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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

#641

Post by thescriptkiddie »

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…

also bring back the 50-cent piece, eliminate the redundant dollar bill, and replace the 2 dollar bill with a new 2 dollar coin

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

#642

Post by wasabi991011 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #633
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…

I'd be amazed if prices weren't engineered so they rounded up far more often than down.

Is that even remotely possible?

You'd have to ensure a positive expectation value over not only every item, but every combination of items a consumer could by. You could focus only on the most likely possible orders (assuming you have the data, I don't know how many stores actually track combination of items bought), but it's not obvious to me that there's a tractable top n most likely orders that gives a reasonable enough estimate of expectation value.

On top of that, you would be interfering with whatever system you already have that sets the cents of each item (whether marketing with 99¢, or % discounts, or a system that tracks that 97¢ means lowest sale, etc).

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

#643

Post by extraduder_ire »

hollasch wrote: post #194
mattnewton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and local taxes make this infeasible

It's just American custom to exclude some taxes from the posted price. Many countries include all taxes in the price, something I've always wished we would do in America. After that, I'd love to see the elimination of the custom of always ending fuel cost per gallon in 9/10 of a cent.

I'm in Ireland where EU law mandates posted prices include all taxes and charges, and fuel prices are still advertised with a .9 or .8 at the end.

They're selling a liquid, so even if it were all priced in whole cents you'd have to deal with fractional cents.

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

#644

Post by echelon »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #525
echelon wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is no rounding down, it could amount to more. Hypothetically if you incur 10,000 transactions per year with the max rounding up of $0.04 per transaction, you're out $400. This doesn't make a huge impact to individuals, but it absolutely will to large volume businesses.

For large volume businesses, $400 / year is what we usually call.. a rounding error.

A large volume business isn't doing 10k transactions.

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

#645

Post by thescriptkiddie »

whycome wrote: post #605
SkyPuncher wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enforced the whole right to refuse service. This is what everyone forgets. If you can't provide exact change, then you can refuse service.

It’s a self-service gas station. Refuse…yourself? You pumped the gas before paying.

in the us, gas stations require you to pay before filling

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

#646

Post by evilkorn »

throw20251101 wrote: post #589
jcranmer wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices in the US are not tax-inclusive, so the effect of sales tax ruins that plan.

Is the tax unknown at the time of setting the price? If that's the problem, set the final price at price + tax, deduce tax, display that. What's the matter?

I doubt that most people in the US know the local sales tax. Let alone any change that may occur due to laws changing or traveling. I'd like to see the out the door price listed but that throws the 99 cent game off retailers like. Also I don't shop very often but Aldi US is the only place I've seen the eink price displays, the rest still have paper.

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

#647

Post by extraduder_ire »

nayuki wrote: post #575
axiolite wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let me assure you that all Canadian banknotes are the same size too [...] not sure how the article got this fact wrong. Because Canada is just part of the U.S. (flame away)

> Because Canada is just part of the U.S. As a Canadian, I'm amused to hear this because it is basically true as a first approximation. Random factoid - Canadian coins ($2, $1, $0.25, $0.10, $0.05, $0.01 (withdrawn)) come in almost the same denominations as US coins ($1 (uncommon), $0.05 (rare), $0.25, $0.10, $0.05, $0.01), and they are the same diameter and thickness, but maybe having different weight and magnetic p…

> Another weird thing is that the National Basketball Association (NBA) has 29 American teams and 1 Canadian one

The NHL is a better example of this, I think.

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

#648

Post by dmix »

philistine wrote: post #498
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.

I don't want to be glib, but hey what the hey. This is how you can see that the United States is in decline; it can no longer discontinue a coin through legislation.

Congress seems like the most dysfunctional branch of government going on a couple decades now.

They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

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

#649

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ryandrake wrote: post #526
patrickthebold wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is gas sold as a whole penny amounts in those locations? Where I am it's always something and 9/10ths of a cent.

Allowing gas stations to denominate their prices by the 10th of a cent has always struck me as a just an underhanded and extreme way to practice the "9.99" retail psychological trick. Why not allow retailers to price things 9.99999? Ridiculous.

Turns out the station charges you a round number of cents per gallon. Then there are federal taxes, which are, IIRC, 24.5 cents per gallon. And then there's state tax, which varies from state to state but seems to always be x.4 cents per gallon.

So I don't think it's just "evil retailer tricks".

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

#650

Post by dmix »

whycome wrote: post #605
SkyPuncher wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enforced the whole right to refuse service. This is what everyone forgets. If you can't provide exact change, then you can refuse service.

It’s a self-service gas station. Refuse…yourself? You pumped the gas before paying.

If you pay with cash you’re going to be going to the cashier first anyway.
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