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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

#931

Post by testing22321 »

axiolite wrote: post #927
testing22321 wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you take a random person and teleport them between a random mix of Canadian and US cities, I think they'll find it hard to tell the two countries apart. The primary language is English, the accent is the same, the streets and buildings look the same, people watch/listen/read much of the same media, and so on. On the surface, I agree 100%. Dig deeper and the differences are stark. Years ago I came from Australia…

> Canada is a friendly, kind, gentle place, everything the US is not. In what ways do you find northern midwest US states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.) substantially less "friendly" than Canada?

As I was driving my daughter to daycare this morning I saw the garbage men. A road worker filling in pot holes, a person holding the stop sign and someone digging a hole in the road. They all have the same healthcare I do. Canadians all pay taxes, and work together for the betterment of everyone, and it shows. It’s a community, a society people are happy strangers have a good standard of living.

The US is a competitive sport where everyone is competing with everyone else. Driving past a lowly person holding a stop sign it’s just literally “sucks to be them” and no ability to help or do anything about it.

There are 30 million people in the US without health insurance. There are none in Canada. Medical issues are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US. In Canada there are none.

Obviously health care is just one example, and there are plenty of kind and friendly people in the US. But living under conditions like that is not a happy, healthy society of people that care about strangers and care for each other. It’s a “look out for me” place.

The more I go there (I was down there last week), the more I see the vast majority of Americans live in a scarcity mindset. Of course the high GDP means not scarce in terms of consumption, but in terms of things that actually impact quality of life day to day.

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

#932

Post by axiolite »

Jblx2 wrote: post #739
paxys wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 million customers doesn't mean 20 million transactions. Considering we are talking about a convenience store I'm sure a large chunk of their customers visit every day, some probably multiple times a day. Assuming 3.4 million customers (cash users) and 2.5 cents average loss per transaction, it would only take one visit a month for them to cross a million dollars in losses. Of course at that scale it's not like tha…

>visit every day, some probably multiple times a day Anyone have data on what percentage of the population visits convenience stores 500+ times per year? Sounds pretty inconvenient.

Plenty of people stop somewhere to get hot breakfast and coffee every day. If you also need something that can't set in your car all day (e.g. milk) that would be a second trip in a day.

Whether that's convenient or not depends on location... If it's right off your route to work/home, a stop may only add a couple minutes to your drive.

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

#933

Post by axiolite »

testing22321 wrote: post #931
axiolite wrote: post #927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Canada is a friendly, kind, gentle place, everything the US is not. In what ways do you find northern midwest US states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.) substantially less "friendly" than Canada?

As I was driving my daughter to daycare this morning I saw the garbage men. A road worker filling in pot holes, a person holding the stop sign and someone digging a hole in the road. They all have the same healthcare I do. Canadians all pay taxes, and work together for the betterment of everyone, and it shows. It’s a community, a society people are happy strangers have a good standard of living. The US is a competiti…

Sounds like a lot of projecting... The U.S. doesn't have single-payer healthcare therefore it's a dystopian hell-scape where everyone hates each other.

> “sucks to be them”

There are large swathes of the US where I would be shocked to hear anyone express that sentiment. There are other parts where I would not be shocked, but then the US is 10X bigger than Canada so you do get to pick and choose which version you'd like to be part of.

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

#934

Post by 0xffff2 »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #255
binarymax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(

Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.

Not a 1-1 comparison. For my daily double shot espresso, actual gourmet locally roasted coffee costs me just over $2. My coffee equipment cost enough that factoring in some kind of depreciation for it seems necessary, which would put my costs somewhere in the ballpark of $3 all in with a 5 year full depreciation. Paying someone else $4 for a them to make a coffee doesn't actually sounds that crazy if it's good coffee.

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

#935

Post by axiolite »

mulmen wrote: post #929
toast0 wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, the Mint has one job, to make money. If it's losing money, it doesn't make cents. :P But, while coins are durable, the Mint has been making billions of pennies every year since the 1950s, and yet retailers have trouble sourcing enough pennies to make change. They do tend not to be recirculated, even if they're not disposable.

> Look, the Mint has one job, to make money. If it's losing money, it doesn't make cents. :P I realize this is a joke but again, my objection is that this is the actual reason given. > But, while coins are durable, the Mint has been making billions of pennies every year since the 1950s, and yet retailers have trouble sourcing enough pennies to make change. They do tend not to be recirculated, even if they're not disp…

> These are all better reasons than the one we were given.

Explaining that it costs 4c to make a 1c coin is a pretty clear and solid justification. People know that producing a physical unit of currency should cost considerably less than its face value, and if not, it's a huge problem.

Complaining that one news article, which is just reporting a current event, doesn't give you an in-depth background analysis and context, is absurd. If you care about a topic enough to want that level of in-depth, you can go look for it elsewhere.

CNN pointed me this NYT article: https://archive.is/Ek38I

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

#936

Post by SkyPuncher »

cartoonworld wrote: post #860
SkyPuncher wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only place I've ever noticed them is the $0.01 pony ride that's been sitting at my grocery store for 30 years. Even they've gotten the hint and simply leave a tray of pennies next to it so people can actually use it.

They’re probably doing that so your kid or some kid can use it and leave the penny tray because they aren’t trying to make money off of it anymore. It’s just for fun, sounds like a nice gesture.

Yep. That's exactly what is was.

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

#937

Post by testing22321 »

axiolite wrote: post #933
testing22321 wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I was driving my daughter to daycare this morning I saw the garbage men. A road worker filling in pot holes, a person holding the stop sign and someone digging a hole in the road. They all have the same healthcare I do. Canadians all pay taxes, and work together for the betterment of everyone, and it shows. It’s a community, a society people are happy strangers have a good standard of living. The US is a competiti…

Sounds like a lot of projecting... The U.S. doesn't have single-payer healthcare therefore it's a dystopian hell-scape where everyone hates each other. > “sucks to be them” There are large swathes of the US where I would be shocked to hear anyone express that sentiment. There are other parts where I would not be shocked, but then the US is 10X bigger than Canada so you do get to pick and choose which version you'd li…

Of course healthcare is just one example of many, and as I said originally, yes I’m generalizing a very large country and population.

I’m giving my observations over 20 years in Canada and exploring the us extensively.

> so you do get to pick and choose which version you'd like to be part of.

Thank you, you have proved my point better than I did.

You literally just said “there are parts of the country where my fellow countrymen, People who make the country function, have families , hopes and dreams have a crappy life. I just choose not to be there”

That is my point exactly. The us is not a community where people care for each other. They just ignore or move away if they can.

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

#938

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

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…

> Of course, there was also central guidance and, well, everyone just followed it. It's called "having a society".

Nice concept.

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

#939

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

nightshift1 wrote: post #657
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…

we should have converted everything to integers.

This infact is the original concept of the penny.

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

#940

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #177
datadrivenangel wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But add a $3.50 coin so that we can strongly incentivize coffee to stay below a certain price.

Just take a zero out of everything and change the name from dollar to something else!

Old trick. The last I checked about 10+ countries have done it.
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