wrote: post #109
revicon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several US states where, by law, retailers are not allowed to give preferential treatment to credit card paying customers over cash paying ones. Which means, in those states, retailers will be required to always round transactions to the cash paying customer's benefit, where in other states the retailer is allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents. This is going to cost large retailers millions. Interestingly…

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

The statistics on consumers evaluating the purchase of something that is $9.99 vs $10 is well proven.

Switching to round number prices would cost retailers a whole lot more.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243599...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243590...

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

#215

Post by nilamo »

mattnewton wrote: post #159
nofriend wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just make the price a multiple of five cents

State and local taxes make this infeasible

Oh no, a made up problem that's easily solved by changing the price slightly in any direction, whatever will we do.

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

#216

Post by chiph »

Like many people, I throw my change into a jar when I get home. One time I only kept pennies and used an old apple cider jug. Turns out that a gallon of pennies is worth almost $55 [0]. And that carrying a heavy glass jug filled with pennies to the Coinstar machine is very anxiety inducing.

Speaking of which - the Coinstar machines near me will give you several options for redemption. Some of which have been Amazon and Home Depot e-gift codes that have no redemption fee.

[0] A potential worthless interview question...

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

#217

Post by darth_avocado »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #141

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a c…

If the Pennies go away, you can no longer get things for pennies on the dollar.

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

#219

Post by jandrewrogers »

JohnFen wrote: post #28
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.

Most of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change. Personally, I think stores should just start setting prices to avoid the need for pennies, but that would be too easy, I guess.

It isn't that simple. There are stacked tax jurisdictions that can change their fraction of the tax independently. Some of those taxes are conditional at point-of-sale so the exact rate varies from customer to customer.

It is a mess but also not easy to unwind or patch over.

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

#220

Post by phantom784 »

UncleSlacky wrote: post #207
phantom784 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately I think this is much easier said than done. No single store is going to want to make this change, because it'll make their prices look higher than the competitors'. It'd require legislation, (and even that'd likely be state-by-state legislation).

It also means a company wouldn't be able to advertise a single price for a product nationwide, since sales tax rates vary by state (and many times even within a state).

Also worth noting that Canada also doesn't include sales taxes.

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