Or look at it another way: inflation has made the nickel from my youth into today's penny.
Not that I've ever gone in and tried to only buy a single washer. I'm guessing the old guy might just smile and say "it's free."
Or galvanic corrosion.
This already happens at convenience stores around the country, too. The "pennies for everybody" trays are the physical manifestations of our collective irritation with the penny. I know I only ever get change back rounded to the nearest 0.05 because I always leave my pennies in the tray. And since I often never have pennies, I'm only prepared to make transactions to the nearest 0.05.
Many of us are already doing it, but just in a roundabout way that requires more effort for no reason.
ahh maybe it’s just a way to keep prices “fair” for cash users, since businesses have to pay interchange on card transactions but charge everyone the same price? (/s)
Most soda machines are charging $0.60 or $0.65 these days. Rounding to either $0.50 or $0.75 would be annoying.
That said, I think it'd be totally reasonable to eliminate all coins other than the nickel and quarter.
(If I really had my way, I'd also eliminate dollar bills (replacing with a dollar coin that doesn't suck, replace with some more valuable and small.... like dime-sized pure copper. Then eliminate all bills except the $5, $20, and $100).
Same goes for the UK and the pound. Nobody uses 1 pound notes.
(£1 notes still exist in Scotland, but since 2001 are only issued in small numbers for collectors.)
The soda machines I see charge $1.25. Where are you?
round(total price + tax) is the obvious solution to this. If you gain or loose 3 cents in the round off who cares.
Here is how other countries solved this ages ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding
The same argument could be made for the nickel and the dime. (How many of us collect them in a jar, and pay a 10% royalty to turn them into dollars?)
We all know that the real reason we hold on is that we know the price of everything will go up. Skinflints!
I also admittedly rarely use cash.
What were 3 or 4 such things?
These things used to literally cost one penny, hence their name.
https://www.frbsf.org/cash/files/figure-3-2015dcpc-share-of-...
Tax is always going to be the same no matter which station in town you use, so it's not a useful metric for comparison shopping.
(And actually gas stations take it a step further. The $3.99 you see on the sign isn't the actual price, it's $3.99 + 99/100 cents. If you look closely, you'll sometimes see the extra fraction of a cent in superscript.)
I grew up on the border of Maine (sales tax) and New Hampshire (no sales tax). There, tax is frequently used as a metric for comparison shopping. In fact there’s an entire street over the bridge into NH colloquially known as “gasoline alley.”
Computers can deal with the latter, signage can't.
Might be a little different for online stores where tax can't be calculated until they know which of the many different local tax codes the sale is being made under, but as you've already noted computers can handle updating the price before people confirm the purchase.
Except for businesses, there isn't the situation as in the US, where the retailer is responsible for verifying that a customer is tax-exempt. People on the equivalents of food stamps pay the VAT; yes the money just goes in a circle back to the government, but it's probably easier accounting for everyone.
The till receipt or invoice breaks down the VAT element for you, and most places even pick out what is zero rated or exempt should you care.
Every receipt breaks out the VAT and rate. Food, books and children's clothes (and a few other things) are exempt (UK).
All online purchases show VAT in the checkout and basket, and in the invoice after purchase.
i.e. Joe Sixpack is going to pay 7% on his loaf of bread, but Jane Wicstamps buying the same loaf of bread with food stamps does not get charged any tax.
Additionally, some municipalities will do things like say there's a general 7% sales tax on everything, except groceries, which are taxed at 2%...until next year, when the general tax goes up to 8% and the tag on literally every item in the store needs to have the price adjusted.
For things that don’t have different VAT rates, such as food or children’s clothing, it’s the retailers responsibility to price that in - most people probably couldn’t even tell you which particular goods are VAT exempt.
(Here in Norway, we've gotten rid of the 5, 10, 25 and 50 øre (cents, if you like) coins since I was a kid; the smallest denominations coin now in use is the 1 krone.
Stores round like any mathematically inclined would -.01-.49 sums are rounded down, .50-.99 sums rounded up.
The average merchant pays 2.3-3.5% per swipe, as a result prices are increased across the board and passed on to consumers, no matter if they pay with card or cash.
Merchant accounts have long been below that, they were just a pain to get, and generally required hardware from the bank.
Stripe's selling point was never low fees. It was "you can be up and accepting cards in just a few minutes of coding", and that was well worth paying an extra percent or so.
CNP transactions (which stripe does) cost bit higher than CP transactions which require POS machine at mom/pop shops.
Now, I don't know if all of this equals out to the same as the credit card fees, but it isn't like cash is cost-free.
And it depends on what you are buying. Most stores have cameras. There are a slew of transactions that require ID as well. You generally need to show some sort of ID to get your cash as well - few employers will pay in cash. Major cash purchases are sometimes either refused or require ID and forms to finish.
And you are simply out of luck if you happen to lose it somehow. It can get damaged to the point of being worthless as well.
Multiple studies have found that customers are more willing to spend and typically spend more per transaction when using cards rather than cash, so the merchant charge is usually a sound investment by the retailer.
I basically said what I said. I want all consumers to pay more so I don't have to have pennies rattling around everywhere, which I eventually accumulate to the point that it's worth going to bank to get rid of them.
Pennies: the busy-work of finance.
Asking everyone to pay more so you're not inconvenienced with change, even though you're asking for it by using cash, is quite self-centered.
If you don't like pennies, then just give them away as soon as they're handed to you.
You mean tack on 2-3% processing fees on every transaction?
is quite self-centered.
* ahem * . All I'm asking is $0.04/transaction at most, regardless of transaction size. But because you don't want to use cash, you'd like much more than four cents tacked on?
> You mean tack on 2-3% processing fees on every transaction?
No. The price you're paying at the store doesn't change for you just because you pay without cash. If you walk into Walmart or Target or a local convenience store, they're not changing all the prices at the POS if you pay in cash vs card. And your paying with cash isn't having a meaningful impact at reducing prices as a share of payment, cash is too far in the minority at this point and that's going to get worse.
Stores don't typically raise their unit prices when they decide to accept credit cards; they benefit from efficiency (and lack of theft) and receive more volume in sales as a result.
As a customer you can 'abuse' this by paying with card when the price would be rounded-up, and cash when it is rounded down. But it's not really worth the effort.
IMO Canada should've gotten rid of the nickel as well. One step at a time, I guess.