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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

#811

Post by rootusrootus »

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?

It is still a choice, though I cannot remember the last time we used cents on ours or any other returns (my wife works for an accounting firm so they handle a fair number of returns). Just has to be consistent, either you round or you do not.

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

#814

Post by gus_massa »

chaboud wrote: post #717
gus_massa wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other direction avoids a lot of stupid complains. Nobody will complain if the shop gives them a $0.04 gift.

The shop will. It can be a lot of money in aggregate. It also creates really pathological purchasing incentives, where spreading out large purchases over several small purchases can yield significant savings for the purchaser. There's one exceedingly simple answer: Keep the penny (possibly a new one that is cheaper to make). We're basically breaking into jail on this one, creating more problems than we're solving.

Hi from Argentina! Here we unofficially deprecated the AR$10, AR$20 and AR$50 bill, so the smallest one is the AR$100 bill (~US$0.07). Every price include taxes.

What are they selling? Candies one by one? Inside the candy store everything is rounded to a multiple of AR$100. A single candy is AR$100. You many get an offer of 3 candies for AR$200, or 2 small candies for AR$100, or other fancy candies in packages of 13 for AR$1000. Everything else is more expensive, like AR$700 or more, but all multiples of AR$100.

The photocopy shop near my home has a copy for AR$120. They usually sell many copies, so a 20% is relevant. They have a stash of AR$20, but it's probably the only shop nearby. I also collect the AR$20 just to pay the photocopies, just to be nice to avoid finishing their stash and also because I don't know what to do with the AR$20.

I guess a single apple is probably a problem. It cost like AR$400-AR$500 depending on the weight. Someone very smart can learn to choose and apple with the exact weight to get a AR$499 apple and pay AR$400 :) Luckily inflation changes the price so it's difficult to learn. Also AR$499 will be illegaly rounded to AR$500. And most people will buy more than 1 apple, let's say that the total is AR$10,000 and AR$100 is only a 1% that is lower than the spoilage of rotten fruit.

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

#817

Post by stevage »

nixpulvis wrote: post #805
stevage wrote: post #799

It's so strange to start with "stop minting pennies" but not "stop pennies being legal tender". But then as an Australian it also seems very weird to even have pennies in circulation. We ditched ours in the 80s.

I mean, it makes numbers weird if you can't have less than a nickel. Tax could be designed to ensure prices are in increments of 5¢. And interest rates, etc. Rounding to whole numbers feels more natural to people than rounding to 5¢. But ultimately it's the same thing.

The way you're framing this sounds like no other country has ever gone through the process of removing their 1 and 2 cent coins. Many have. It's fine. None of this is a problem.

It does work better if there's a bit of planning though.

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

#818

Post by nixpulvis »

stevage wrote: post #817
nixpulvis wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it makes numbers weird if you can't have less than a nickel. Tax could be designed to ensure prices are in increments of 5¢. And interest rates, etc. Rounding to whole numbers feels more natural to people than rounding to 5¢. But ultimately it's the same thing.

The way you're framing this sounds like no other country has ever gone through the process of removing their 1 and 2 cent coins. Many have. It's fine. None of this is a problem. It does work better if there's a bit of planning though.

I wasn't trying to frame it that way. I have never had to deal with this personally, so that's just how I see it.

It's not a big deal, and people have been ignoring it for years with gas. It's just going to be more obvious in some cases now for us in the US. I'll be curious to read the psychology behind how things are priced in response to this. Will $9.99 fade in favor of $9.95 more.

All and all, the upsides of stopping wasting resources on pennies outweighs all the minuscule downsides, but it's still curious.

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

#819

Post by stevage »

nixpulvis wrote: post #818
stevage wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you're framing this sounds like no other country has ever gone through the process of removing their 1 and 2 cent coins. Many have. It's fine. None of this is a problem. It does work better if there's a bit of planning though.

I wasn't trying to frame it that way. I have never had to deal with this personally, so that's just how I see it. It's not a big deal, and people have been ignoring it for years with gas. It's just going to be more obvious in some cases now for us in the US. I'll be curious to read the psychology behind how things are priced in response to this. Will $9.99 fade in favor of $9.95 more. All and all, the upsides of stop…

It would definitely work better with an actual withdrawal from currency. It's weird to have individual businesses having to decide when and how to handle the slow disappearance of coins.

But then, there's a lot weird about American currency to me. Like I have heard that repeated attempts to introduce a $1 coin "didn't catch on". In Australia it was pretty simple - they took away all the $1 notes, they made a gazillion $1 coins. It wasn't optional. There wasn't any question of "catching on", it was just...this is what we do now.

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

#820

Post by abustamam »

hamandcheese wrote: post #720
dmix wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress seems like the most dysfunctional branch of government going on a couple decades now. They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

> They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents I would expect this to be the case generally since congress is at all times 99.5% people who you have no say in electing/recalling.

I happen to live in one of the few districts in CA that has a republican representative. I was looking forward to voting him out but then CA got gerrymandered and now we'll likely have a Democrat representative next term.

I didn't like our republican representative but it seems kinda shitty that the folks who did like him and voted for him suddenly didn't get a say in who their representative ought to be. I mean, sure they probably voted No on 50 but most of the yes votes came from outside of our district.

Edit: I strongly hate gerrymandering but I also acknowledge the need for the democrats to play dirty because the Republicans are, and "being the better person" doesn't seem to be a viable political strategy anymore.

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