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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

#541

Post by Thrymr »

gblargg wrote: post #528
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…

Things have always been rounded (tax). There's just a change in what multiple it's rounded to.

And in inflation-adjusted terms, rounding to the nearest nickel now is about as significant as rounding to the nearest penny was in 1978.

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

#542

Post by retrocog »

Debasement through inflation steals from workers, pensioners, and savers. On the other hand, its great for big business and big government.

The money illusion fools many people into believing they've gained (ie real estate) when in reality, they've lost purchasing power.

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

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

#543

Post by jandrewrogers »

dpark wrote: post #515
jandrewrogers wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Pretending that these problems don't exist because they don't exist elsewhere is not helpful. Pretend that’s everything in the US is globally unique to us also is not helpful. “No one else has sales tax like us” is likely not true but also not super relevant. Tax collecting agencies in 50 states and however many territories could issue guidance tomorrow for how to deal with this and it would have the force of law u…

The tax authorities cannot unilaterally change the law with "guidance".

It is explicitly written into statute in many cases, requiring legislative action across thousands of independent tax authorities. Complicating it more is that in some cases a change must satisfy constitutional requirements which are even harder to change.

Everything is easy if you pretend that you can change things by authoritarian fiat instead of abiding by existing statutory and constitutional restrictions. The courts would never allow it.

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

#544

Post by jedberg »

"What are we going to do about the rounding problem?!"

INCLUDE TAX IN THE PRICE, then you won't have a rounding problem!

The common argument against that is "but there are so many tax jurisdictions"

One, Europe has a bunch too and has solved this, and two, it would only apply to in person cash transactions. You should be able to figure out the tax rules for the one specific place the transaction is taking place.

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

#545

Post by SkyPuncher »

simpleguitar wrote: post #273
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…

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others". If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law. The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

Charges take into account severity of the crime and intent. Nobody is going to get criminal charges for rounding pennies on cash transactions.

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

#546

Post by BenjiWiebe »

Babkock wrote: post #460
Night_Thastus wrote: post #141

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a c…

Some people are poor. Did you know that? Some people live in poverty. I'm sure that is a big surprise to you. Some Americans still have to spend nickels and dimes. Crazy, right? Some people don't have infinite Bitcoin from mommy and daddy.

I'm in favor of keeping dimes.

However, to put it into perspective, a dime is only 50 seconds of labor at Kansas' minimum wage ($7.25/hr).

It's hard to find a situation where a dime truly makes much difference. And remember the rounding. You won't always lose 10c just because dimes don't exist.

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

#547

Post by close04 »

hypeatei wrote: post #445
simpleguitar wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others". If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law. The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

> there are laws that say Hmm, maybe this is why it should be handled by Congress and not at the whim of the executive. They can handle all this in one piece of legislation.

If the law is slow to change or there are no available pennies, the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices. I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny but it's a quick and easy way to avoid any doubt.

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

#548

Post by SkyPuncher »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #199
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #113

Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately: >Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience…

They can round down the card transactions too if it’s really a problem to charge differing amounts. For those that seriously think this would be a major problem there was a comedy skit circulating in Australia when this happened. A guy would push his car to the petrol pump, fill with 2c of petrol, rounded down to 0. The guy at the counter just laughed at it. You could in theory do this 1000 more times (would take hou…

> enforced the whole right to refuse service.

This is what everyone forgets. If you can't provide exact change, then you can refuse service.

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

#549

Post by robocat »

burningChrome wrote: post #346
quantified wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>> and we won't have $100 bills anymore. Heard some pundits on the radio talking about the elimination of the penny and one of them who worked at the Secret Service as an analyst talked about why the US paper money only goes to $100 bills. He said it was to reduce criminals and illicit activity and criminals having to store it. He related the story of Pablo Escobar's brother or cousin who was the accountant for the c…

> rats chewing up the money

Profit for the US government. Fixed by plastic bills.

Every $ printed but never redeemed is a significant profit (assuming other costs are low like printing).

Especially yummy when countries just want to hoard the currency - same as selling stamps that are never used:

  estimate the stock of U.S. currency circulating in Argentina ... U.S. currency inflows during 1988-1992 totaled $20.8 billion
https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1993/460/ifdp460.pd...
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