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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

#691

Post by ourmandave »

b112 wrote: post #252
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…

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…

Have you never seen the documentary Office Space where penny rounding goes terribly wrong?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnPBSy5FsOc

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

#692

Post by techblueberry »

tvb12 wrote: post #681
techblueberry wrote: post #667

I think we should issue a new dollar that’s 10x the value of the current dollar, and / 10 the value of everything. I mean it wouldn’t make a substantive difference, but psychologically, I think it would feel better if the mean value of the house in the US was 52k instead of 522k, and I could start carrying cash again and have 100 bucks not go by in like 2 fast food orders.

Would it feel better to see your bank account and pay checks shrink by 90%?

Yes, my brain like to think about weird things, and this for some reason is one of those weird things I like to think about, maybe it's just me, but my brain kinda likes small big numbers over big big numbers. Maybe because mentally it's like a giant fraction reduction across the entire economy.

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

#693

Post by alright2565 »

jxramos wrote: post #685

What would it take to shift the balance of inflation to restore the purchasing power of the penny? Just out of curiosity how does a government and a people and their economy go the other direction?

Deflation is an economic disaster. The Great Depression, for example, was related to deflation.

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

#694

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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.

Actually, I'd say by all means, allow them to price things $9.99̅ so we can all agree it's equal to $10 and be done with it.

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

#695

Post by jltsiren »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #594
pyth0 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain further? Canada has sales tax and successfully phased out the penny.

Sales taxes in the US are truly and insanely decentralized. The US has thousands of independent sales tax authorities with their own laws and regulations about how sales tax must be computed and displayed. These jurisdictions overlap, the sales tax you pay may be the aggregate of multiple different sales tax authorities between which there is no coordination. Rounding to the nearest 5c or whatever creates a situation…

Coordination problems become easier when there is a pressing need to solve them.

If pennies are phased out, companies need to figure out how to do business without pennies. If they can't find a legal way to continue business, they will tell the relevant legislators that the laws should be changed. If the legislators don't see a reason to change the laws, the companies will probably stop doing business in that jurisdiction. If the legislators still don't see a reason to change the laws, then the outcome is probably what the local residents wanted.

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

#696

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

Waterluvian wrote: post #613
dawnerd wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's time to follow Canada and the rest of the world but it needs to be done through congress, not executive orders. It needs to have a proper framework for migration and laws for how payments are rounded.

I don’t believe we actually have a law that dictates how to round in Canada. There’s just a government recommendation. I get that the U.S. is a much lower trust culture, but is it really necessary? The rounding is only for cash transactions.

I think stores will adjust their prices pretty quick if they cannot even aquire pennies to give as change. So no law should be needed.

you may need to stipulate a grace period during which stores are still obligated to take pennies, to slowly shake them out of circulation without every American needing to visit a bank for cashing in. But its also possible that isn't needed either.

In the 2nd half of the phaseout you may need a proper marketing campaign to remind people to cashe in before expiration. (common when other countries update their physical currency). But that is probably the job of a different sitting president anyway so whatever.

Heck, is this actual something that congress have say over? It wouldn't surprise me if this was actually up to the federal reserve to decide, and they seem on board.

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

#697

Post by Dylan16807 »

axiolite wrote: post #442
toast0 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nickles are likely to go shortly after. You can do everything you can with nickles with dimes and quarters, nickles have worse economics than pennies, and have had their minting suppressed below the market needs for years. Once pennies leave circulation, the problems with nickles will become urgent and they'll quickly leave. Dimes are small and cheap to make though, so they'll probably stick around.

It's impractical to eliminate the nickel and penny, while keeping the quarter and dime. The most practical way forward is to keep only the dime, but people will be quite upset about the loss of the quarter.

The last time we got rid of a coin, money was worth something like 40x less. I don't want to exchange 8 dimes. Keep the quarters and just the quarters.

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

#698

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

Some people are poor. What about it?

Removing a coin doesn't change the average price people pay for things.

Think about doing it the other way. Would bringing back the half penny help poor people?

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

#699

Post by thinmalk »

flymasterv wrote: post #621
kelnos wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this could encourage retailers to start advertising tax-inclusive prices. That way there's no rounding in the customer transaction (if they set all their tax-inclusive pricing at multiples of 5 cents), and then the sales tax would just be calculated in aggregate, and paid electronically with no rounding.

That’s illegal in a lot of places.

We had a coffee shop that tried to do it. Listed prices included taxes, and the total prices were in nice whole numbers (IE, $2 for a cup of coffee, $5 for a latter, $8 for a sandwich, etc.). But regulators stopped them and they had to go back to listing the prices without the sales tax.

It's frustrating how much needless friction gets put into the system.

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

#700

Post by benregenspan »

dyslexit wrote: post #394
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.

The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

> they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

I think most of the ones from previous years are all in people's junk drawers, couches, etc., and only go back into circulation when someone decides to dump them into a Coinstar machine. Retailers are already reporting shortages.

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