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Canada ditches the penny

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Re: Canada ditches the penny

#101

Post by taitems »

prawn wrote: post #92
taitems wrote: post #20

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.

We need to follow NZ's lead and ditch the five cent coin next. Even 10c pieces are a waste of time. Can't think of many cash transactions in my daily life where it would bother me to round to the nearest 20c. Certainly not dinner or a round of drinks, lunch, a full bag of groceries, etc.

There are several thousand, if not million of Australians that would disagree. The ability to round prices by ten or twenty cents at a time is a luxury that cannot be afforded by everyone.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#102

Post by henrikschroder »

taitems wrote: post #101
prawn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to follow NZ's lead and ditch the five cent coin next. Even 10c pieces are a waste of time. Can't think of many cash transactions in my daily life where it would bother me to round to the nearest 20c. Certainly not dinner or a round of drinks, lunch, a full bag of groceries, etc.

There are several thousand, if not million of Australians that would disagree. The ability to round prices by ten or twenty cents at a time is a luxury that cannot be afforded by everyone.

What? If you remove coins and round to the nearest payable amount, it evens out over time. Sometimes you'll pay less than the actual total, sometimes you'll pay more. Prices aren't magically going to increase, so how is this a luxury?

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#103

Post by kamjam »

phillco wrote: post #21
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…

Even better: the US used to have a half-cent but they abolished it in 1857 due to its lack of value. With inflation, it's worth more than today's dime.

For a few years during the transition to decimalisation, the UK had a half penny also.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfpenny_(British_decimal_coin...

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#104

Post by whiskyant »

jowiar wrote: post #49

Ridiculously simple solution: Drop the hundredths place entirely. Kill pennies, nickels, quarters, bring back $.5 pieces. A tenth of a dollar is enough precision for any realistic transaction in the United States.

A simpler solution would be to just round every transaction to the nearest 5 cent, which is the scheme that most countries that drop the penny follow.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#105

Post by _delirium »

NZ_Matt wrote: post #80
jowiar wrote: post #49

Ridiculously simple solution: Drop the hundredths place entirely. Kill pennies, nickels, quarters, bring back $.5 pieces. A tenth of a dollar is enough precision for any realistic transaction in the United States.

New Zealand removed the 5c coin form circulation in 2004, leaving us with $2 ,$1 , 50, 20c and 10c coins. Electronic card transactions are charged to the nearest cent and cash transactions are rounded to the nearest 10th. The transition was straight forward and I didn't hear any complaints.

It works like that in Denmark as well; credit/debit transactions are charged to the full 0.01 kr precision (an absurdly small amount, about 1/10 of a eurocent), but cash transactions are rounded to the nearest 0.5 kr.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#106

Post by _delirium »

milanst wrote: post #42
maaku wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, sales tax is assessed locally, so it can vary even within a particular region. Dealing with fixed prices and additional sales tax is the only reasonable way to run a business that crosses multiple localities.

What about gas prices? The displayed price is what you actually pay, it always includes all the taxes. I guess the businesses are not required to do this for other products and naturally they choose to display the lower price, i.e. the one excluding taxes.

Yeah, for whatever reason most (all?) states have decided to specifically require that advertised gasoline prices include all taxes and fees, but haven't done the same for other products. Though there are some moves afoot to require it for mobile telephone contracts as well.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#107

Post by redthrowaway »

maratd wrote: post #68
yay_cloud wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be construed as a partisan comment, but that is exactly how politics works. After working on a few campaigns (and leaving in disgust), a politician or party will gladly pocket an easy but visible decision like this in order to "steal eyes" away from other -- less positive -- changes or events.

> "steal eyes" away from other -- less positive -- changes or events. How is cutting waste less positive? They're conservatives . They get bonus points for cutting things. Now, if they passed tax increases, then you've got a point.

Cutting spending is positive among their base, which is about a third of Canadians. The rest typically wouldn't vote Conservative. They and the NDP simply split the Liberal and Bloc vote in the last election.

You may view the CBC and Healthcare as waste; the vast majority of Canadians do not. Harper wants more than anything to convince Canadians that the Conservatives are trustworthy. The last thing he wants is for Canadians to be sick of them by the time the next election rolls around, especially if the Liberals manage to find a halfway competent leader.

That's why Harper's been as centrist as he has, and that's why cuts to popular programs are being delivered alongside this news. He'll stay true to conservative values, but only insofar as they don't hurt his re-election chances.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#108

Post by huggyface »

wisty wrote: post #70
huggyface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Memo by Jo Moore, British special adviser and press officer, 2.55pm on September 11, 2001: > It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses? It's an extremely common practice to release unpopular information, or pass unpopular bills when something else is bound to hit the front page.

The penny change in no way is distracting from other parts of the budget, and as tabbyjabby mentioned it is focused on here because it has cross-border novelty that the other parts of the budget don't. But among Canadians it is a meh change -- we electronically pay for almost everything now, so the nickle will follow in short order.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#109

Post by huggyface »

redthrowaway wrote: post #107
maratd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "steal eyes" away from other -- less positive -- changes or events. How is cutting waste less positive? They're conservatives . They get bonus points for cutting things. Now, if they passed tax increases, then you've got a point.

Cutting spending is positive among their base, which is about a third of Canadians. The rest typically wouldn't vote Conservative. They and the NDP simply split the Liberal and Bloc vote in the last election. You may view the CBC and Healthcare as waste; the vast majority of Canadians do not. Harper wants more than anything to convince Canadians that the Conservatives are trustworthy. The last thing he wants is for C…

Cutting spending is positive among their base, which is about a third of Canadians.

Cutting spending is a positive among all Canadians. The Liberals had their most populous years when they were responsible for -- and still deserve credit for -- brutal spending cuts (health care transfers, services, etc) that balanced the budget.

While HN isn't the place for discussions like this, it really is hard to rationalize some claims against conservatives with reality. The Conservatives are currently running the largest budgets in Canadian history. They increased transfers to the provinces more than any other government (some would say naively and rashly, making promises that health care spending, for instance, could just increase exponentially forever). They cut the military budget.

But if you read what you just wrote you would think that they were a slash and burn government. Hardly.

It's also worth noting that Harper has the most liberal reign to do what he wants right now, given that he doesn't have to face an election for another four years and memories are infamously short in Canada. He doesn't need to pander to the masses right now, at all, and the same-old "trying to hide the hidden agenda" bits grow enormously tiresome, bringing the sort of ignorance, baseless partisan noise into the discussion that we see too often South of the border.

Re: Canada ditches the penny

#110

Post by gyardley »

redthrowaway wrote: post #107
maratd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "steal eyes" away from other -- less positive -- changes or events. How is cutting waste less positive? They're conservatives . They get bonus points for cutting things. Now, if they passed tax increases, then you've got a point.

Cutting spending is positive among their base, which is about a third of Canadians. The rest typically wouldn't vote Conservative. They and the NDP simply split the Liberal and Bloc vote in the last election. You may view the CBC and Healthcare as waste; the vast majority of Canadians do not. Harper wants more than anything to convince Canadians that the Conservatives are trustworthy. The last thing he wants is for C…

Or Harper could just be a fairly centrist politician - after all, there's no better time in Canadian politics to push through radical change than the earliest stages of a majority government, something Harper has never previously had. If his 'true colors' were ever going to show, it'd be right now.

Not everything has to be a conspiracy theory.

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