Gas prices are frequently in fractions of a penny. This never matters because they round. Yep, rounding, in the real world, and the nation has not imploded. As pointed out by others Canada does this already and it's no issue.
The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
451–460 of 981 posts
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
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_... ]
The wikipedia article says that this was specifically the price of a 6.5oz Coke.
The obvious way to raise the price by 50% is to cut the amount by a third, selling 4.33oz Cokes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/coca... suggests that Coca-Cola was comfortable producing bottles in several different sizes.
Now, a 4 1/3 oz Coke is obviously too small to be worth bothering with. But that's also true of a 6 1/2 oz Coke. These sizes seem more like something you dispense with an eyedropper than something you drink. A normal can is 12 oz! Who'd want to buy a six-ounce beverage?
You can address both problems at once by doubling the price and increasing the volume all the way up to 8.67 oz.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
It makes no sense to spend more money to mint the actual money, then the money is worth OK. You might not like it, but something has to be done because to continue in a slow and methodical process 1) forgets that the government is the same entity that runs the DMV 2) people love to throw out criticisms of solutions that aren’t perfect not realizing that it’s still better than the status quo. To do nothing is costing…
> 3) I bet you $100 You don’t like Trump.
I actually like Trump (or at least his presidency) a lot more than I think most Hacker News browsers do. I like Trump's presidency more than most of my co-workers and many of my friends do. My arguments in this thread are entirely my own, not the product of some political allegiance.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Several reasons, it really is a mess. The local tax is set by multiple independent tax authorities that change their taxes independently, the tax you see is the aggregate of those independent authorities computed separately, which do not coordinate with each other. Some of these taxes are conditional at point-of-sale, late-binding the taxes, such that different customers are subject to different rates across these ta…
> It is widely illegal to not display the true price and taxes paid separately. Trying to retcon a price and taxes for rounding purposes that is also strictly consistent across customers so as to not violate the law is not trivial. Having lived in Europe, this should be changed. It makes it infeasible to keep track of your total bill as you shop. The amount without tax should be printed on the receipt, if you care to…
The issue is that the legal change would have to be made independently across thousands of decentralized tax authorities. Herding that many cats is infeasible so it can't be part of a plausible solution. In some jurisdictions, the legal process required to make the changes have effectively insurmountable voting thresholds.
It may not be convenient but any realistic solution has to recognize the hard facts that shape the nature of problem.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the national government literally stops creating a certain precision of money, i expect the "exact change" requirement should be invalid.
You volunteering your business to be the the test legal case for that? Or are you stocking pennies?
“change will be provided via Venmo” sign at the entrance :)
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.
Wasting people’s time is rude here not illegal.
Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. My proposal would be to have 10 cent, 50 cent, and $1 coins (rounding everything to the nearest 10 cents), with $2 the smallest bill. And probably you could drop the $5 bill at that point.
There's a lot of physical infrastructure that works with quarters, and it's probably not worth giving that up for slightly improved coinage. Just drop all the coins smaller than a quarter.
There's also the 3rd amendment. It would be worthless to say soldiers can't demand change for the vending machine, when nobody at all can get quarters.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#458Some 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…
Right, but getting fined in this situation means the government is incompetent. They should just tell retailers the "right" thing to do and not fine any retailers that follow the guidelines.
The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#459The argument that we should stop minting them because they cost more to produce than their face value falls flat for me.
A penny is not a single use item. The cost of production must be depreciated across the thousands of transactions in which it is used and then compared to the economic benefit of its existence.
It may be true that the economic benefit of a penny is less than the production cost but I don’t see anyone making that case.
What will it actually cost the US economy to stop minting these coins?
How long will they remain in circulation until they are no longer accepted for payment?
Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
#460I'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…
Some people are poor. Did you know that? Some people live in poverty. I'm sure that is a big surprise to you. Some Americans still have to spend nickels and dimes. Crazy, right? Some people don't have infinite Bitcoin from mommy and daddy.