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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

#311

Post by jabbany »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #152
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…

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

I know this is supposed to be a joke but... businesses have pushed for this the other way around in the past, asking for a new coin to raise prices.

> The Coca-Cola Company sought ways to increase the five cent price, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_...]

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

#312

Post by mtmail »

darth_avocado wrote: post #217
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.

Soon one can no longer add 2 cents to a discussion.

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

#313

Post by nothrabannosir »

jacobgkau wrote: post #281
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

Are we pretending that nobody has ever tried phasing out smaller denomination currency, and that we don’t have a vast body of actual case studies to draw from? Why are we running thought experiments at all?

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

#314

Post by chokolad »

jacobgkau wrote: post #301
bigfishrunning wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but then you buy 2 things, and it's $2.06. round down! or you buy 4 and it's $4.12. round down! it'll come out in the wash. there are much bigger things to worry about.

You attempt that at my store. To help ensure my business is sustainable in these hard times (/s), I'm imposing a "multi-item order" fee at my store. Now what?

What's stopping you from doing it now ?

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

#315

Post by jacobgkau »

mtmail wrote: post #300
jacobgkau wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

Sales tax gets applied first.

Sales tax rates aren't secret. Stores can set their prices with it in mind. Consumers are far less likely to have sales tax rates memorized and to go through the trouble of checking how things'll work out from the sticker price before they get to the register.

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

#316

Post by immibis »

internetter wrote: post #293
simpleguitar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you not argue that the average is the same and thus the law isn’t violated?

Does the law say the average price must be the same, or does it say the price must be the same?

Reality: the supermarket does it the common sense way, and never gets sued, but if they do get sued, the outcome is "you must now refund 2 cents from every SNAP transaction you ever did"

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

#317

Post by m463 »

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.

I use quarters in parking meters sometimes.

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

#318

Post by jacobgkau »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #313
jacobgkau wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04. Not sure why you think retailers (or any sellers) would ever, ever, ever let this play into customers' advantage. But apparently pointing out that obvious truth makes me a "moron," because you can think of some clever ways to get around it that retailers surely won't work arou…

Are we pretending that nobody has ever tried phasing out smaller denomination currency, and that we don’t have a vast body of actual case studies to draw from? Why are we running thought experiments at all?

As others have pointed out, governments sometimes issue actual guidance on how it's supposed to work when they phase out currency. It's not always "just stop making them and see how the market deals with it."

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

#319

Post by niij »

jacobgkau wrote: post #301
bigfishrunning wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but then you buy 2 things, and it's $2.06. round down! or you buy 4 and it's $4.12. round down! it'll come out in the wash. there are much bigger things to worry about.

You attempt that at my store. To help ensure my business is sustainable in these hard times (/s), I'm imposing a "multi-item order" fee at my store. Now what?

If you seriously think that's realistic I guess I don't know what to tell you.

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

#320

Post by codyb »

As much as there's a lot of reasonable arguments for ending the minting of the penny, the method in which this president waves his hands and fundamentally changes things such as our White House, our currency, our trade policies, our universities leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and it's hard to support even sensible decisions this authoritarian regime makes.
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