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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

#501

Post by pyth0 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #433
dragonwriter wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans like to pretend that history and the experience of the rest of the world doesn't exist and that things that large numbers of other countries have done successfully (and which even the US has done in the past, in this case, as the half-penny, after all, was phase out a long time ago) are impossible to do successfully.

Sales taxes as they are known in the US were largely introduced in the 20th century. The half-penny was phased out in the mid-19th century. The legal structure of sales taxes in the US present some unique challenges that simply don't exist as problems that needed to be solved in other countries. These problems can't be legislated away because the authority to do so is highly decentralized. Pretending that these probl…

Can you explain further? Canada has sales tax and successfully phased out the penny.

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

#502

Post by rtkwe »

phantom784 wrote: post #246
anticorporate wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SNAP equal treatment rule requirement works in both directions: Prices cannot be higher or lower for SNAP recipients. As a retailer, there is an option to request a waiver, though.

How does this work with coupons, discount for loyalty card holders, etc.? Presumably that's fine because a SNAP recipient has access to those same discounts. So wouldn't this be the same - the "cash rounding" discount is available to SNAP and people paying cash?

Anyone can have a coupon the law is about not special fees or discounts to SNAP recipients, and since EBT/SNAP cards are essentially debit cards them always being charged exact change could be litigated as differential pricing in theory, which in a country as big and sue happy as the US means someone will try it eventually.

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

#503

Post by barbazoo »

droptablemain wrote: post #257
darth_avocado wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Pennies go away, you can no longer get things for pennies on the dollar.

The famous little jingle "shave and a haircut, two bits" Most people today have no clue what a "bit" is. I imagine the future will hold something similar for the penny in all the idioms and cultural phrases we have. What the hell is a penny?

What is a bit, a penny?

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

#504

Post by bluGill »

philipallstar wrote: post #478
pwg wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. It's not. Some US states have laws on the books that make it illegal for retailers to round up. The turmoil is that if the retailer can only round down to the nearest five cents, then they stand to lose from one to four cents per cash sale for any sale that is not a multiple of five cents. A…

If it means shops stop charging $4.99 and start charging $5.00, I will be ecstatic.

Problem is it isn't just the $5.99 rounds to $6.00 it is tax. If the end cost is $6.36 will the state be happy with that one penny less? For any state 1 penny per transaction is millions of dollars per year! (note that I had to change your price from 4.99 to 5.99 - 5.00 times any tax rate is an even multiple of 5 and so cannot make the point).

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

#505

Post by rtkwe »

smallerize wrote: post #238
hollasch wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just American custom to exclude some taxes from the posted price. Many countries include all taxes in the price, something I've always wished we would do in America. After that, I'd love to see the elimination of the custom of always ending fuel cost per gallon in 9/10 of a cent.

Rounding sales tax on each item will often result in a different price than rounding once for the total. The store will collect the wrong amount of tax that way.

They're saying include the sales tax in the price and set the item's price such that the sum of price + all taxes is an even increment of 5 cents. Gets a little tricky with fractional sales taxes but that's only a problem where POS systems strictly enforce 2 digit cents (not sure if that's the case).

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

#507

Post by rtkwe »

bogeholm wrote: post #188
mattnewton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and local taxes make this infeasible

> State and local taxes make this infeasible I don’t see why that would be the case? In my country, most prices with VAT (which is what you’re charged) are nice, round numbers, but not the price without VAT. I suppose the stores set a target price, and then adjust it a bit to make the price + VAT a “nice” number. Is there a reason that couldn’t be done to make all prices + VAT multiples of 5c?

Lots of localities total taxes aren't whole percentages so it potentially gets tricky making prices work in those systems such that you can make whole 5 cent tax included prices with whole cent base prices. Do most POS systems support arbitrary precision item prices?

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

#508

Post by pxx »

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.…

Nobody wants 10 months in a year. What we want is 13 28-day months a year plus one or two intercalary days. But organized religion gets in the way.

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

#509

Post by axiolite »

nayuki wrote: post #212
afavour wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The United States is the only country that prints all denominations of currency in the same size Let me assure you that all Canadian banknotes are the same size too, 6.00 inch × 2.75 inch (152.40 mm × 69.85 mm). I'm not sure how the article got this fact wrong. As a side note, Canadian banknotes don't have braille, but have an ad hoc system of bumps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_currency_tactile_feat...

> Let me assure you that all Canadian banknotes are the same size too [...] not sure how the article got this fact wrong.

Because Canada is just part of the U.S.

(flame away)

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