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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

#261
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…

Paying by card doesn't round, the amount charged is exact cents, or at least that's the way it worked last time I was in Canada.

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

#262
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…

All green notes are barely there anymore... the dollar bill itself. Even the five has some color now.

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the SNAP law, could they just round down SNAP purchases in the same way to be compliant?

The SNAP equal treatment rule requirement works in both directions: Prices cannot be higher or lower for SNAP recipients. As a retailer, there is an option to request a waiver, though.

So, that sounds like a yes, they could round up or down SNAP purchases just like cash purchases.

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

#264

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!

Night City eurodollars?

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

#265
I’m old enough to remember being able to scrounge around the house for pennies and heading down to Gracie’s corner store so I could buy some Swedish fish. They were 1 cent each. Gracie counted them out and put them in a small paper bag for you.

A major score was finding a dime or quarter on the street. When the Whatchamacallit first came out they were 25 cents!

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. My proposal would be to have 10 cent, 50 cent, and $1 coins (rounding everything to the nearest 10 cents), with $2 the smallest bill. And probably you could drop the $5 bill at that point.

There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters, and it's probably not worth giving that up for slightly improved coinage. Just drop all the coins smaller than a quarter.

There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters

Very good point and I think I'm convinced.

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

#267
post #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. An…

Rounding is such a weird boogeyman to me because people are like "the companies are just going to use it to get more money from the customers" but, they're doing that anyway. They don't need this excuse to raise prices they'll just do it anyway.

Same thing when people complain that raising minimum wage will increase prices, meanwhile prices have increased for 50 years completely separate from wages. They don't need the excuse to raise prices they're just gonna do it anyway.

If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation, but regulation is communism and therefore bad.

I'm so god damn tired.

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retailers don't, like, have to add sales tax on top of listed prices. They just have to pay it.

No, it's illegal in many, looks like most states: https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-america/2019/07/retail...

IIRC, in New York it’s illegal to absorb sales tax on individual items because by law it’s a consumer tax collected by the business and explicitly not a tax on the business itself, but - and it’s a pretty big exception - anything sold as a bulk good can include the tax in the price. That includes things like liquid fuels, grains or candy by the scoop in the supermarket, loose sand/gravel/salt/whatever for outdoor use, and things like that. It’s been a long while since I had to set up an ecommerce site for New York though.
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