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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

#421

Post by dragonwriter »

mynameisash wrote: post #168
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…

> the transition was a non-issue I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom. Last I checked, there are plenty of restaurants open in the state, and things are going fine. In fact, just…

> I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom.

Yeah, they had done the same thing when California did the same thing 30 years ago. The fact that it didn't happen then didn't stop them from doing it everywhere else similar laws were subsequently proposed.

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

#423

Post by cindyllm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #77
didgetmaster wrote: post #18

Many are reporting this as if failing to mint new pennies each year is going to produce some kind of shortage. There are billions of pennies sitting in drawers or jars in homes across the nation (I certainly have one with about a thousand pennies in it). I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.

> I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years. Based on my experience with the universe, this ability of being able to find something whenever you need it, only happens until you start expecting it and when you really need it, you're not gonna be able to find it anywhere. Maybe "Murphy's law" isn't what I'm looking for but something similar? For when what you really need is n…

[dead]

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

#424

Post by rootusrootus »

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.…

> You still need to include the cents in a tax bill that runs into the millions of dollars

Not in all cases. The IRS does not use cents when you file your tax return, they say round to the nearest dollar.

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

#426

Post by toast0 »

firefax wrote: post #363
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'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. Let's do it like Japan does, only one type of currency. And that currency will be the penny. One dollar note? No buddy... that's a one hundred cent note now. We may or may not continue to mint one dollar coins (previously one cent coins), but everything will make... cents. (I guess this style of humor is better delivered verbally?)

JPY has the benefit that people probably don't try to use floating point numbers for currency. (ignoring the central joke of your comment)

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

#427

Post by ianferrel »

timeinput wrote: post #242
ianferrel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting prices to avoid the need for pennies is probably technically challenging given the combination of requirements to post prices and sales taxes that don't always round the same way. If the effective tax rate is 7.432%, you can price single items so that the price plus tax ends up in a multiple of $0.05, but if you get a purchase with multiple items, you either need to round somewhere or post prices that are lik…

Imagine a world where they just posted the price you would pay at the register on the shelf instead of some number that is ~93.082% of the price you would pay. I know it's hard to imagine the price on the shelf being the price that you pay, but I believe it is possible even in complex tax situations.

I live where there is no sales tax, so it's not hard to imagine!

But good luck convincing every state, county, municipality, and other weird governing body that requires something other than that and also collects a weird sales tax.

Or go with the solution that papers over all that nonsense: a flexible and maximum $0.04 per purchase discount.

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

#428

Post by zahlman »

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…

I pay exact change whenever I can.

And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.

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

#429

Post by thaumasiotes »

meandthewallaby wrote: post #385
wat10000 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions.

That's not an "issue". That's the way things that actually happen, happen.

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

#430

Post by mathgradthrow »

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…

Nothing avoids rounding.
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