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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

#381

Post by zahlman »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #336
zer00eyz wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In what part of the world do they use US pennies ? The US currency system sure. But pennies , specifically?

Before Canada stopped using its penny, it was common to find American pennies in circulation.

It's still fairly common to find American nickels, quarters and dimes in circulation. (Probably mostly dimes if I had to guess.) They're generally accepted at par because nobody is even really looking at them and if they did it wouldn't really represent being, well, short-changed.

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

#382

Post by whimsicalism »

axiolite wrote: post #373

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 co…

i think ~5 cents per capita is a fine price to pay to never have to think about pennies again

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

#383

Post by zahlman »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #258
cft wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And hell, put Bank of Zimbabwe on the bills.

I don't like inflation either. The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks and a lot of pretending that it doesn't cause issues in the long run. But it's here to stay, nothing we can do about it.

> The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks

Please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoDKqlcR4Y

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

#384

Post by emodendroket »

wat10000 wrote: post #347
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.

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

SNAP is a major source of revenue for grocers so it seems like you wouldn't have to prod them very hard to do that.

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

#385

Post by meandthewallaby »

wat10000 wrote: post #347
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.

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

They're all easily solvable problems. The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions. This was done via a social media post, not a well thought out transition like Canada had.

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

#386

Post by metabagel »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #267
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…

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 t…

Right. Most gas stations list prices ending in 9/10 of a cent.

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

#387

Post by carlosjobim »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #327
carlosjobim wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You price it including sales tax. Sticker price is final price.

If someone is buying a banana for resale, or buying with WIC or SNAP benefits (among other things), they would not owe sales tax. So if the price included sales tax, the sticker price would not be the final price. You do not know the final price until you know how they are paying for it, what they are using it for, and when they are buying it (among other things). Falsehoods programmers believe about sales tax (among…

Then that discount can be deducted by the cash register when it's time to pay.

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

#388

Post by jacobgkau »

tempestn wrote: post #372
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?

Now people stop shopping at your store.

If the store is e.g. Walmart, then their scale's already large enough that I don't think this is going to put them under. And if every store's doing it, then there'll be nowhere to turn to.

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

#389

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> So everything's going to be $1.03 or $1.04.

Rounding would apply on the total transaction, not individual items (because otherwise the individual posted item prices would just be false.) So, if there is an abuse route with round-half-down, it is that optimizing buyers would structure purchase to always total $x.01 or $x.02, possibly splitting planned purchases into multiple purchases to achieve that.

But even that isn't realistically a significant issue.

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

#390

Post by emodendroket »

burningChrome wrote: post #346
quantified wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The 500-euro bill is being phased out for similar reasons. Though it's worth noting a 100-dollar bill was worth more than twice what it is today when Pablo Escobar died.
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