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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

#341

Post by hcknwscommenter »

immibis wrote: post #316
internetter wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Very unlikely that would happen. The way similar issues have been dealt with in the past is that settlement is negotiated to something "reasonable" (at least arguably so) and administrable. Probably the settlement amount would just go to a fund that the state would then distribute according to its priorities.

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

#342

Post by ewoodrich »

JohnFen wrote: post #47
devmor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason. It’s because retailers wont accept them - they think they’re counterfeit because no one uses them. A catch-22 situation, really.

I've never had a retailer refuse to accept a $2 bill, although a couple of times the clerk summoned the manager about it. But I've never found a retailer willing to give a $2 bill as change. The resistance to the $2 bill is a very weird cultural thing.

Dispensaries in OR/WA love $2 bills, for some chains they're as unremarkable as a $1 and must special request them in bulk to keep on hand for making change.

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

#343

Post by dpark »

zer00eyz wrote: post #278
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 o…

> The penny may not be important to the US, but it dam well is every where else where dollars are still in use frequently

[citation needed]

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

#344

Post by ivanbakel »

jacobgkau wrote: post #309
smeej wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy two things at $1.03 or $1.04, it's $2.06 or $2.07 and rounds down to $2.05 more often than it's $2.08 and rounds up to $2.10. That's not "some clever ways." That's so basic it's absurd. They don't know how many things you're going to buy. They don't know how many things anyone is going to buy. There's no way to game the entire system for every combination of things people might buy. Never mind this: When w…

> Never mind this: When was the last time you bought something in person, in cash, and bought only one thing? Just think it through for a second. "In cash" is entirely separate from the rounding debate and is just the "people use cards, anyway" argument. It's not relevant to this discussion. This discussion is about cash. I do buy single items at stores sometimes. > If you buy two things at $1.03 or $1.04, it's $2.06…

> Where's the law preventing stores from imposing an accounting fee for multi-item purchases, conveniently totaling a few cents?

Where’s the law preventing someone from doing this right now? I don’t think this cynicism is justified.

Similarly, if places are willing to price stuff at $1.03 for the few extra cents they’ll collect some of the time, then they can just raise prices on 99c items right now to $1 to collect the extra cent, which they don’t do because such prices have a psychological effect on the consumer that outweighs the small gain.

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

#346

Post by burningChrome »

quantified wrote: post #307
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…

When the US attempted to transition to the metric system, gas stations raised their prices per unit volume and the American consumer was convinced that the metric system was bad. I have family that think metric is bad because some fringe people thought there should be 10 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour, also something like 10 months a year, and the whole thing is bad because some awkward ideas were floated.…

>> and we won't have $100 bills anymore.

Heard some pundits on the radio talking about the elimination of the penny and one of them who worked at the Secret Service as an analyst talked about why the US paper money only goes to $100 bills. He said it was to reduce criminals and illicit activity and criminals having to store it.

He related the story of Pablo Escobar's brother or cousin who was the accountant for the cartel. He said they were losing billions of dollars every year because of various kinds of attrition like rats chewing up the money, it getting too wet and disintegrating. They were losing so much because they had to store it and that wasn't always the best because they had so much of it on hand which seemed to lend credence to his story.

So if you were to get rid of the $100 bills that would further erode the ability of criminals to store so much of it.

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

#347

Post by wat10000 »

simpleguitar wrote: post #273
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…

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.

So, round down debit cards too? This seems like a really easy problem to solve.

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

#348

Post by jacobgkau »

dpark wrote: post #330
jacobgkau wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is nonsense. No store is going to charge a multi item fee so that they can try to scrape an extra penny off their customers. As someone else’s already pointed out, they could just do this today if they believe their customers will accept it. Did you forget that stores can just raise prices? Your premise that stores will find a way to force rounding up is nonsense. It’s nonsense because stores aren’t actually goi…

> As someone else’s already pointed out, they could just do this today if they believe their customers will accept it. Did you forget that stores can just raise prices?

As I already pointed out, customers would be more likely to accept it if there's an excuse for it (pennies are being phased out) than just randomly. The discussion's about what rounding may cause, not about what stores have the legal ability to do.

> It’s nonsense because stores aren’t actually going to do it, but also because we’re talking about pennies. Oh, no. The store ripped me off for 2 cents. How will I survive?

So this argument is just "you may be right, but I don't care." That's not an argument, imo.

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

#349

Post by kccqzy »

nayuki wrote: 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…

I simply don’t like coins because they are heavy. I will continue to prefer $1 bills over $1 coins. Agree with the rest of your points though.

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

#350

Post by basscomm »

silisili wrote: post #82
basscomm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also have a $2 bill that nobody uses for whatever reason. I never understood the objections to the $1 coin, especially after the redesign to make it more distinct from a quarter. $1 coins are great for buying stuff out of vending machines since you don't have to fight with a dodgy bill acceptor or a mangled bill.

My only real objection I guess, and the reason I don't carry change of any sort, is because it's constantly falling out of my pockets. I'm rather tall, so many seating positions put my knees higher than my waist, which I think contributes to that. Further, since I don't have enough pockets to have a dedicated change pocket, it's always getting caught up in my keys and/or pocket knife. Nobody really gave us training o…

> Nobody really gave us training on this stuff, do other countries use a coin purse or some such?

Americans also use coin purses or rubber coin pouches, but I mostly only see older generations using them.

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