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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

#371

Post by MrMorden »

munificent wrote: post #292
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…

> We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. That's because Canada had a plan, thought it through, and rolled it out. In the US... “We had a social media post (by Trump) during Super Bowl Sunday, but no real plan for what retailers would have to do,” he said, referring to the president’s February announcement. We have a deranged old man posting random shit on social media determining…

Unlike serving as a Republican politician, clowning requires a lot of work and training. It's nothing resembling an unskilled job. Ringling Bros. would do a lot better.

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

#372

Post by tempestn »

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?

Now people stop shopping at your store.

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

#373

Post by axiolite »

penny-rounding “imposes a tax of $3.27 million Canadian dollars from consumers to grocery stores on a yearly basis in aggregate

https://economics.ubc.ca/news/penny-rounding-profitable-for-...

eliminating the penny would require producing more nickels to “fill the gap in small-value transactions.” But nickels suffer from a similar “seigniorage” problem: the 2024 U.S. Mint report said the five-cent coins have a unit cost of 13.78 cents each.

https://time.com/7215870/trump-us-penny-mint-costs-one-cent-...

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

#374

Post by mortar »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #199
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #113

Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately: >Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience…

They can round down the card transactions too if it’s really a problem to charge differing amounts. For those that seriously think this would be a major problem there was a comedy skit circulating in Australia when this happened. A guy would push his car to the petrol pump, fill with 2c of petrol, rounded down to 0. The guy at the counter just laughed at it. You could in theory do this 1000 more times (would take hou…

I had this same idea and seem to recall even trying it, but it was mostly thwarted when they added minimum liquid delivery amounts.

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

#375

Post by kbolino »

afavour wrote: post #100
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American banknotes have numbers on them to easily distinguish the different values!

> 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…

All U.S. bills in common circulation (all denominations except $2) have been different colors for 20 years.

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

#376

Post by verelo »

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…

Growing up in Australia 1 cent pieces were gone before i knew what money was. Coming to Canada in 2009 on a trip, i was shocked to see them. They were annoying and instantly drove me crazy, but i felt bad throwing them out. I threw them out anyway, helping reduce inflation

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

#377

Post by stonemetal12 »

smeej wrote: post #298
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…

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…

> They don't know how many things anyone is going to buy.

They have historical data, so they know on average people buy 5 things, and they will have data on what impact on purchasing behavior the changes have. Most likely they will tune for increased volume as people spend more to avoid losing a couple of cents.

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

#378

Post by dragonwriter »

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?

No, because the law applies to individual transactions, not averages.

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

#379

Post by drdec »

mattnewton wrote: post #159
nofriend wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just make the price a multiple of five cents

State and local taxes make this infeasible

It's the same way with the penny.

Tax on a 0.99 item isn't coming out to an exact penny multiple.

So stores are already dealing with this situation

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

#380

Post by jacobgkau »

tempestn wrote: post #369
echelon wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is no rounding down, it could amount to more. Hypothetically if you incur 10,000 transactions per year with the max rounding up of $0.04 per transaction, you're out $400. This doesn't make a huge impact to individuals, but it absolutely will to large volume businesses.

But there would be rounding down, so how is this relevant?

What's even to say anything will be rounded down? If Walmart says "we're going to round anything from $0.01 to $0.04 up to $0.05," do you think the free market would put them out of business out of principle, or would they get away with it? I think they'd get away with it.
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