The U.S. Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and plans to stop producing the coin when those run out.
      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        331·
        1 个月前

        The problem is you can’t get rid of nickles without getting rid of either quarters or dimes too. Without nickles you would have a denomination (25c) that has no way to be made by lower coins (10c dimes can’t equal 25c). So you either need to get rid of every coin, every coin except the quarter, or nuke the quarter and nickle concurrently and only use dimes, forcing prices to be multiples of 10.

          • IamSparticles@lemmy.zipEnglish
            16·
            1 个月前

            That isn’t the specific problem. The problem is that you need a way to make up the difference between them. Example: If someone pays $1.00 for something that costs $0.35, how do you make change without a .05 denomination?

            • Pyr@lemmy.ca
              172·
              1 个月前

              It’s the same issue with the penny, you round up or round down.

              If you have no penny, when taxes on your item make the total equal to $5.03, you pay $5.05. if the total is $5.02 you pay $5.00.

                • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
                  1·
                  1 个月前

                  When I was implementing penny-rounding for Canada in Point-of-Sale software, I was told we were legally required to round in a specific way.

                  I would imagine the U.S. probably will do something similar. Tho, we might follow the model of some of the other countries that have eliminated their pennies. Executive orders are a poor way to cover all the knock-on issues that some with eliminating the penny.

                • Pyr@lemmy.ca
                  2·
                  1 个月前

                  As long as there’s no collusion it should generally even out with random purchases. Unless you constantly buy the same order every day that ends in 3 cents and rounds up you might pay like $5 more every year.

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 个月前

            Its just awkward if something costs 1.15 and you just have a dollar and two dimes. No way to make change for that despite it can be summed from coins (3 quarters 4 dimes) so it will for sure occur in a real world situation where nickels are gone.

            Imo a funnier (unrealistic) solution would be to just change the value of the dime to 12.5 cents.

            • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              1 个月前

              They don’t have to be. The old silver dollar coin was huge, but the sacagawea dollar coin is no bigger than a quarter

              • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
                1·
                1 个月前

                It would be a poor idea to introduce a coin that couldn’t be easily accommodated by coin-op machines. The Sacajawea was specifically designed to be the same size and magnetic signature was previous dollar coins so that coin-op machines that has taken “silver dollars” would also take Sacajaweas without updating.

          • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
            2·
            1 个月前

            I think this is the way. And, in memoriam of the quarter and to celebrate the massive increase in half-dollar production, we open with a 50cents for 50states where we produce half-dollars with 50 alternative “tails”, one for each state.

            I doubt it’ll happen in this administration, but at least we are getting rid of the penny, finally.

        • Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 个月前

          Why’s it a bad idea to get rid of coins at this point anyway. What can you still buy that is a fraction of a dollar that actually matters? Anything that cheap can just be sold in multiples that amount to even dollar amounts.

          Getting rid of coins and rounding to nearest dollar sounds great to me but I don’t know what the drawbacks are.

      • N0t_5ure@lemmy.world
        9·
        1 个月前

        I’ve got a great business idea: I’ll collect a few million dollars worth of nickels and sell them back to the government for 10 cents each. That’s about a 28% discount to the manufacturing cost, and I’ll double my money. Win-win!

        • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 个月前

          Chad walks into a committee meeting to explain why we should end the production of our copper familiar. “LOOK AT THIS PENNY GRAPH, every time I do it makes me laugh”

  • Owl@lemm.eeEnglish
    24·
    1 个月前

    frankly they might aswell cut the 5 cent piece too while theyre at it.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
      23·
      1 个月前

      Make a 20¢ piece instead of the quarter and everything can go to the nearest 10¢. Then eventually we can get rid of the dime too and everything can go to the nearest 20¢.

    • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      83·
      1 个月前

      Just scrap anything less than $1. Then make coins $1 $5 $10 $20 that look and feel similar to the penny, nickel, dime, & quarter but are really replacing these paper bills.

        • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          31·
          1 个月前

          They last longer. Up to this point the government could not get the public to adopt the $1 coin, largely because it was too big physically, and cashiers didn’t have an extra slot in their coin drawer. We could change all that now, if we convert $1, $5, $10, and $20 into coins the appear similar to the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter.

      • 5opn0o30@lemmy.world
        54·
        1 个月前

        What fallout? Their worth is negative. Other countries and the us have done this when the impact was theoretically higher.

        I’ll admit I’m not an economist but this easily passes the smell test without further explanation of the negative.

  • Raltoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    1 个月前

    So is this one of those things where Americans do the common sense thing and agree?

    Or is this the another classic case of a few very loud and emotional Americans screaming with passion and zero logic?

    Or is it one of those situations where everything seems to go smoothly. And then you figure out that they didn’t add the correct rounding regulations, so you’ll be paying a little extra on every single transaction the store puts at .96?

    • epicstove@lemmy.caEnglish
      10·
      1 个月前

      Here in Canada we got rid of the penny years ago.

      When paying in cash, we round to the nearest 0.05 but with card payments it’s still the exact price.

      Also, the amount of money you’d lose by rounding in a cash transaction is pretty minimal.

    • DarthKaren@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 个月前

      It’s going to be 2 and 3.

      First 3. Then 2 because yokels will complain that “them walmarts is stealin my money!”

      I do have a funny story about someone determined to get his .01 cent.

      USAF. We were leaving after a month long TDY (not a deployment, but you do go to a different place, stands for Temporary Duty Assignment) to England. The crew and us maintenance guys all stayed at the same hotel off base. We spent this month meeting with them in the morning in front of the fire place, and usually finding out the mission got canceled for the day. We were all ready to go home.

      The head maintenance guy was a penny pincher. He had like 8 kids, so he kind of had to. This is a guy that went around base picking fruit off the trees. He left Saudi with a large bag of free MREs. We all joked that that was the only way he could eat at home because no one else wanted to eat them.

      Anyway, we’re leaving finally. We’re all on the bus. Air crew and maintenance. Maintenance usually has to show up about 45 mins prior so we can inspect and get everything ready. So this was going to be a quick turn and out. We stopped by the base gas station to pick up snacks for the flight home. Everyone but the head maintenance guy is back on the bus. 5 mins. 10 mins. 15 mins. The pilot finally had enough. “WTF is taking him so long?”

      He goes in and comes back out almost right away with the guy in tow. Why was he in there so long? He was arguing with the cashier over his change…1 penny. The pilot went in, found out what the hold up was, and told him, “I’ll give you the damned penny. lets go!” while dragging his ass out.

  • Sunsofold@lemmings.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 个月前

    US slowly working its way to a Japan style monetary system where the fractional unit ceases to be used as the buying power of the main unit dwindles.

    Did you know Japan had a coin called ‘sen’ which was 1/100 of a yen? They aren’t made anymore. They’d be near useless if they were because a cup of ramen is ~¥200, or 20000 sen. Although, it would be pretty funny in a show to see some ancient Japanese guy paying for his lunch with his sen collection while some uptight salaryman loses his mind in line behind him.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 个月前

      If only he did it properly. The better way to do it would have been via Congress.

      Canada has a law that allows cashiers to round up or down. Without this, the US is only making a penny shortage, and you better believe customers will be screaming at cashiers for “stealing their money” if they don’t get their cent back, or shrieking “it’s legal tender!” if cashiers don’t accept their Pennies.

      • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
        2·
        1 个月前

        IIRC, Canada had at least some period of time where while change provided was rounded to the nearest nickel, the penny was still legal tender. (Prices / totals were not rounded; non-cash payments were still denominated / accurate to the penny.)

        And, yes, it would be better to get congress and the executive together and have an actual plan for discontinuing the penny and the nickel (and maybe the dime or quarter?). I think on this issue, the executive acting alone is better than doing nothing / maintaining the status quo.

    • ytorf@lemmy.world
      21·
      1 个月前

      I saw an interview with an economist years ago where he said that if we just followed the accepted rules of rounding (1-4 rounds to 0, 5-10 rounds to 10) then it would work out about the same. In reality I’m sure companies would just pocket the extra money

    • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
      10·
      1 个月前

      We follow normal rounding rules in Canada. 1, 2 round down to 0. 3, 4 round up to 5. 6, 7 round down to 5. 8, 9 round up to 10.

      Can you game the system? Yes!

      As a business, make sure all your prices (plus tax) come to a price ending in 3, 4, 8, or 9. When consumers buy a single item you’ll get the rounding up (edit: if they pay cash) and make sweet, sweet profit. But if they buy more than one item, you’re SOL on controlling the rounding.

      As a consumer, you have way more control. First, pay with cash whenever the price will round down and you can probably “profit” 5 or so dollars a year. (Assuming you pay with cash on or two times a day, saving 1 to 2 cents each time.) Pay with credit or debit each time the price will would round up.

      Second, you can get real fancy. You can learn tax rules in depth so you know what items will or won’t be taxed and at what rate (we have federal and provincial taxes but they don’t apply to everything and they don’t follow the same rules on what is taxed.) But, you can use this info to always know what the final bill will be and always buy combinations of items that end in 2 or 7 (or 1 and 6 if you’re lazy) and always pay cash. You can profit like $20 a year or something doing this.

      In reality? No one gives a shit until that one rare time you’re paying with cash and it rounds down. It’s your lucky day and you do the Six Flags Man dance. It’s like finding a penny and picking it up.

    • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world
      English
      3·
      1 个月前

      There’s still a fuck ton of pennies in circulation and on the ground, unless they consider them no longer legal tender we’ll have plenty.

      However, if we end up following how Brazil does it, in my experience, it depends on the person/vendor and the amount. If you buy something that’s like R$3,99 you’ll usually get give them R$4 and that’s it. I’ve also had it where I’ll pay for something that’s say R$4,89, give them R$5 and get 15 or 25 centavos back. Could also depend on what’s in the drawer at that time.

      Corporations will 100% pocket the difference at first, but once it becomes a normal thing to do the rounding I’ll wager it’ll fall to the Brazilian method, especially with local businesses or vendors.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
      English
      6·
      1 个月前

      Nickels and dimes sure. Not sure why you’d ditch the dollar yet, it still has buying power. And dropping paper dollars for dollar coins is pants on head levels of stupid

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 个月前

        It would make counterfeiting harder, for one. It would also replace the quarter for coin op devices which are almost entirely impractical at this point.

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 个月前

            Did you respond to the wrong post?

            I said I use coin op shit. It takes way too many quarters to use that shit. I handle coins all the time but I want to handle LESS COINS. I still LIKE coins but the denominations below quarters AREN’T useful and paying 3 dollars in quarters is insane.

            Cash machines jam all the time. This is why most pay machines now are credit card - I DO NOT LIKE PAYING WITH CREDIT CARDS. I do not want that. The current coin situation in the US is dumb.

            The half penny was eliminated when it was worth more than a dime in todays money.

        • octobob@lemmy.ml
          51·
          1 个月前

          Great, so throw every homeless or vulnerable person, abuse victims, children, etc who do not have access to a bank account or phone into a completely worse state. Food? Busses? For any of these people they are just now off the table. Eliminate whole sects of the restaurant, service, and gig economy industry overnight and millions will lose their jobs. The amount of people who work under the table at restaurants is outstanding.

  • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
    132·
    1 个月前

    Cool. Do the dollar bill next. Go buck and doublebuck coin like Canadia did.

    If I can’t buy a gallon of milk or gasoline with it, it should be a coin.

  • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 个月前

    Guarantee Walmart starts pricing things at $xx.96 and milking $0.04 on every transaction.

    • malin@thelemmy.club
      1·
      1 个月前

      This means pennies will stop being made, but the concept of 1 cent will still exist.

      Most payments are digital, anyways. This won’t have any meaningful effect.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 个月前

    I’m all for it. Real talk though: at what point do we consider re-basing the dollar? I get that we’re nowhere near that now, but I’m guessing it’s at the “kill the $1 bill” mark?

    • TheHiddenCatboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 个月前

      I’d answer this with ‘we rebase the dollar when a coin can’t buy a thing.’ It should have happened decades ago. Here’s my worked example.

      A penny used to be a lot of money. You could buy actual things with a penny. I’m sure our oldest contributors can point to the day that a penny would get you a piece of candy. In my earliest days, I could get that same piece of candy with a nickel, but by my teens, that piece of candy would be a dime or even quarter. I remember when a bag of M&Ms cost $0.50, That became $1.00 around the 2000s, and is now $2.00.

      A penny sitting on the ground was ‘good luck’ back in the day. I think that’s because you could bend down, pick up that penny, head to the store, and plink that penny down and get something in exchange for it. Today, you can’t plink down a single penny for anything. You can’t even plink down 10 of these pennies or a dime and expect to get something today, with the cheapest things requiring 25 of these coins (or a single quarter). Not much luck if you need 25 of them to get a burst of sweetness.

      If we did away with the penny, would anyone lose anything? That’s 5 seconds at Federal Minimum Wage, and about 2 seconds at my city’s minimum wage. It takes more time to reach down and pick up the penny than you’d earn working a minimum wage job, so arguments about ‘Oh, prices will go higher if we eliminate the penny’ ring hollow to me. There is functionally no difference between $7.99 and $8.00 pricewise. Even a hike of a $7.9 priced item to $8 isn’t a bunch of money. We’re almost to the point where you can’t buy something with a single dollar bill. The time for the hundredth of that dollar bill passed a LONG time ago.

      • Jeffool @lemmy.world
        3·
        1 个月前

        I recall the gumball machine at my childhood barber being a penny in the mid 1980s. I don’t recall when it went up exactly, but it was around then. I was born in 80 so I was pretty young when it happened. But yeah, even then the convenience store in the middle of town had a candy aisle with lots of 5 cent candy that made picking up pennies worthwhile.

        I also remember in the later 80s when I began reading them, comics were $0.75 each. Over the next 15 years they went to $3, until I was in college and my comic habit was just too expensive, so I stopped the monthlies completely.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 个月前

        Inspired by your comment, I decided to look up when the U.S. stopped minting the half penny, as well as what a “half penny” of that time would’ve been worth when accounting for modern inflation.

        The U.S. half penny was abandoned in 1857. The inflation calculators I checked don’t allow for division by half-cents, but when $0.01 from 1857 is inflated to today’s value, it comes out to somewhere between 37¢ and 38¢. If I did the math correctly, that means a U.S. half cent was worth a modern equivalent of about 19¢ at the time it was discontinued.