“Where does that leave citizens? It may be a penny, but that adds up,” said Moss, 29. She paid $8.23 for her orange chicken and cream cheese ragoons with a debit card.
For sure, it does… but this person already had 1 solution already in her wallet! Also, at most you’ll pay $0.02 extra for something. This equates to an extra $7.30 if you purchase this thing every day for a year! This also ignores that some things will be as much as $0.03 cheaper.
America last phased out a coin roughly 170 years ago, when it got rid of the half-cent. “We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” said Steve Kenneally, the association’s senior vice president of payments.
… But Canada does. They did this in 2013. I was actually there when they did it, and it appeared to go pretty smoothly. Almost like they had a plan rather than having to quickly react to the whims of a broken clock one of the times it was actually right.
There’s also a lot about companies training cashiers on “how to round,” which reminds me of the George Carlin quote about the average person’s intelligence. Also, plenty about commercial groups “begging” the federal government to help them with the transition and being met with silence. This is probably the most important part of the article.
The US is finally doing something it should have done decades ago, and it’s choosing to do it in the most chaotic way possible. Rather than looking at what other countries have done and forming a plan, they’re acting like the edict itself, along with no longer minting pennies or accepting deposited ones, is all the government should have to do. Is this the “small government” utopia conservatives dream about!? One that tells states and businesses, “We’ve done the minimum. You figure out the rest amongst yourselves.” Seems like it’s going great so far!
Overall, the article should’ve been more about how terribly this is being enacted, and less about people not being able to do basic math. Especially disappointing since the original source is WSJ (and I know who owns it - it’s still a mostly business-oriented publication).
Edit: spelling
Rounding down… As in cheaper for you.
$9.99 becomes $9.95.
$9.94 -> $9.90
What are you upset about?
As a Canadian that first experienced not having to deal with pennies during a visit to Australia, then had Canada follow up with removing our own pennies; I absolutely love this change. Far less bulky coins to carry around/manage, which is so much nicer for both the consumer and cashiers.
Now we just need to include taxes on the sticker price so you can actually add up prices reasonably as you shop, and not be surprised by the added taxes that’s a PITA to calculate as you go. Australia, you grab 5 items that each say ‘$5’ on them, you pay exactly $25 at the till, no extra math involved.