Canada ditches the penny • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#11

Post by mhyee » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:18 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #8

mmastrac wrote: post #3

This line-item is basically a smokescreen for cutting all sorts of other important things (like the research tax credit, SR&ED; various social programs; the budget for our national broadcaster, the CBC; and the salary of the Chief Electoral Officer): http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/rjrfn/the_budget_5_b... Amusingly this particular cut was actually a private member proposal from the NDP (the left-most mainstre…

I'm not very familiar with canadian politics. Why is it amusing that the NDP proposed this?

The party that implemented this is the Conservative party, the right-most mainstream party. The two parties generally don't see eye to eye, to put it lightly.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#12

Post by drostie » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:19 PM UTC

kmm wrote: post #5

A brilliant decision. Now if we could only get rid of our 1 euro cent here. According to some inflation figures I quickly found on the internet, a (US dollar) penny had a hundred years ago 23 times as much buying power as a penny nowadays. That means the smallest denomination was then was worth almost as much as a quarter is now! People could get by without smaller coins then and they should be able to work perfectly…

Move to the Netherlands. The one-euro-cent and two-euro-cent bits don't exist here unless you're doing a bank transaction; cash transactions get rounded to the nearest 5 cents.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#13

Post by randlet » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:22 PM UTC

"They cost more to produce than they are worth, nobody likes them, they have no commercial value."

My very first (very primitive) public facing webpage was dedicated to abolishing the Canadian penny. Good riddance!

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#14

Post by redthrowaway » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:22 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #8

mmastrac wrote: post #3

This line-item is basically a smokescreen for cutting all sorts of other important things (like the research tax credit, SR&ED; various social programs; the budget for our national broadcaster, the CBC; and the salary of the Chief Electoral Officer): http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/rjrfn/the_budget_5_b... Amusingly this particular cut was actually a private member proposal from the NDP (the left-most mainstre…

I'm not very familiar with canadian politics. Why is it amusing that the NDP proposed this?

This isn't the Canadian Budget; it's the budget proposed by the ruling Conservatives. This item will likely generate the most buzz and goodwill for the budget, and it was proposed by the current Opposition NDP, who are socialists.

So, the greatest PR windfall for the Conservatives will have come from their biggest ideological and political opponents. It's mildly entertaining.

That said, as the Conservatives have a majority (>50% of seats in the House of Commons), there's no chance that the budget would fail, triggering a vote of non-confidence and a general election. So it wasn't a vote that had any real importance politically, but it will serve to generate public goodwill, which they could use. The Conservatives currently only have a majority because of the ineptitude of the Liberals and Quebecers' fatigue with the Bloc Quebecois. Most Canadians are to the left of the Conservatives, have only warily entrusted them with power, and only then because the center-left liberals couldn't get their shit together at election time.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#15

Post by msbarnett » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:24 PM UTC

seanmccann wrote: post #6

If the customer has the pennies, they can use them. Payments with debit or credit cards, or cheques, can also be to the penny. But if the customer is paying cash and doesn't have the pennies, the total will go up or down to the nearest nickel. For example, $1.02 will become $1 and $1.03 will be $1.05. Something just feels wrong about rounding. The customer would always get screwed. They should solve this problem by u…

> They should solve this problem by using the federal sales tax to round up/down. $1.25 + 5% = 5¢ of tax instead of 6.25¢.

Wouldn't work except in Alberta, NWT, the Yukon, and Nunavut. Anywhere else, the provincial sales tax would knock it back off a multiple of 5.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#16

Post by brunoqc » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:26 PM UTC

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #9

vaksel wrote: post #7

i wonder if Canada has that bit, where the prices you see in the store are the final prices(i..e with tax already calculated in)

No, the prices are before tax. I think there is even a law against showing prices with tax for whatever reason.

I thought they don't include tax so they don't have to change it every time the tax rate change.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#17

Post by huggyface » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:26 PM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #3

This line-item is basically a smokescreen for cutting all sorts of other important things (like the research tax credit, SR&ED; various social programs; the budget for our national broadcaster, the CBC; and the salary of the Chief Electoral Officer): http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/rjrfn/the_budget_5_b... Amusingly this particular cut was actually a private member proposal from the NDP (the left-most mainstre…

Say that it's a "smoke screen" is needlessly partisan. It is, indeed, a line item. It deals with something that has come up for consideration since the 80s. If it gets attention, it gets attention.

But do you think no one notices the other changes because they're ditching the penny? That is preposterous.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#18

Post by drostie » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:27 PM UTC

seanmccann wrote: post #6

If the customer has the pennies, they can use them. Payments with debit or credit cards, or cheques, can also be to the penny. But if the customer is paying cash and doesn't have the pennies, the total will go up or down to the nearest nickel. For example, $1.02 will become $1 and $1.03 will be $1.05. Something just feels wrong about rounding. The customer would always get screwed. They should solve this problem by u…

It's a round, not a ceiling function. If you were going to pay .98, .99, .00, .01, or .02 you will now pay .00; whereas if you were going to pay .03, .04, .05, .06, or .07 you will now pay .05 . In other words, after the very first interval of 5 cents (about $0 even) each numeral gets 5 incoming numbers associated with it.

The only people who could really try to steal pennies from everyone would be supermarkets, and they would face the problem that it's too broadly peaked -- people going to the supermarket will buy between two and twenty things, and modulo 5 that sum is not easy to predict or steer.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#19

Post by sanswork » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:29 PM UTC

seanmccann wrote: post #6

If the customer has the pennies, they can use them. Payments with debit or credit cards, or cheques, can also be to the penny. But if the customer is paying cash and doesn't have the pennies, the total will go up or down to the nearest nickel. For example, $1.02 will become $1 and $1.03 will be $1.05. Something just feels wrong about rounding. The customer would always get screwed. They should solve this problem by u…

They don't have pennies in Australia and they just round up or down to the nearest 5c interval. I assume they will do the same in Canada.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#20

Post by taitems » Thu, Mar 29, 2012, 10:30 PM UTC

Just as a point of interest, Australia removed the 1 and 2 cent coins from circulation back in 1992. Prices have been rounded to the nearest 5 cent value when paying with cash ever since. A comment on this thread said that it's madness, but it's all someone my age has grown up with.