"Zinc lobby" preventing retirement of penny

[anon26940528]

@waetherman

What - did people used to eat the food just right off the table if it wasn’t a special occasion?

Alinea - White Chocolate & Grant Achatz

[waetherman]

How uncivilized. And the servers - they use their hands instead of utensils? And is the one on the right Theon “Reek” Greyjoy?!? Oh this just gets worse and worse…

[retchdog]

i used to just outright throw them on the floor for a while.

[L_Mariachi]

How are you supposed to light a cigar with a burning polymer $100 bill? Melted plastic dripping all over your cuffs, we can’t have that.

[PurpleStater]

@kpkpkp

@anonymous86

I like the ability to make exact change. Otherwise, we have to introduce rounding into the system

We already round to 1/100 of a dollar (penny)
Once we retire pennies and nickles we round to 1/10 of a dollar (dime)

The only time we round to 1/100 is when we’re buying gas.

I like exact change. Just make the dang things out of plastic to lower production costs. It’s not like anybody’s going to counterfeit them.

[PurpleStater]

@retchdog

i used to just outright throw them on the floor for a while.

People who throw pennies on the floor need to be beaten (albeit lightly). Any idea how many vacuum cleaners get ruined that way?

Besides… litttering.

[Beanolini]

In the UK, we changed the composition of our pennies (and tuppences) from bronze to copper-plated steel in 1992. Almost nobody noticed. I guess we don’t have a ‘copper lobby’.

[retchdog]

the rounding is happening, it just gets munged by the supply chain in aggregate contracts and such.

think of it this way: if a currency inflates 10x in 10 years, that means that dimes now work as pennies did then. so were they “rounding” ten years ago, or not? it’s silly to keep the same precision as the currency’s value changes.

[SteampunkBanana]

[retchdog]

i was practicing to be a psychopath at the time.

anyway, i’d think that whatever vacuum cleaner a NYC bodega uses for its biennial cleaning could handle a few pennies.

[davide405]

@PurpleStater

I like exact change. Just make the dang things out of plastic to lower production costs. It’s not like anybody’s going to counterfeit them.

How precise do your transactions really need to be?

In the U.S. we briefly flirted with a 1/1000th dollar level of precision, during the Great Depression…

Sales tax token

Later in the article…

Sales tax tokens were generally regarded as a nuisance by consumers and were replaced in fairly short order by the bracket system of sales tax collection, which averaged out the tax on small sales. By the end of the 1930s token use was eliminated in most of the issuing states, with sales tax tokens lingering in Missouri until late in the 1940s.

Considering the relative purchasing power of a penny today, vs. the value of a one mil token in the 1930s, I think it’s long past time to retire the penny.

[kpkpkp]

@PurpleStater

The only time we round to 1/100 is when we’re buying gas

The majority of sales tax calculations are rounded to 1/100 (aka, a penny), so why not round to the 1/10 and stop making pennies and nickles?

[Brainspore]

@PurpleStater

The only time we round to 1/100 is when we’re buying gas.

I like exact change.

You are missing the point entirely. All prices are always rounded to the lowest denomination of available currency. In the U.S. all prices were rounded to the nearest 1/200th of a dollar until we retired the half-penny. Since then we’ve been rounding them to the nearest 1/100th of a dollar. If we retire the penny we’ll round them to the nearest 1/20th of a dollar, then the nearest 1/10th if we retire the nickel and so forth.

The basic unit of U.S. currency is the dollar, not the penny. There’s nothing inherently magical about the dollar that means it must be divided into units of 100. As noted, other countries (Australia for example) have already phased out 1 cent coins when their buying power made them obsolete.

[kpkpkp]

@Brainspore

All prices (cash transactions, actually) are always rounded to the lowest denomination of available currency.

DING DING DING DING! You have crystallized my thoughts. Thanks!

[OtherMichael]

TAKE AWAY MY PRECIOUS PENNIES?!?!?

Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance. Stop. Move in. Stop. Pull out, track right. Stop. Center and pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right or-and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute. Go right. Stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Gimme a hard copy right there.

[Brainspore]

@OtherMichael

TAKE AWAY MY PRECIOUS PENNIES?!?!?

If anything your pennies would become MORE precious if the denomination was discontinued. Half cent coins are worth a pretty penny these days. (Uh, that is to say considerably more than an actual penny, pretty or otherwise.)

There are also a lot of people hoarding copper pennies in the hopes that they won’t be legal tender for much longer so they can legally melt them down for the value of the metal, which is worth almost two and a half times as much as the coins themselves.

[redesigned]

@PurpleStater

The only time we round to 1/100 is when we’re buying gas.

Not true at all. Most transactions are rounded.

lets say you buy something for $1.57 and there is a 3% tax…that makes your total: $1.6171 so naturally the register displays the rounded value of $1.62 That hat is $8.65 but is on sale for 15% off which makes it $7.3525, you are only charged $7.35 though, again because of rounding.

Many countries have done away with the penny (or equivalent) for cash transactions but still calculate to the cent (or equivalent) for digital transactions. The transition went seamlessly up here in Canada where 90% of people just threw pennies into a jar/bucket/whatever when they got home and accumulated them endlessly, because who wants to carry pennies…ugggh.

[Brainspore]

@redesigned

The transition went seamlessly up here in Canada where 90% of people just threw pennies into a jar/bucket/whatever when they got home and accumulated them endlessly, because who wants to carry pennies…ugggh.

When I’ve travelled abroad I always enjoyed the sense of satisfaction that came with knowing that all the coins in my pocket were actually worth something. In the U.S. it feels like a tiny triumph just to have a cash transaction that ends in a multiple of five. (“YES! I have a whole handful of currency that could be used in a parking meter or vending machine!”)

[redesigned]

i agree, i am from the states and have been living in canada, even before i left the usa i hated carrying $1 bills… wallet filler. the $1 coins up here aren’t that much better besides saving a mint (pun intended) in cost to the gov. i wish $1 coins were the size of a dime. smaller lighter coins would make me hate them less.

ironically i am a coin collector. i love coins, just not in my pockets.

[TobinL]

@Brainspore

(“YES! I have a whole handful of currency that could be used in a parking meter or vending machine!”)

This is why I would love dollar coins. Though all the meters in Seattle take plastic as well which I tend to end up using in them cause who carries around $4 in quarters on a regular basis.