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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

#871

Post by knorker »

knorker wrote: post #124
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

US notes also stink.

I don't get the downvotes. I'm not saying "stink as in I don't like it". US notes literally smell, and I've not gotten that from other currency.

It's not even controversial. If you Google it you'll find that it's even a deliberate anti counterfit technology.

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

#872

Post by bux93 »

jcranmer wrote: post #490
bjourne wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er... So just adjust prices to whole multiples of 5 cents? Helps math-challenged cashiers too...

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

Taxes are rounded to cents already, so this is obviously not an issue.

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

#875

Post by Retric »

zahlman wrote: post #760
Retric wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasting people’s time is rude here not illegal. Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.

... How is this related to what I said?

> It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing.

If you’re checking it at a grocery store it’s likely there’s someone in line behind you waiting to pay, it’s a fairly common aspect of physical transactions. Waiting for you to count out your pennies is the kind of thing that evokes rage in people because it’s so rude.

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

#876

Post by benchly »

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…

I've thought on this as someone who travels between the US and Canada a lot, and the scene about the embezzlement scheme from Office Space often comes to mind (the "Pennies for everyone" tray: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ea64c5fd-3c6d-46f9-b729-beef7b0...)

For me, it's not about the pennies I'm losing. You're right, I don't care about them and the end of their minting doesn't mean much to me at all. No, it's about who is getting the pennies I'm losing. Let's say Nestle, a company I loath, has a box of instant noodles for $0.99 USD. Our hypothetical noodles are very popular, so everyone in the US tends to buy them.

Suddenly, pennies go away. Nestle thinks "hmm, so our customers were already paying $0.99, might as well just bump the price up to $1.00, nobody will care." And they'd be correct. As a typical consumer, I'd pay $1.00 for something that I was just paying $0.99 for because the difference is negligible to me.

But if everyone in the US buys them for lunch, that's not a negligible difference to Nestle. That's nearly $3,500,000 USD in extra revenue that week. If the consumer behavior remains consistent, that's an extra $182,000,000 USD per year. Maybe that seems like small potatoes compared to what Nestle grosses annually on a global scale, but even the richest of companies can do A LOT with that much extra cash.

But of course, that is an extreme and overly simplified example. However, it illustrates the idea that while the individual will not really feel the change, the collectives or corporations will.

I'm not an economics expert by any stretch of the imagination, but one thing I'm fairly sure about is when something like this type of change happens, the corporations are unchallenged at finding ways to exploit it, which usually translates to more money going up to them and less coming back down to the individual.

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

#877

Post by kasey_junk »

munk-a wrote: post #712
Telemakhos wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will a…

America is allergic to baked in taxes - you've got to keep the appearance of a deal even when there isn't one. America also embraces a lot of junk and hidden fees - ticketmaster is a great example of this. I think consumers would love having baked in taxes and clear prices and were the government functional I'd hope that a consumer advocacy agency could enforce this - but that's simply not where we are right now.

America isn’t against baked in taxes because of the appearance of a deal, it’s because there is the large part of the population that is against _taxation_. Their argument (which is probably right) is that if you bake in the tax then it will be ignored by more buyers and it will be easier to raise.

Lots of odd American customs can be explained by this phenomenon. The other major difference in the states is that we don’t have many places that only have federal taxes. States and every locality from the county to the water reclamation board can have tax authority. Those 2 things in conjunction go a long way to explain the differences you see in US tax treatment.

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

#878

Post by kasey_junk »

abustamam wrote: post #820
hamandcheese wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, sur…

The voters did get a say in California which at least had the process require a referendum.

The other states that have done mid cycle gerrymandering just forced it on their population.

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

#879

Post by koliber »

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.

Always round up (or down) to the nearest nickel regardless of whether someone pays card, cash, or SNAP. In effect, this would set the gross price as a multiple of 5 cents.

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

#880

Post by stevage »

PostOnce wrote: post #863
stevage wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian here. Barely anyone uses cash anymore. It's weird to see debates about moving towards technology we had 35 years ago which we don't even use anymore.

Electronics continue to fail in severe weather events, and cash keeps working, which is important when we're talking about food.

Does it? What about weather that stops the ATMs being refilled? Takes a lot of weather to bring down satellite internet...
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