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Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

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411–420 of 428 posts

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#411

Go further. I haven't used coins in 10 years. Get coins - put them all in the 'penny tray'. Or give them to the cashier. Or hand them to somebody nearby. All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store.

While I don't throw change out info not use coins ever. Any coins I get in change goes directly into the tip jar or change tray in the car or bucket at home. It's not going to be reused until I take a bunch of it to the bank. I would say get rid of all change but if absolutely necessary keep the quarter. With cards being so prevelant who cares, they will stil have the exact amount. To be fair I think checks should ba…

We're on the same page. Except for, I replace the change bucket with a trash can. Same result, and less work.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: the nickle wasn't made of silver, either.

Thank you for pointing this out you are correct and I should have been more precise in my language.

Eh, no worries. As I said, it's a nit, not anything that actually matters.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#413
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that 0.01€ coins produced elsewhere remain legal tender in the rounding countries, does not hold for Finland. No supermarket is going to accept 1- or 2-cent coins for payment even if you had enough to add up to the nearest 5-cent unit.

That doesn't mean they aren't still legal tender in Finland (which they are). Somewhat relatedly, some places also don't accept all the banknotes – that is, the largest denominations – a rule which clearly has nothing to do with the rounding rules of cents.

It feels like the discussion of "legal tender" on this thread is based on how things work in the USA. In Finland, one can be compelled to pay all kinds of debts and obligations by bank transfer, and cash is not accepted. Even banks won’t take the 1- and 2-cent coins, and so these coins are de facto so marginalized that calling them "legal tender" misses the point.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#414
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not, I want to see the practice end on Gas Pumps. Every business should be requried to adversite, print, and clearly mark the amount of the tansaction is going to taxation Hiding taxation in the purchase price allows government to increase those tax rights with out facing the same amount of public back lash as they do when the taxation is calculated secretly from the transaction or advertised rate This is…

> Every business should be requried to adversite, print, and clearly mark the amount of the tansaction is going to taxation That's exactly what happens in Europe, the receipt tells you exactly how much you paid for each of tax and goods.

Yeah like these do not have to be separate things. If I advertise a final price to you, "you will pay $4.95 for this thing," I can still communicate on the receipt that $0.50 of that went to sales tax, and if you are paying in a way that excludes taxes from being collected, e.g. SNAP benefits, there is no reason that you can't be charged only $4.45 for that because the tax is deducted from the advertised purchase price. If you are concerned about benefits that are "use 'em or lose 'em" you can always remit the tax to the person as physical cash so that there is transparency there. This is just a pareto inefficiency; there appears to be a way to make some folks better off without making any other folks worse off.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I'm from, shops started using .95 pricing _long_ before the idea of scrapping 1c and 2c coins was raised, purely because handling those coins wasn't worth it. A key difference is that we have VAT, which is built into the price, rather than a US-style sales tax, which is not. In the US, if you're handling cash you still have to deal with 1c and 2c coins because of that. That made it easier for us to scrap 1c and…

> if you're handling cash you still have to deal with 1c and 2c coins because of that. I don't think so. The same way you don't have to handle sub-1-penny tax amounts, you won't have to handle sub-nickle tax amounts later. There'll be some sort of rounding mechanism just like you described.

Well, yes. That's why I mentioned the rounding mechanism later. However, US-style sales taxes make the process of applying that more difficult because you can end up with weird numbers, whereas with VAT, you can pre-round things to minimise the disruption.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#416
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the case myself. While I do think that the parliamentary system is better than the congressional system, I think it's more that the parliamentary system emphasises consensus-building and executive accountability more. This is especially apparent in countries where a form of proportional representation is used for elections.

Consensus building? If a party in Canada gets a majority in Parliament, they can pass whatever bills they want (the senate rarely intervenes unless it's really controversial). And individual MPs have much less leeway to stray from the party line. The US system is much more adversarial. Even if a single party gets the house, senate and presidency, there isn't much stopping individual party members from voting against…

Well, that's what you get with FPTP, with both the US and Canada use.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#417
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is especially apparent in countries where a form of proportional representation is used for elections. Proportional representation is almost a necessary condition for the parliamentary system to encourage consensus-building. More specifically, it's necessary that no party hold an absolute majority. With first-past-the-post, you usually end up with one party having full control for one term, and no one to hold…

Except when you get fringe parties holding the balance of power. With some of the NI parties screwing over conservative governments its why NI doesn't have the same laws as the UK

Well, that's _part_ of why, but the fundamental reason is that NI is the rump of the Kingdom of Ireland within the UK, which, like Scotland, preserved a separate legal system even after political union with the UK brought about through the 1800 Act of Union.

[Aside: An interesting consequence of this is that England lacks a legal and political identity separate from the UK as the UK is an _extension_ of the Kingdom of England. Another interesting this is that even though it was part of the Kingdom of England, Wales _does_ have a legal and political identity because there are acts of parliament that _explicitly_ refer to it. The UK is a constitutionally odd country.]

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the case myself. While I do think that the parliamentary system is better than the congressional system, I think it's more that the parliamentary system emphasises consensus-building and executive accountability more. This is especially apparent in countries where a form of proportional representation is used for elections.

What you're leaving out, in Canada's case, is that the norm is a strict party-line vote. In rare cases, the PM will allow a "conscience vote", where individuals vote as they will; in every other case, you vote as your party directs or you're kicked out of the party. As party-line voting is the norm, sitting as an independent is basically worthless in terms of accomplishing anything--no access to party resources or as…

> What you're leaving out, in Canada's case, is that the norm is a strict party-line vote.

No, I'm not. The concept of a party whip literally invented where I'm from. I'm very much familiar with it.

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#419
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will round however the manufacturer told it to round (which will be correctly) either you're way too optimistic, or i'm way too pessimistic, but lemme tell you, we do not see eye-to-eye on that point.

Do you believe that they are already screwing you out of fractional cents? After all there is already rounding going on. Concretely, $1.20 with 7% tax is $1.284, do you believe merchants would charge you $1.29?

I mostly meant that I don't have any faith that the code will work correctly. I'm not even assuming malice. There are all kinds of super simple rounding mistakes you could make that would mess up the rounding. Especially if you're writing for a market that you're not part of (eg, out-sourced coders living in one country, but writing POS code that is deployed in another country).

That said, do I think that someone, somewhere, has/does/will out of malice abuse this specific oft-ignored dark corner of the marketplace, for personal gain? Yeah, I absolutely think that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSlE28hOgI

Re: Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good doc, check it out. All taxes: no. Tarrifs for example are... excellent ethical and thoroughly constitutional.. Otherwise country X can just attack with slave labor. Inalienable rights aren't called that because they can be overridden.

The gap between a sales tax and an income tax is not that big. It's not a human rights issue.

Why would the gap be relevant?

Perhaps we should ignore a small % of X Amendment claims? That would be a small gap right?

The Amendments dont confer rights to the people; they only remind the people of the things they gov has no power to do. See Amendment 0:

"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."

https://drexel.edu/ogcr/resources/constitution/amendments/pr...

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