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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

#721

Post by EasyMark »

bogeholm wrote: post #188
mattnewton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and local taxes make this infeasible

> State and local taxes make this infeasible I don’t see why that would be the case? In my country, most prices with VAT (which is what you’re charged) are nice, round numbers, but not the price without VAT. I suppose the stores set a target price, and then adjust it a bit to make the price + VAT a “nice” number. Is there a reason that couldn’t be done to make all prices + VAT multiples of 5c?

I think that's what has to happen here. Things will be priced in such a way that the final price is a multiple of 5. That's a pretty easy thing for an inventory pricing system can figure out. We already do it for fractions of a penny, not sure why it would be a big deal for a fraction of a nickel

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

#722

Post by ghaff »

dpark wrote: post #488
rootusrootus wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still need to include the cents in a tax bill that runs into the millions of dollars Not in all cases. The IRS does not use cents when you file your tax return, they say round to the nearest dollar.

It used to be that they gave you the choice. You could round or you could use pennies but you had to be consistent throughout the return, because even the IRS doesn’t care if you manage to scrape out 49 cents. Has that changed and it has to be dollars now?

I think my accountant still gives me a choice of what to do and certainly I still get forms with cents on them.

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

#723

Post by EasyMark »

strbean wrote: post #183
saalweachter wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retailers don't, like, have to add sales tax on top of listed prices. They just have to pay it.

Now is our chance to switch to European style "you pay the price it says on the shelf"!

I don't think this will happen in our lifetimes. It's like not moving the day hour ahead/behind twice a year. A wholly stupid idea that will likely never be fixed on the federal level because of inertia.

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

#724

Post by EasyMark »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #364
mattnewton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and local taxes make this infeasible

Just show the price including tax. (half-sarcastic, because obviously that would be an unpopular change for sellers because it makes the visible number go up, but it would solve two problmes...) They could still set the post-tax price to something that results in round numbers, at downside of the pre-tax price having more decimals.

Since that is a state thing, it can never happen and is likely outside the power of Congress to enforce, especially with our current activist federal supreme court.

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

#725

Post by ghaff »

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…

The other thing about hundred is I tend to carry one or two when I travel internationally but I’d never count of using one in a lot of places in the US.

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

#726

Post by kragen »

anamexis wrote: post #703
kragen wrote: post #620

Copper pennies weigh 3.11 grams. Copper is currently US$10987 per tonne https://www.metal.com/en/prices/LME_CA_3M so a copper penny is worth 3.4¢. This is a surprisingly low number to me; I would have expected it to be closer to 10¢ or 20¢, since presumably it was about 1¢ of copper when it was still copper. By comparison, a silver dime (90% silver, 10% copper) is 2.268 grams, and silver is US$1486.77/kg https://www.…

> From the point of view of an 18th- or 19th-century person, for whom the purpose of the mint was to certify the value of the precious metal in the coin by stamping it Was that the purpose of the mint? That would imply that the relative value of silver vs. copper was static.

It was, yes. The varying relative values of metals was in fact a huge problem for mints for many centuries. The problem was sometimes resolved by refusing to mint any but the priciest metal, and at other times by the values of different coins such as shillings and sovereigns varying relative to one another.

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

#727

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #668
quantified wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the $1000 bill was retired, a loaf of bread cost a couple cents. There was indeed a push to purge them during the drug scares of the late 20th century. A suitcase of $1000 bills is far sexier than one of $100 bills. It really was porting them. With bitcoin, it's moot. A $100 is basically a tank of gas and a sandwich in CA.

> A $100 is basically a tank of gas and a sandwich in CA. I was just lamenting with my wife the other day about how "$100 is the new 20 bucks" When I was a kid, mowing someone's yard for $20 was a really good payout. Kids my neighborhood last year were doing it for $70 lol.

$70!? How big are these lawns? Hell, I'd mow lawns for $70 each.

I wouldn't pay more than $5 for someone to mow my lawn, but then again, it's tiny at like 20x15 feet. I spend more time getting the mower out and putting it back away than actually mowing. Probably gonna replace it with just a bunch of wildflowers next spring.

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

#728

Post by robocat »

vel0city wrote: post #670
robocat wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 billi…

> Every $ printed but never redeemed is a significant profit Redeemed? Redeemed for what? Its not like they're still trading dollars for gold at any kind of fixed rate.

Nitpicking over words isn't profitable either, and if you're trying to appear sophisticated you've missed the mark with me.

I would love to see an analysis of the benefits of crime to the government accounts.

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

#729

Post by anamexis »

kragen wrote: post #726
anamexis wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the point of view of an 18th- or 19th-century person, for whom the purpose of the mint was to certify the value of the precious metal in the coin by stamping it Was that the purpose of the mint? That would imply that the relative value of silver vs. copper was static.

It was, yes. The varying relative values of metals was in fact a huge problem for mints for many centuries. The problem was sometimes resolved by refusing to mint any but the priciest metal, and at other times by the values of different coins such as shillings and sovereigns varying relative to one another.

Ok, but the US mint in the 18th and 19th centuries?

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

#730

Post by comradesmith »

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #680
hrimfaxi wrote: post #3

I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.

I always pick them up. Every penny buys enough pasta to keep you alive for another 15 minutes. So in case I ever go broke, I've staved off my eventual starvation by 15 minutes.

I like this perspective :)
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