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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

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

#251
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry Europe and Canada, $1 and $2 coins are just absolutely terrible . I never want to have to think about where my change is. Bills are much lighter than coins and stack with the rest of the bills.

I want to get rid of bills and move to only coins. We can carry coin pouches and act like a medieval/fantasy novel character.

IMO best would be some kind of money where you could physically break a given piece of cash into two pieces of half the value.

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

#252

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…

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story.

Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. And the math seems fair enough:

https://www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/theme2-info-eng.htm...

Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. Rounding is to be applied after all taxes are paid, etc.

Of course, there was also central guidance and, well, everyone just followed it. It's called "having a society".

People blathering on about stores fixing the rounding are morons, there's no way to do so if you buy more than one item. No one gets ripped off with the above method. In the end, it just works out.

And really, who cares?! It's a penny.

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

#253
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.

I remember moving out of a place (decades ago). I was the last roommate out, and so was stuck with some of the cleanup (wanted to get that deposit back!). One of the things we had was a ton of pennies (no idea why). I had no room in my car, so I spend a few minutes late at night flinging pennies out onto the sidewalk after a long day of cleaning the place.

Would it not have been better/easier for all involved to have just set a container of all the pennies on the street on your way out? If someone really could use them, you're kind of a dick for making them pick them up one at a time, but if they were all together...

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(

Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.

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

#256

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…

Nickles are likely to go shortly after. You can do everything you can with nickles with dimes and quarters, nickles have worse economics than pennies, and have had their minting suppressed below the market needs for years. Once pennies leave circulation, the problems with nickles will become urgent and they'll quickly leave.

Dimes are small and cheap to make though, so they'll probably stick around.

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

#257

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.

The famous little jingle "shave and a haircut, two bits"

Most people today have no clue what a "bit" is.

I imagine the future will hold something similar for the penny in all the idioms and cultural phrases we have. What the hell is a penny?

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

#258
post #239

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…

And hell, put Bank of Zimbabwe on the bills.

I don't like inflation either. The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks and a lot of pretending that it doesn't cause issues in the long run.

But it's here to stay, nothing we can do about it.

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

#259
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.

Now we've unlocked a new lucrative business model where we can cut the customer out entirely! Simply buy pennies from the bank on the dollar and sell them back for 100% profit...

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

#260

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…

Quick, someone file a trademark for “Take a Quarter, Leave a Quarter”
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