The Penny Must Die
theecjournal.com
theecjournal.com
It's a small thing, but then, so is a canary in a coal mine. This penny thing has been an irritant for years, and the things presaged by accepting that are starting to emerge... like failing infrastructure.
The "question before the question" is-- why is the penny worthless? That's the uncomfortable situation.
Sure, if you're very new to this planet and aren't aware that, "The penny must die" has been published in some form for longer than you've been alive. The actual question isn't engaging, isn't new, and doesn't represent a significant issue facing any of us. The issue behind why we keep regurgitating the same issues and pawing at them like blind fools however, is interesting.
Pennies are gone in AU/NZ and other south pacific countries.
A penny is so worthless these days even homeless people throw them out.
Visiting the US is like visiting a time machine where pennies and dollar bills still exist, where chip and pin is only just coming into fashion, and where "checks" are still used for ordinary transactions like buying groceries.
I've been wondering if there are statistics regarding the usage of checks. When I was younger almost every week I'd get stuck in line by someone very, very slowly writing a check. But I haven't seen someone write one in...well it must be at least 3 or 4 years ago and that was at some tiny store that didn't accept credit cards.
Do people really still write checks in a number that's in any way significant?
Fair enough I was mostly referring to using them at retail locations like I thought parent was alluding to. I forgot I also pay more service folks with a check (though with things like stripe I see more and more service folks using those to prevent bounced checks).
They aren't any slower than a card nowadays, with check printers. You don't even have to sign them.
Almost nowhere we shop has NFC readers yet. They're gaining adoption, but they're far from ubiquitous.
Those that do often require that you sign a receipt in addition to presenting your device or card. I've had one place go as far as to require a PIN and a signature... on a purchase where I had to unlock my phone with a fingerprint.
Compare that to "hand the clerk a paper check, clerk inserts it into the register, then hands it back to you".
> Never bounces
Sure they can. They can also be reversed, in some cases weeks after the purchase. Large retailers who print/scan checks (e.g., WalMart) present it to the bank electronically, instantly. There's actually a significantly stronger guarantee that the money is actually there in that case.
> Never gets stolen and used to make fraudulent withdrawals, at least so long as skimmers are mostly mag-stripe readers.
This is a risk, sure - but it's on the retailers, not the consumer. It's a hassle for a consumer but most banks will happily reverse the charges for you if you report a checkbook stolen.
But I think it was the media's policy of always showing both sides of an issue that made it seem much more contentious than it really was.
It's just cash that gets rounded. This means there is no reason for shops to adjust their pricing for rounding (basically impossible anyway as GST/HST/PST tax is added later) since only a minority pay with cash. It's a good way to avoid any side effects of getting rid of the small coins.
There's a particular coin in the US that doesn't actually say the value on it anywhere - it's particularly annoying.
I was confused there for a second because "1/2cent coins" looks like "half-cent coins", where you actually mean "one-cent and two-cent coins".
And yeah, I would like to see these go. I refer to them simply as "Buntmetall" (a German word that translates literally as "colored metal"; appropriate since the small coins are brown-ish) and throw them away at any occasion.
...It's the most basic level of participation; if that's not failing to participate in the process, what is? You're welcome to rail against the entirety of the history of who politicians are and how they behave, but it's at your peril.
In the same way that you can't just turn a computer on and leave it alone forever, you can't do the same thing with government. Politicians have always been, and will probably always been unrelentingly worthless scumbags.
But the $1 bill really ought to be a coin instead
There have been various efforts at dollar coins and they've never really taken off.
I would hate this. I don't use a lot of cash in general but I really like the fact that, when I do use cash, except for some quarters I save for parking meters, coins are basically in the dump in a jar when I get home value. I dislike when I travel to UK/EU that there's coinage of sufficient value that I can't just ignore my loose change.
If I have to use cash I'd much rather just use bills. Coins require some sort of different container to carry them.
Parking meters. Laundry. Vending machines. Public transit. These are all things made immeasurably better by having coins that have value.
> I can't just ignore my loose change.
Sure you can. Back when I was still using cash I'd just dump it all in a jar and at the end of the year I'd have at least $800-1000 of savings.
It's also nice that with a single coin you can buy something. A bagel? A muffin? A coffee? If you shop at the right place you might even be able to swing a muffin and a coffee for a single coin.
You really can't get much for $0.25 these days. Even a pack of gum is vastly more than that.
I do need $1-ish value cash for tips etc. from time to time and I don't want to carry coinage for that purpose.
Cash tips usually come out of change. If they only give you $0.10 to work with, win some lose some.
> Parking meters.
Lately I've been seeing updated parking meters that take credit cards. Not sure how common it is but depends on your area.
> Laundry.
Last time I did laundry at a laundromat they had credit card machines on each washer and dryer. I just kinda assumed this was becoming more and more common.
> Vending machines.
I've never seen a vending machine in my life that didn't accept bills. Even better, I haven't seen a vending machine in the past 2 years that didn't accept credit cards. Granted I know they still exist I just hadn't run into one in a couple of years.
> Public transit.
All the public transit I take (train, sometimes bus) accept either specialized cards that can be refilled via vending machines or online (with credit, debit or cash). Vending machines for tickets typically take credit, debit or cash, too.
I'm sure buses will allow coins but is its usage even common anymore?
> It's also nice that with a single coin you can buy something. A bagel? A muffin? A coffee? If you shop at the right place you might even be able to swing a muffin and a coffee for a single coin. You really can't get much for $0.25 these days. Even a pack of gum is vastly more than that.
It's "nice"? Personally I find it "nice" to be able to buy something with a single bill. Is your point necessarily better than my point?
Until then coins are the best way for people who don't have a credit card to pay for things like that. Services like Apple Pay are still in the early adoption phase and aren't as reliable.
All your arguments, and I mean literally all of them, were what people were harping about before the $1 coin showed up here over thirty years ago. Nobody misses $1 bills. Literally nobody.
And it saves space, both in the wallet and in my pocket.
Every couple of years, I take them to a coin machine and take a couple % hit for the machine's surcharge. More, higher-value coins = more waste, both of space, and in terms of returning them to a valuable form.
You're also highly unlikely to have more than 3 or 4 of those. If you have 5 just trade up for a bill. Most stores will be very grateful to get some change back.
Nobody here is clamouring for the $1 bill to come back. The only thing more annoying than a pocket full of $1 coins is a bunch of absolutely disgustingly filthy $1 bills.
If you want some, go to a US post office, put a $20 bill in the stamp vending machine, and press coin return. The older machines give change in dollar coins.
Guess those machines are being phased out
In the UK, where I grew up, the smallest (proper) banknote is five pounds (worth about seven dollars). (The (proper) is because there are still some Scottish one pound notes floating around. I believe they're still valid, but they're not printed any more and so are decades old and disgusting, and you need to be really unlucky to see one.) In Switzerland, where I live, it's ten francs (worth about ten dollars). Switzerland actually has five franc coins, which are amazingly chunky things.
...the smallest coin in Switzerland, BTW, is five rappen (one rappen is a hundredth of a franc). The two rappen coin was deprecated in 1978, and the one rappen coin in 2007.
It works fine, no one dies.
‡ Purchasing power to a citizen of the corresponding country, rather than exchange rate (exchange rate only makes ~30% difference).
† probably quite a good approximation given years difference.
This is entirely wrong. In high school you're taught that we went from barter to money to credit, but in reality, the earliest human economies were credit based.
People sometimes say, "x society collapsed and reverted to barter," but in every case, they "revert" to the currency of trade from the previous state .. or they use something generic like "Oxen" but they never actually trade in real Oxen; they just use it as a unit of measure.
I do agree the penny should be deprecated, and I know it sounds nit-picky, but myths like this prop up a narrative that doesn't match with history, and it distorts our perception of what money and markets truly are.
I highly recommend the book Debt the First 5,000 Years, as it goes into great detail about the history of debt, money and slavery.
Nevertheless, we Canadians have been without pennies for a few years now. I have no complaints, just less change, which is nice.
Did I fall for a slippery slope fallacy?
I like this solution. Get rid of the need for money, too.
I get $100 bills to travel overseas (and they're routinely accepted if I'm using US currency for something). But I'd in no way depend on getting a $50 or $100 accepted in a US store. I admit that I see fewer signs to that effect these days than I maybe did in the past but I do have to go int to a bank teller if I want to get $100 bills for travelling.
Pennies are made because there is demand. If businesses stop requesting rolls of pennies, the mint would make less of them. If you want to get rid of pennies lobby businesses to round their after tax prices to the nearest nickel. Just McDonalds and Walmart dropping the penny might cut the amount in circulation by a significant amount.
When available currency has limited resolution merchants simply adjust their quantities to match.
Wouldn't it be nice to just pay 3.50 and get a tad more product than 3.37 and futz with the change?
Of course if you get rid of the penny then rounding only occurs when you pay with cash - when you pay with a card you still get to pay to the penny
That's not true at all. Many prices (in restaurants but also elsewhere) in both Canada and Europe don't include sales tax/VAT.
There are lots of places in the world that accept and use the dollar as a means of trade, where the penny is still of value.
https://qz.com/260980/meet-the-countries-that-dont-use-their...
What amounts to a rounding error for most Americans would quickly add up in places that depend on the dollar for currency (official or un officially) as they typically have larger marginal populations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian_centavo_coins
Americans were able to trade fine in the past when a penny had far more purchasing power. Other counties will manage.
In Poland, if you want to talk about a particular coin, you use its denomination.