The country is welcome to send me the 300 billion pennies. My bank will happily "dispose" of them with their "deposit to my account" service.
The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
131–140 of 151 posts
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#132Why does the government need a plan for pennies? They stopped wasting money minting them, now the "problem" will sort itself out naturally.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#133This rounds physical currency to the nearest $0.05, effectively. Why not round everything to the nearest $0.1? The math and adjustments (changes to every printed price, etc.) would be simpler. How much for the wine? "$19.9". It seems much simpler to me, though I'm sure it's been discussed ... Is there some item that would be problematic to round to $0.1? I suppose anything that is fractionally priced at ≤$0.05 is now…
By far the most common coin in the USA is 25¢. Changing that would be much more disruptive.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh my goodness please no one take this seriously. Heating pennies will result in harmful zinc off-gassing. You do not want to breathe this in. Use dry beans for blind-baking. They are almost infinitely reusable with no harmful effects.
Using pennies has long been recommended by reputable cookbooks. Is there really a risk at 375 degrees F? I would think the everyday fumes from an unventilated gas oven are a much more significant problem, and that's fairly common in many parts of the US. Anyway, I've done it a hundred times, and my brain and lungs still work good-ish?
Maybe if you had clean uncirculated pennies and lots of them(why?) but using pennies from my local gas station in my pies? How about no..... And washing them seems not worth the effort when a bag of dry beans is 70 cents .
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#135[dead]
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Folks can take them to a bank FWIW my bank refuses to accept unrolled coins, long before this month's retirement of the penny.
A lot of banks just have one of those coin counting machine things (like Coinstar but not Coinstar). Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.
A credit union local to me waives the fee if you are a member.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of banks just have one of those coin counting machine things (like Coinstar but not Coinstar). Coinstar also often has zero commission options like gift cards that are an easy way to cash in extra change without paying fees.
A credit union local to me waives the fee if you are a member.
Mine had the machines, then ripped them out, over the cost to them the regional bank they deal with imposed and other excuses. Coinstar (some) gift card is the only no-fee I've found in my area, but then you're stuck with a gift card instead of cash.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Tbf it wouldn't take that much effort to issue guidance. It shouldn't require legislation. Doesn't mean the way they did things was wrong.
It would be trivial to issue useful guidance, and that guidance would be beneficial even if it was incredibly stupid or misguided or even caused it's own problems, because it is a document that demonstrates that some thinking somewhere went into it, and someone has taken a minute to think through outcomes and effects.
But the premise of the current administration is that the world is radically simpler than "experts" and "bureaucrats" want you to believe, and they purposely and loudly eschew any thinking about 2nd, 3rd, or often even 1st order effects of their proposals because they want them to sound "simple" to rather simple people, and rely on trite soundbites or false "truisms" to keep them propped up, and also because even a surface level examination of most of their claims or proposals forces you to confront how stupid they usually are.
This administration and it's fiercest supporters view not thinking through things as a virtue. They view large proscriptions from the throne as good governance, because they want a king.
That is very explicitly why what they did was wrong, even if it's not a big deal to get rid of the penny, and very few people will have problems with it, and I think state governments and even the fed really shouldn't have a problem accommodating it.
Being purposely ignorant like that is stupid and wrong even when it doesn't have negative repercussions, because it WILL have negative repercussions somewhere, and they will be entirely preventable. See innocent citizens being deported and assaulted, and the extrajudicial murder of random drug mules driving cartel speedboats.
The federal government and current administration has a tiny army of professionals who are sufficiently well equipped and paid to wargame out exactly this kind of thing to discover some corner cases. We are still paying them even as they do nothing. The current admin is so incompetent and averse to actual governance that they reject working systems that could even help them make their agenda a reality, but the bureaucracy being good and effective at what it does is antithetical to their worldviews and hostile to their individualist philosophies, and it's more important to make the government look bad than actually succeed at what they were elected to do.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#139Why do we need a plan for pennies?
Reporters et al always want 'a plan,' which is ironic because they have problems planning more than a week in advance.
Re: The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using pennies has long been recommended by reputable cookbooks. Is there really a risk at 375 degrees F? I would think the everyday fumes from an unventilated gas oven are a much more significant problem, and that's fairly common in many parts of the US. Anyway, I've done it a hundred times, and my brain and lungs still work good-ish?
Maybe if you had clean uncirculated pennies and lots of them(why?) but using pennies from my local gas station in my pies? How about no..... And washing them seems not worth the effort when a bag of dry beans is 70 cents .
They're easy to clean, and they don't come in direct contact with the dough at any point. America's Test Kitchen found that pennies work better than beans due to how they conduct heat. If you don't like the idea, that's fine, no one's forcing you.