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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

#271

Post by gniv »

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.

Random anecdote: I go to a boulangerie almost daily (as one does here in France). There is one close to me that started charging 12 centimes for slicing the bread. I got annoyed with this and nowadays make a point to take lots of small change from the coin jar and use it. They don't seem to mind.

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

#272

Post by drivebyhooting »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if the gourmet high end plastic ends up in the brew.

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

#273

Post by simpleguitar »

b112 wrote: post #252
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…

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…

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others".

If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law.

The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

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

#274

Post by bregma »

SCUSKU wrote: post #115
totallykvothe wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree on all but one point. The cotton/linen notes feel so much better in the hand than the candy wrapper plastic of Canadian bills. I know it's a dumb reason, but I just hate the feeling.

Plus US dollars just have that smell to them. I wouldn't mind though if we rotated out some of the faces on the bills, e.g. Andrew Jackson

Is that what cocaine smells like?

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

#276

Post by 0_____0 »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you go through coffee regularly, it's actually quite a nice thing to invest in. There are a really amazing number of craft roasters throughout the country, and simply having a quality grinder is enough. And you don't need a crazy espresso setup to enjoy it. My setup consists of a motorized flat burr grinder, a 20$ kettle from target, and a pour over funnel. The quality is so much higher than anything you can get from a pod that's been sitting around with pre ground coffee, and it only takes a couple minutes while you're waiting for Claude to rewrite your codebase in Rust or whatever it is "Hackers" do these days

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

#277

Post by Galacta7 »

strbean wrote: post #183
saalweachter wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now is our chance to switch to European style "you pay the price it says on the shelf"!

That makes too much sense, which is why it won't happen. Though I'd be all for it.

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

#278

Post by zer00eyz »

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…

> 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.

The problem: the dollar is almost global in its usage. The penny may not be important to the US, but it dam well is every where else where dollars are still in use frequently, along side, or in place of the local/native currency.

Getting rid of the penny will have implications, getting rid of more coins would endanger the use of the dollar globally.

There is still a large portion of the world where 100 dollar bill and a Rolex will get you home safely.

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

#279

Post by expedition32 »

basscomm wrote: post #7
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.

> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket . That was in the 90's, and I still see it happenin…

Nowadays I pay for everything with my phone but back in the day I too hated using coins. Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that.

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

#280

Post by HansHamster »

varun_ch wrote: post #119
afavour wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Switzerland has same colors for all of the various bills? As far as I can tell, that has never been true

This also confused me. The current ones have very distinct colors and also all the previous series used different colors as far as I can tell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_Swiss_franc
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