Is It Time to Kill the Penny?
npr.org
npr.org
Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky didn't fall. There was no great debate, no public opinion polls and politicians swearing heartily about the demise of our great nation. (Ok that's probably not true. For too many politicians that's all they do.)
There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour of a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People bitched about having too much change in there pocket, pockets became too heavy, etc. I do however see more coins in tip & donation jars now then I ever saw paper money.
This is a key difference between US policy & Canadian policy that I have informally noticed while growing up on the border (with family ties on both sides).
Canadian government: We think it's a good idea, so we're going to do it.
US Government: Lets have more opinion polls, and countless politicians swearing against any decent public reform or change to the status quo. Watch the media whip the public up into a frenzy. I guaranty that this will create a more frantic response and airtime then the BLM & Police Reform protests did.
Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day has got to make some accountants happy.
[0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-all...
And for anyone who thinks otherwise, I'm going for a swim with $300 in my pocket.
Money isn't waterproof where you live?
British, Canadian, Australian bank notes can't be ripped when wet or dry - they're polymer.
Much better than in the USA, where their cloth money always feels like dirty laundry.
Uggh. When I travel in Europe--especially Germany with its remaining heavy use of cash--I hate coinage that is sufficiently valuable that I can't just basically ignore it. The US seriously tried to do a dollar coin (the Susan B. Anthony)--which was arguably ill-conceived for at least a couple of reasons but I'm very happy with US coinage being basically loose change although I'd be happy to eliminate basically disposable pennies and maybe even nickels.
Though to tell the truth I normally use cash so seldom and/or at so few places in the US that it probably doesn't matter.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)#Sa...
Funny, that's basically the inverse of the reason I liked it — it allowed me to ignore cash some time.
The wonders of search helped me find my old comment without scrolling, here's more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502882
There are absolutely better materials to use, no argument there. But US paper currency are not even close to being fragile.
You'd think, but actually no. That's because it's per transaction, so the accumulated amount is well pennies compared to the turnover.
For example, say you always rounded in favor of the company. That means an average of 2c gain per transaction. If you do 2 million transactions a day that's... 40 grand! yay. Except that if the average transaction is say $50 (which seems kinda low) that means your turnover for the day was $100 million.
So, in short, if you are making a lot from the rounding error, well you're making a lot lot from the actual sales.
I don't think that seems low. A grocery store or a bakery probably sees a lot of transaction in the 2$ to 5$ range.
But, to be fair, even at 'only' 4 million $ turnover your point still stands.
Corner stores have the occasional sub-$5 purchase, as do, of course, coffee shops.
This might also be a currency difference, through; 5 Euro in Germany can get you quite far (at least outside of metropolitan areas).
Are you sure? I did a quick search and came up with this
>One of the rules in Regulation NMS is a new Sub-Penny Rule: “which establishes a uniform quoting increment of no less than one penny for quotations in NMS stocks equal to or greater than $1.00 per share to promote greater price transparency and consistency. . . . In particular, Rule 612 addresses the practice of “stepping ahead” of displayed limit orders by trivial amounts. It therefore should further encourage the display of limit orders and improve the depth and liquidity of trading in NMS stocks.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/sub-penny-pricin...
which suggests the opposite of what you're claiming. Also, I'm not sure how you'd even make money this way, considering that NBBO requires brokers to execute their customer's trades at the best available price.
If the best price of a stock on exchanges is $25.00, but an HFT can buy it at $24.99 on a dark pool, they could buy it cheaper and sell it to you, and pocket the difference. When they pay your broker for the privilege of doing so, it's called payment for order flow. As a retail trader you have no visibility or access to dark pools.
Aside from dark pools, NBBO updates have latency which may be exploited:
http://strategicreasoning.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ec3...
Not matter how they do it, the fact that they are willing to pay your broker to execute your order is proof that they have some way to make money from your orders.
You are correct that brokers are required to execute customer trades at the best available price aka the NBBO. The issue here is that the NBBO is relatively slow as compared to data feeds offered by various exchanges and many brokers use the NBBO simply to satisfy Reg NMS Rule 603(c)[1].
If price data was able to travel instantaneously then the NBBO might represent the true best price(s). But the laws of physics say it isn't so and orders can be executed at a less-than-best price yet still at or better than the NBBO.[2]
Fortunately, more are aware of this these days including the SEC which released a proposed order calling for exchanges to submit revised NMS Plans for consolidated data earlier this year.[3]
A great summary of how money is made with all of this I highly recommend giving this a read: http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/What-Every-Retail-Investor-Needs-...
[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.612 [1]: https://www.sec.gov/comments/4-729/4729-4560068-176205.pdf [2]: https://iextrading.com/docs/The%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Cru... [3]: https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nms/2020/34-87906.pdf
My wife's Canadian and I'm American, and we've discussed this point too. My theory is that Canada's parliamentary system generally puts one party in charge of the executive and legislative, so it's easier for that party to get things done. Of course there are times when a party in the US controls both branches and we still struggle to get things done. I would assume that most larger changes happens on this scenarios though.
And of course the US seems to suffer from partisanship in general more than Canada, but I can't back that up.
On one hand, beneficial change can be painstakingly slow. On the other, malevolent change can be stymied indefinitely
Edit: clarify my statement was in reference to the US
When the party that made the "malevolent" change is kicked out, then whatever they did can be reverted very easily.
Contrast that with: if passing anything is hard, and a "malevolent" change does manage to be rammed through somehow (e.g., one party controls things for a two-year period), then reversing it will also be very difficult.
Somewhat humorous example: In response to the need for warm clothing in the Korean War, US lawmakers instituted an alpaca subsidy in 1952. This subsidy remained in place for over 40 years.[1]
I do think there’s evidence that your second statement is true. Bad policy takes a lot of political will to overturn.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=fV_SuDMHpOsC&pg=PA273&lpg=...
Probably because you're only thinking about it from a US-centric POV.
As a Canadian who lives under a Westminster-style style system, there tends to be less gridlock here under majority governments.
I personally think it was deliberately put intended as a check/balance. Af the far end of spectrum, the most “efficient” form of government is a dictatorship. I’m not sure if what the US has is the correct balance, though.
I think it's a feature. We seem to move a lot faster and it doesn't always work, but for the most part, having MPs as the executive branch allows people at the top to legislate what they need to succeed.
I used to think so, but as I read more about the founding fathers I’m beginning to think they had all the same personality conflicts we have today. Maybe there’s a case that with today’s media our current reps are more accountable to their constituents, but (superficially at least) most would interpret that as a good thing
Proportional representation is almost a necessary condition for the parliamentary system to encourage consensus-building. More specifically, it's necessary that no party hold an absolute majority.
With first-past-the-post, you usually end up with one party having full control for one term, and no one to hold them accountable (particularly if you have the principle of parliamentary soverignity).
With some of the NI parties screwing over conservative governments its why NI doesn't have the same laws as the UK
[Aside: An interesting consequence of this is that England lacks a legal and political identity separate from the UK as the UK is an _extension_ of the Kingdom of England. Another interesting this is that even though it was part of the Kingdom of England, Wales _does_ have a legal and political identity because there are acts of parliament that _explicitly_ refer to it. The UK is a constitutionally odd country.]
So in practice, the PM of a majority gov't (i.e., has a majority of seats) gets to pass whatever they want to pass; the saving grace of this is that, without having to haggle and herd cats and trade horses, the legislation is the legislation--there's no poison pills, no payoff amendments, no loopholes to capture one person's support, and no extreme bits to trade away. It's just "this is the law we want", which I think leads to higher quality legislation over all.
The PM of a minority gov't (i.e., only has a plurality of seats) may have to secure another party's vote to pass, but that's a negotiation with a second entity, not a hundred other voting entities.
Consensus doesn't play a significant part in it, I believe. Within the bounds of the law, the PM of a majority is nearly a polite dictator.
In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime Minister and win or lose his performance is on the line in the next election. There's no (effective) hand-waving about opposition or other excuses to deflect accountability. Elections are a black/white referendum of the incumbent's performance.
In the US it's a lot easier to muddy the waters and a lot harder for people to arrive at a clear conclusion and often nobody is happy.
"YES I don't like X BUT it wasn't Y's fault it was Z"
No, I'm not. The concept of a party whip literally invented where I'm from. I'm very much familiar with it.
The US system is much more adversarial. Even if a single party gets the house, senate and presidency, there isn't much stopping individual party members from voting against the party line.
It's true consensus is need with a coalition/minority government, but they don't seem to happen that often. Yes, I know there is one right now.
Canada generally has at least three official political parties (more than 12 seats in the house) at any given time. Currently there are four. You need the most seats but not necessarily a majority of seats to form a government. If a party has fewer than 50%, they form what's called a minority government.
Next big piece is the motion of no confidence, which means we can have an election literally whenever if a government can't pass legislation.
So combine the chance of minority governments and more voices and platforms in government the possibility that obstruction can actually cause you to, you know, lose your job, and you get natural checks against a lot of the problems on display in American federal politics right now. If you can't pass a budget, you don't get a federal shutdown until you negotiate one, you get an election triggered immediately. I understand why no confidence would be practically impossible in America due to money and insanely long election cycles, but it really helps form coalitions and collaboration in Canadian politics.
No, that's when a political party _or_ a coalition of parties does not have the majority. Netherlands often/always has a coalition / combination of parties. They're never considered a minority government unless the combination is <50%.
I actually liked the US approach when I first arrived - "how great! everyone is passionate about politics!". I find it somewhat draining now. There is almost no part of life (work, friends, random strangers) where politics doesn't come up.
I think you’re not describing real political passion or engagement, though — Americans can get quite worked up about politics but we’re not all that engaged, or passionate enough to lobby for real change. Politics serve as signs of tribal affiliation and self-identity, and sometimes as a way to bludgeon other people. In that sense talking about politics is similar to, and as pointless as, arguing about sports. We (Americans) actually don’t show much real engagement if you look at voter turnout.
My other pet theory is that Canadians get more than enough politics from Canadian coverage of US politics (it's often 30%+ of news coverage) so they feel little urge to do the same with domestic politics.
It's the party discipline. In Canada political parties control the fundraising apparatus and you can't be bankrolled by a handful of wealthy donors. Barring unusual circumstance, if you want to be re-elected you are beholden to a party and thus the whips generally have a strong ability to bring votes to the table.
In the states its a lot easier for a Republican or Democrat to tell their party to go fly a kite if they don't see voting for a bill as opportune, in part because of less reliance on the party.
Also, the rounding algorithm is in the article you linked to:
> If the price ends in a one, two, six, or seven it gets rounded down to 0 or 5; and rounded up if it ends in three, four, eight or nine.
That tends to work out pretty even for consumer/store if you are buying groups of randomly priced items.
FYI Sales tax is 13% in Ontario now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
>Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.
I imagine I will see this in my lifetime.
Though, since I rarely handle change at all — if I do use cash, I usually find the first place near my hand to donate whatever metal comes back to me - I suppose I’m not the target audience anyway.
I think it would be a fine to drop the penny and nickel from circulation, just let it become an obscure unit.
You do realize you’re being guilty of exactly what you’re decrying in American politics? You’re over analyzing a minuscule impact that would result from a change to the status quo.
Personally, I think it makes accounting more annoying for businesses. I say leave the penny as it is, and move everyone to plastic.
When you pay for something electronically, the rounding rules don't apply. If my bill comes to $10.42, I can save two cents by paying cash thanks to the rounding rules. But if it comes to $10.98, I save two cents by paying electronically.
That’s about where the USA is as well. Cash is used in 31% of consumer transactions. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/06/spike-the-dollars-obit-cash-...
Anecdotally I haven’t carried cash around in years.
Generally I keep a $40 in the wallet just in case there is a cash-only situation, but that's literally just a backup -- 99% of transactions are on some kind of card.
This assertion is wrong. If the item you buy is $1.00, then after your 14% tax it will be $1.14, which is rounded up to $1.15. If the item is $2.00, then after tax it is $2.28, which also rounds up to $2.30. But if the item is $3.00, then after tax it is $3.42, which rounds down to $3.40. If the item is $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which rounds down to $4.55.
Secondly, the rounding to nearest nickel is done per transaction, not per item. So if you go to a supermarket and pick up 3 items costing exactly $1.00, then the total you owe is $3.42 (which becomes $3.40 in cash), and it is that amount that is subjected to rounding, not the individual items (which are $1.13 and would round to $1.15).
I live in Toronto and have analyzed my retail receipts. (I'm aware the HST is currently 13% but that's not relevant to this argument.) The rule about rounding to the nearest nickel is sensible enough, but I've witnessed various weird behaviors. For example, each vendor has a different kind of wording to show how they rounded your cash transaction. Some use a negative sign to show that the penny rounding deducted money from your total owed, while some use a negative sign to show that the penny rounding increased your total owed (as if you paid negative money). Also, a few vendors always round down to the nearest 5 cents (to appear nice to the customer), which causes a surprise when I'm trying to prepare the correct amount of change. Finally, some vendors don't display cash rounding on their receipts, so for them it is an oral culture that isn't formally written down.
Everybody who lived the transition to the Euro knows that this is not what will happen. Prices will be always rounded up.
I don't understand the big fuss over rounding in the discussion of eliminating the penny. Rounding happens. We already round sales tax up or down to the nearest penny--this would just round up or down to the nearest nickel.
But while we are on the subject, I think we should eliminate nickels and quarters at the same time as the penny and just round to the nearest dime. (Let's put the 50 cent piece of of its misery while we are at it too--just dollars and dimes). Rounding to the nearest ten cents is plenty specific enough given the accumulated inflation/devaluation of currency over the years and you basically get to simply knock off one decimal digit of precision for each transaction which makes things more straightforward. Also, US dimes are small and lightweight, making them easy to carry relative to other coins.
If we assume it takes about 15 seconds to chug a bud, and that an eagle's wingspan is about 6ft, this leads to 528ft/15s, or ~24Mph.
Either you need a faster car, you chug your beer quickly, or you grow some oversized eagles.
I choose to assume the man meant what he said, has a slowish car that can only hit 75mph, but can chug a beer in a respectable 5 seconds.
You forgot quarters, which are perhaps the most common coin. How about we eliminate pennies, nickles, dimes, half-dollars, and dollar bills, and just use quarters and dollars?
Making change would require an average of 4.5 dimes, with a maximum of 9 that happens 10% of the time. Currently 9 coins are required only for 99 and 94 cents. (That's without half dollars, if you use them then it's only 8). If you have dimes and half dollars, it's an average of 2.5 and a max of 5.
Also, US dimes are small and lightweight
I find them to be too small. I like the simplicity of removing a decimal place, but I'd prefer penny-sized dimes and quarter-sized half dollars.
It's actually illegal there to set prices such that they will generally round in the business's favor? Talk about micromanaging…
If they change the tax rates do you have to update your prices so that they round evenly again?
A fairer policy might be "round random" (e.g. 1.23 rounds to 1.20 40% of the time and to 1.25 60% of the time, since .23 is 60% of the way from .20 to .25). That would be harder to game by manipulating the prices. However, you would need to certify that the rounding was actually random; the result wouldn't be obviously correct for any particular transaction, only in aggregate.
3-4 cents isn't a lot. Unless it's added up by all of the people shopping in those places over the course of a year. The incentive to cheat the system is there, therefore the system will 100% be cheated. That's The American Way, in my experience.
This kind of fraud would be so easy to detect I just can't see it occurring on any large scale. The problem would be with small "mom and pop" businesses that could do it for some time without being noticed.
either you're way too optimistic, or i'm way too pessimistic, but lemme tell you, we do not see eye-to-eye on that point.
Concretely, $1.20 with 7% tax is $1.284, do you believe merchants would charge you $1.29?
That said, do I think that someone, somewhere, has/does/will out of malice abuse this specific oft-ignored dark corner of the marketplace, for personal gain? Yeah, I absolutely think that:
You already have this in some sense on gas pumps: the price advertised has taxes included so you are not always playing guess-the-final-total with your money. Just pass a law that requires fair advertising of the actual amount the purchaser will pay, taxes etc. included. If there are special circumstances that might make certain people exempt from a tax -- SNAP is sales-tax free, for instance -- there are several ways to handle that but it's clearer when phrased as a discount rather than as an evasion of a tax.
However, the reason I think stores do this is: If store A is selling candy bars for $1 (+ $0.05 tax at register) and store B is selling candy bars for $1.05. Most people would buy their candy from store A because their prices are lower.
The situation where it comes up is the idea of an American VAT. Because it applies the tax before the store even sees the good, the tax ends up baked into the price. And people like Grover Norquist have argued against a VAT specifically because of that: "The VAT is embedded inside the price of a good (as opposed to the U.S., where sales tax is transparent and on top of the price). As such, people forget they pay it, and European governments have found it too easy to raise the tax repeatedly over time."
If the business did not collect taxes then you the customer owe that to the state still and are suppose to self report that and pay the owed taxed annually
This is the same as Tax withholding from a paycheck, you owe the taxes but your employer is collecting and forwarding them to the government on your behalf, the big difference here is the purchases are not tracked by individual tax payer
Interesting. But do people actually do this in practice? I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax comes from businesses vs individuals.
Before 2018 or 2019 unless a business had a physical presence in the state it was outsize the reach of that states laws on taxation, as the Federal government has the exclusive domain of regulating interstate transactions under the US Constitution.
However in 2018 or 2019 the Supreme court has ruled that a business shipping into a state provides enough "nexus" for a business to fall under state regulations on sales tax collection. All but one state now require any business shipping a product into the state with a total sales volume of more than $600 for that state must collect sales tax, one state says any sales at all you must collect.
So the "loop hole" of buying from out of state to avoid state sales taxes no longer exist as almost all businesses now need to collect all taxes for all taxing jurisdictions in the US of which there are around 10,000 different tax jurisdictions as many area's have city and/or county level taxes in addition to the state taxes making this is very complex issue
Companies like Amazon and Walmart in the past have advocated for some kind of National Standardization of Sale Taxes but that largely has gone no where as many states make up the majority of their revenue from 2 places, Property Taxes and Sales Taxes where the majority of Income Taxes go to the Federal Government
>>I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax comes from businesses vs individuals.
Most states do have detailed reports of where sales taxes come from, in my state over 70% of sales taxes come from the sale of Automobiles as an example
One exception is in advertised gasoline prices, which usually include all the taxes, including sales tax and special gasoline taxes.
I doubt if most price tags last more than a month at clothing stores, maybe a year at grocery/other large chain stores. Department stores and trendy fashion stores have too many sales and don't keep the same items in stock year round anyways.
Almost every other country in the world works fine without bait'n'switching their citizens at every single transaction.
I get that it's weird if you aren't used to it, but it really isn't the big deal people (that don't have to even deal with it) make it out to be.
Every business should be requried to adversite, print, and clearly mark the amount of the tansaction is going to taxation
Hiding taxation in the purchase price allows government to increase those tax rights with out facing the same amount of public back lash as they do when the taxation is calculated secretly from the transaction or advertised rate
This is why when come taxes increase their gas takes the hate and vitriol is directed at the "evil gas companies" increasing the rates when in reality it was a increase in gas taxation that cause the per gallon price to increase
One of the primary reasons I oppose a VAT style tax in the US is the vert nature of non-transparent taxation. People need to know exactly how much money the government is taken from them in any given transaction
People should have to actively hand over money to the government, see the money in their account, and then see it removed for the exact purpose of government taxation
This is the only way to hold government to account for their massive overspending, which today is abstracted away to the point that people believe their tax refund check is the "government paying me money" instead of what is really is, the government taking to much money from you and then giving you back what they over seized
Any abstraction in government funding is a negative for government accountability
If people had to physcially spend a payment larger than their mortgage every month to the government they would quickly start to ask "Why I am paying so much" and "what am i actually getting for this money"
Instead the government slyly takes the money before people even realize they had it, sure they get a pay stub but it is not "real money" that was ever in their physical possession, most people do not even look at their Gross income only the amount physically put into their bank account.
This subtle difference is factored into how government has structured taxation to ensure very limited accountability
That's exactly what happens in Europe, the receipt tells you exactly how much you paid for each of tax and goods.
"Just" anything in America is as OP pointed out an absolute nightmare left-vs-right debacle.
The "left" wants to have inclusive pricing for, as you point out, convenience and sanity while politicians on the "right" want to have taxes appended afterwards so that you are smacked in the face with how much the government is wasting your money every time you buy anything.
I don't see why this would be different. Most likely there would be a law that covers it. (I believe there already is regarding sales tax)
And even if they do always round up: It won't be that much - up to 4 cents per transaction. 125 transactions would only cost you $5 per month - and besides, businesses have actual costs to using cash. No pennies means less time handing out and counting change and less change to get from the bank. Not to mention the savings at the government level.
¹ it was so that the effective tax rate remained the same when Quebec stopped taxing the federal tax, which was pretty annoying for software.
- Prices are rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5 cents for sales ending in: 1¢ & 2¢ (rounded to 0¢); and 6¢ & 7¢ (rounded to 5¢).
- Prices are rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5 cents for sales ending in: 3¢ & 4¢ (round to 5¢); and 8¢ & 9¢ (round to 10¢).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding#Rounding_with_0....
I share GP's assumption, assuming that businesses would re-price based on the final cost. There is a financial incentive to get the transaction to round up, and financial incentives are usually pretty motivating.
(Given the max incentive is 5 cents per transaction, I might guess a focus on one-off transactions like a bag of chips, vs. the complexity of attempting to get the average grocery bill to end in the right #!)
Would be interesting to see if the after-tax prices of potential single items (chips, water, pop) changed with this rule. Anything that was 99 cents, now that HST is 13%, comes to 111.8 cents, rounds to 110 cents. Bumping that to 100 cents even, rounds to 113, rounds up to 115. Profit of 5 cents on '99c/1$' item for 5% difference. Hard margins to give up!
Sounds like you know why that is, because people don't want to be stuck carrying around big coins.
>Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day has got to make some accountants happy.
Over the billions of dollars spent in a state per quarter, you are either seriously screwing consumers, or seriously reducing state government revenue. I'd really hate my 6% sales tax to be raised to 10% so that we could kill a coin I don't even use (last paid cash probably a year ago).
If you're paying in plastic then there's no rounding.
>If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc.
Which I assumed wouldn't be just for paying with cash. I don't know if a 'cash tax' would even be legal.
In practice, no one gives a shit because it's a penny and no one cares about the penny. QED
When Australia ditched the 1 and 2 cent coins, making 5 cents the smallest denomination, the rules were that transactions ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 were to be rounded down to 0 or 5, respectively, and that 3, 4, 8 or 9 were rounded up, and that this was to be done at the _transaction_, not the _item_ level.
Several companies and utilities had to be reprimanded or fined due to doing it per item.
In the US, the States are very powerful and the Federal government is much weaker comparatively. For anything to be done collectively across the entire US, it requires cooperation from all states, otherwise one of them can screw everything up. That inherently means more talking, more coordination, more meetings, etc.
It's the fundamental difference in how each country was forme and the system that they pursued. In some ways it's better and in some ways its worse. That's why you can have very powerful states like California dictate a lot of their own destiny, but then when it comes time for a national crisis like a pandemic, everything is fucked because the US Federal government doesn't have the same level of control and power as in Canada. In Canada you didn't get the inane policy of each province buying its own PPE like in the States, driving up prices because they are all fighting each other.
Very few states maintained their supply of medical equipment properly. Likewise, the federal government hasn't restocked much equipment since the early? Obama administration. Unfortunately, it just wasn't made much of a priority. Of course this failure was made even more devastating due to massive global misinformation leading to late decisions and poor communication by entities that should have been more trustworthy and better equipped.
---
With that said, the states rights debate is a tough nut to crack. There's been so many instances of (various) governments doing evil things that I'm not sure I'd want to centralize even more power.
It's an extreme example, but I liken it to letting a Mao or Hitler take complete control for the benefit of a better healthcare system. The cost is just too great.
In canada, health care is the sole responsibility of the province. The federal government helps with planning and coordination (and maybe funding) You didnt get the insanity because the individial provinces are mostly sane. You still saw individual differences, especially look at ontario's early response.
This 100%. Quebec is the worst - 9.975%! Why oh why. It is so much simpler to have reasonable change in alberta.
Source: I write point of sale systems in Canada
I think that is primarily a function of having three rather than two major political parties. With three parties, any party that can be on the other side of a controversial issue from the other two tends to win the argument. Hence, we're a lot more biased for action at the government level.
Better to make the advertised price include sales tax so there's no surprise at the checkout.
That only lasted a few years until they changed it to always "round up" - i.e. it always goes up to 0.05.
For what it's worth, dropping the $0.01 coin is great, every time I'm in the US I try to avoid them like the plague.
I don't think you thought that through. Unless you are going to require prices be rounded to the nearest dollar, you still need pennies or even fractional pennies to accurately pay the tax. 15% of 75 cents is 11.25 cents, for instance.
The last state I lived in where I looked closely at the sales tax structure had a table like this for which penny to round up or down to. It eliminated all formulas and ambiguity.
True, but part of me still misses it. Not for any real functional reasons. The rounding issue is really nothing and seems to work out pretty evenly from what I can tell, not that I've really bothered to try and figure it out.
I guess it's more sentimental reasons really. It feels odd not being able to count cash to an exact cent. You can now only hold cash up to the nearest 5¢, again not a big deal, but it just makes cash feel more second class. Then there's things like those fountains people would toss pennies into, or the whole find a penny pass it on for good luck thing, or the various phrases involving pennies. 'A penny for your thoughts and such'. These are all things that'll kind of vanish from public thought.
I dunno, these are just some things i've thought of over the years since they got rid of pennies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html
This is (very) mildly stimulative/inflationary, and in the time leading up to en expected re-basing, accelerates the phase-out of the 1¢ penny (as people hoard in expectation of a 5x return). But as of the moment of re-basing, it flushes all those penny-jars out into spending/circulation.
Congress could do this tomorrow, effective immediately or in a week or month. Maybe the Treasury Department/Administration could do it on their own authority.
(The only significant opposition is likely to be from suppliers of nickel-minting metals. So maybe we just rebase pennies as 10¢.)
But they say "ONE CENT" on them.
If it really bothers you, you can file that off your pennies before spending them at 5¢ value. We won't mind.
But also, when was the last prosecution for defacing a coin in the United States?
What sort of monster would call the police on a fellow person for passing a damaged penny?
How would the prosecution's burden of proof be met?
(Be a currency hacker, like Satoshi or Woz – https://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-own... – not someone whose actions are limited by obscure dead-letter laws.)
[0]https://catalog.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-currency/
What other definition of 'hacking' do you use?
It'd grow a popular constituency for the rebasing, and create a change shortage that's most-easily addressed by incentivizing the release of instantly-more-valuable penny hoards.
Fill your jars, then pass the idea on!
(Does anyone know someone high up in this '4chan' memetic-prankster cooperative I keep hearing about? Nah, they'd probably just trick Congress into doing something useless like rebasing the penny to 4¢.)
If you accumulate a pile $1 and $2 coins, nobody looks askance if you plunk down a stack of them. But god, the glares if you want to spend $20 in dollar bills.
I say take it further: nickels should go too, and probably dimes.
But because of quarters you still probably need nickels.
Or you could just go binary use halves, quarters and eighths.
Only in the presence of dimes. That's why I say, cut them too.
But you can get arrested (or shot if Black) for trying to spend a two dollar bill in America.
Man arrested for using $2 bills at Best Buy - clip from The Two Dollar Bill Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3yjfefUD8
A $2 Bill At Taco Bell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbp-UyLH2ng
Police Involved After Student Tries To Buy Lunch With $2 Bill
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/05/04/pol...
https://catalog.usmint.gov/2-32-note-sheet-B9488.html?cgid=u...
Quarter, dollar, five, twenty, hundred would be plenty of coverage.
A US penny in 1913 has the purchasing power of 26 cents today, so I’d agree that dropping everything below the quarter makes good sense.
The reason we don't is that people hate change and politicians don't like to rock the boat. A lot of our issues today are not that we don't know how to solve problems, but that the politicians aren't willing to take them on.
The majority of people seems to like it this way, or rather doesn't care. There's even no vocal enough minority to demand the change (pun not intended).
And they also hate change.
Sample size of one incoming, but the building I live in only has 16 2-room apartments and has a app-driven option for the machines (they take coins, but there's no change machines and I've never seen anyone actually do so)
And more to the point, forcing every American to pay 1-3% rent on every transaction is not progress.
Additionally, the terms of use of credit card companies forbids charging a different price for cash versus card. This means that businesses which aren't large enough to negotiate different terms, have to raise prices across the board to cover the cost of credit card payments--even using cash, you're paying rent to the credit card companies.
Agreed.
> Or something halfway, like forcing card companies to allow price differences up to x% of their charge.
If I want to use cash, why should I subsidize any portion of the credit card company? I don't see the logic of a half-measure.
I firmly believe that corporations (and other collectives) do not have rights, individuals have rights. This is a prime example where refusal to regulate corporations harms individuals.
Please think through how pedantic this "correction" would be even if the credit card company were charitably passing all their fees to you as cash back, which I assure you, they are not doing.
Let's say there are 3 customers who each buy a $98 item at a retailer: customers A, B, and C.
If all three paid with cash, the retailer would receive $294, so the net change would be:
Retailer: +$294
Customer A: -$98
Customer B: -$98
Customer C: -$98
The credit card company charges 3% in fees, or ~$3 for each of the CC customers, so the retailer is now making $288. So they raise the price of the item to $100. Now all three customers are paying $100 each, the retailer is making $294 again, and the credit card company is making $6. Customer B has a card that gets 1% cash, so they receive $1. Now the net change is:
Retailer: +$294
CC: +$5
Customer A: -$100
Customer B: -$99
Customer C: -$100
You're saying, customers A, B, and C have given $2 to the credit card company, and customer A (the one paying in cash) has given $1 to customer B (the one receiving cash back). That's technically not wrong--it's certainly a way to represent the cash flow that gets you to the same place--but it's a pedantic, inane difference, and it certainly isn't a "correction".
> In 1980, production of the 1-cent coin ceased and was demonetized three years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder#Coins
> In 1999 replaced by the Euro, and gained 1-cent and 2-cent coins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_euro_cent_coin
The one- and two-cent coins were initially introduced in order to ensure that the introduction of the euro was not used as an excuse by retailers to heavily round up prices. However, due to the cost to business and the mints of maintaining a circulation of low value coins, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands round prices to the nearest five cents (Swedish rounding) for cash payments, producing only a handful of those coins for collectors rather than general circulation.[3] Despite this, the coins are still legal tender and produced outside these states, so if a customer with a two-cent coin minted elsewhere wishes to pay with it, they may.[4]
The Dutch Bank calculated it would save $36 million a year by not using the smaller coins. According to a Eurobarometer survey of EU citizens, 64% across the Eurozone want their removal with prices rounded; with over 70% in Belgium, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia.
I think this has been known for a long time but special interests have kept it on life support for obvious reasons.
On the other side, handling pennies is expensive for businesses and banks, I bet it costs at least that much. There are special interests on both sides of this.
There are too many people making too much money on the status quo, and they'll fight tooth and nail to not let it change.
So some people are now starting to hoard copper pennies, waiting for the day when pennies are no longer legal tender, and then...they'll make a modest profit, I guess.
http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penn...
What law would that violate?
"31 USC §5111(d)(2), 31 CFR §82.1(b) & 82.2(a)(2) make it a federal crime to leave the US with more than $25 worth of pennies in your pocket."
Most of that is about penalties but 31 CFR §82.2(a) has the $5 and $25 rules: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/82.2
(I just guessed A Crime A Day had tweeted about this, US law seems to be mostly legacy code...)
States commonly have more internally aligned political goals and therefore can move quicker. It also has the benefit of allowing different states to experiment with different solutions and all states can learn from the results.
Lastly, inter-state mobility is much higher than inter-country and this will allow residents to congregate in a state that matches their political desires. E.g., if someone doesn't like the tax burden of states that provide more services then they can move to a state that provides fewer.
This isn't really feasible because residents of one state with no universal healthcare + lower taxes could easily move to another state with universal healthcare + higher taxes when they get a serious illness.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-may-18-mn-38325...
[0] https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol104/iss3/5/ [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
"If the purpose of the requirements was to inhibit migration by needy persons into the state or to bar the entry of those who came from low-paying states to higher-paying ones in order to collect greater benefits, the Court said, the purpose was impermissible"
It's obviously hard to know for certain what SCOTUS will do, but under that standard it sounds like having health care benefits only available to long term residents would be on very shaky legal ground.
Determining residency is not rocket surgery; could steal the entire system from state income tax codes.
If a state provided universal healthcare for residents, it'd quickly be overwhelmed with "hard cases" from other states where coverage is a problem. Which would drive up costs, and taxes, and drive productive/healthy people out.
See the current inter-state shipping of homeless people, especially those who suffer mental illness, that is often done via bus tickets paid for by local governments looking to shed those people.
In general, we don't dump problems on to other provinces. It's bad form and federal courts will fix that quick especially with so much money on the line. If Florida state sends patients to a universal health care NY state for care, you can bet, NY State will be suing either residents of Florida for medical bills or Florida State directly.
All of Canada has universal healthcare, which again makes Canada a completely different discussion from my earlier comment. There isn't the kind of huge discrepancy between provinces as we'd have if some US states had universal healthcare and some had the status quo.
To your argument about states suing one another - we literally already have localities giving mentally ill people bus tickets out of state, and that's been unable to be stopped via the court system. I'm not dealing in hypotheticals here, I'm talking about things that already happen.
That was kind of the point OP was trying to make - in the US there are quite a few states that would do this without blushing. Without the Federal government instituting a framework and legal mechanism to prevent it, there is no way any individual state can do it on their own.
Any state trying to implement a single payer system would get crushed as tons of individuals and even other states tried to milk the system (like putting homeless people on a bus with a one way ticket).
States would need a "suicide pact" of sorts to ensure a bunch of states made the leap at the same time. There actually is such a plan to subvert the electoral college to ensure the popular vote winner always wins the presidency, but that's a relatively simple pact around single law. Health care laws a incredibly complex and rather than try some kind of weird multi-state pact you're better off fighting for a national law.
... that said - why _don't_ you guys cancel the penny?
> Penny defenders' strongest argument was that eliminating it would hurt consumers. All those $9.99 products? The prices would be jacked up to an even $10!
That sounds like an argument made up retroactively to try to justify something. Seriously?
1. The time and effort to handle penny change costs more.
2. Those bargain prices will become $9.95 , and some other prices will rise slightly to compensate; or not.
Personally yeah, I don’t think we need pence.
A key difference is that we have VAT, which is built into the price, rather than a US-style sales tax, which is not. In the US, if you're handling cash you still have to deal with 1c and 2c coins because of that. That made it easier for us to scrap 1c and 2c coins, but creates resistance for any US attempts to do the same.
One other thing we did was introduce symmetrical rounding rules on the final price of cash transactions: https://www.centralbank.ie/consumer-hub/rounding
Applying rounding was entirely voluntary, and all the Government did was gradually take the 1c and 2c coins out of circulation. After that, it was a matter of time for the problem to go away.
I don't think so. The same way you don't have to handle sub-1-penny tax amounts, you won't have to handle sub-nickle tax amounts later. There'll be some sort of rounding mechanism just like you described.
If the latest console game rises from $79.99 to $80.00 it's a trivial increase, I agree. A hundredth of a percentage point.
But if a loaf of bread rises from $0.99 to $1.00 it's increased by an entire 1% - resulting in a noticeable impact on food price inflation. And when your inflation rate is around 0%-2% before, even a quarter of a percentage point is pretty noticeable to inflation-watchers.
IMHO we should do it anyway, though.
1. Loaves of bread don't go for $0.99 ; see an example survey here: https://costaide.com/loaf-bread-cost/
2. You can get bread at different units of weight.
2. A $0.09 item would rise by a full 10%! Terrible, right? ... not when you ask yourself "How many of those do I actually buy?"
I imagine retailers would still price things at £9.95 instead to perpetuate the 'psychological trick' that "it's not really £10!".
It's always a great deal of fun seeing the family come over and try to hand over / or wait for their pennies after doing the groceries; struggling to really understand each other because of the language barrier.
There is something very charming about it .
Appearantly every shop should have stickers telling customers that they round cash payments. I've never noticed that anywhere.
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-en-...
https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkeliers....
CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber.
When they were withdrawn in 1984, they were worth more than 1.5p in today's money. The country survived, so I dare say we could safely discontinue 1p (and 2p) coins.
Ah apparently it’s on overseas bases: https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11
> All those $9.99 products? The prices would be jacked up to an even $10!
Only logical thing, I know this "wow less than 10$" tricks people into buying stuff, but it's just stupid that it's the default to give me back 1 penny whatever I buy.
Where I live the 1c and 2c coins were killed some time ago. The smallest coin now is a 5c.
The way it works is that you go to the checkout, get a final total. If you pay cash then the change is "rounded up" to the nearest 5c mark. If you pay via card you pay the exact amount.
It's really not complicated, and frankly no-one cares about it.
Makes you wonder how much of this stuff is calculated decision making and how much is just dogma.
Personally, I just use my debit card for everything and only use cash when the vendor specifically doesn't allow credit, which is increasingly rare with square and other methods of taking payment from a smartphone.
That said, a large portion of the country is cashless anyway. I almost never have cash on me.
It's not like we have a low-value currency unit either (e.g. Yen). Prices in NZ dollars are usually less than double the US dollar price in the US (and our prices include sales tax and shipping to NZ).
And standardize on a single sales tax rate across the country?
And then build that into prices instead of being tacked on extra?
Just let everything actually cost increments of $0.25. Let me buy something on the McDonald's dollar menu with an actual dollar. Not with two dollars and then dealing with seven chunks of metal in return.
(I mean, as long as we're dreaming. Because if we haven't managed to get rid of the penny over the past 30 years, I don't see why we'll ever actually manage to in the future. Sadly.)
My modest proposal, do what Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon have all done and eliminate it. Sales tax is annoying and regressive.
There was an entire amendment specifically declaring the ability to levy (unapportioned) income tax. It was sufficiently passed, and overrides everything else that came before it.
You can't play a game of 'gotcha' and invalidate something like that off the way you want a word interpreted or some bureaucratic misstep.
It's also a rather obvious violation of the 5th. The gov does not own us; it's the other way around.
So far 9 states have removed state income tax completely: AL, TN, FL, NH, SD, WY, TX, WA, NE. A good start; seems to really bother the authortarians.
The most that could happen is congress going 'oh, that was worded badly' and fixing the wording.
The 16th amendment cannot be in violation of the 5th. That's not how amending works.
Also doesn't that argument apply to all taxes? It seems pretty clear that blocking all taxes was not the intent, based on the rest of the constitution.
> A good start; seems to really bother the authortarians.
Really? I've never seen anyone bothered by that. Sounds fun to watch.
All taxes: no. Tarrifs for example are... excellent ethical and thoroughly constitutional.. Otherwise country X can just attack with slave labor.
Inalienable rights aren't called that because they can be overridden.
Perhaps we should ignore a small % of X Amendment claims? That would be a small gap right?
The Amendments dont confer rights to the people; they only remind the people of the things they gov has no power to do. See Amendment 0:
"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
https://drexel.edu/ogcr/resources/constitution/amendments/pr...
Because I can at least understand an argument like "all taxation is theft".
When it's "sales tax is okay, but income tax violates innate rights", that's a pretty finicky argument. The difference barely matters.
As that documentary nicely lays out, there is no constitutional law that anyone can point to on individual income tax. The IRS commissioner admits it.
Recent interview with former IRS agent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXua-6xr_Kw
She asks in the beginning, "At what percentage is it not slavery?"
First, it's the main tax foreigners pay when visiting (hotel taxes being the other). And since foreigners are benefting from local roads, police, and everything else just like citizens do, there's an argument they should contribute local taxes too.
But second, that sales taxes are aren't necessarily regressive, and could be made progressive. You don't pay sales tax on necessities like rent and supermarket food, so that's already a progressive aspect. And sales tax could be made more progressive if it were higher based on product categories (e.g. expensive cell phones, etc.). Many countries have a huge number of sales tax brackets by product category for this reason -- but they're built into the price, so stores know but consumers don't see the difference.
I do personally think it would be simpler though to just set sales tax to zero, fund local taxes with income+property taxes mainly, and jack up hotel taxes (in a highly progressive way) in destinations with so many tourists that they actually make a big difference to local infrastructure costs.
The continued existence of the penny is absolutely ludicrous. Here we have something that has almost zero economic value to everyone involved. It costs more to mint them than they're worth. It likely costs more to even transport or count them than they're worth. It is almost entirely just economic drag on every transaction that involves them. Yet somehow, we can't find the political will to _just_ _stop_ _making_ them. Momentum truly is the most powerful force in politics.
It's sad, because it doesn't have to be this way. I am in favor of socialized health care. I could even be convinced that some amount of UBI may be a good idea. I am in favor of a strong social safety net. But the fact that this country can't even figure out how to stop making a coin that is worthless tells me that it is probably asking a little too much to expect that the federal government can competently manage anything as complex as healthcare or the livelihoods of millions.
One might wonder whether the problem isn't bureaucracy per se, but rather that there are actually many larger dead-weight losses in the government that are being focused on, such that this one is comparatively trivial and doesn't even register on the priorities list.
For everything else you can say about it, the current administration has been heavily focused on "ways the government can be improved by doing less" (i.e. "red-tape reduction.") And yet, it has still not even mentioned considering doing this. I'm guessing the elimination of pennies is just not the low-hanging fruit it seems to be — there are fruit even lower.
Isn't this largely irrelevant since the producer of pennies makes up for this when they print any other form of currency?
> But the fact that this country can't even figure out how to stop making a coin that is worthless tells me that it is probably asking a little too much to expect that the federal government can competently manage anything as complex as healthcare or the livelihoods of millions.
The worth of a unit of currency should not be measured by how much it costs to produce. If we're using that metric a $1 note has just as much worth as a $5 note, and a $20 note is equivalent to a $50 note. A single $50 pays for plenty of pennies in terms of cost.
I honestly don't know where I stand on keeping/removing the penny, but I do know from personal experience that counting and saving pennies was useful for me when I was very poor. I know that rounding down saves the consumer money, but putting the savings in a jar and treating yourself to something when you cash in your jar is something of value that is lost.
I don't count pennies these days, but I used to, and I definitely picked up pennies off the street. Should we design economic/currency policy to 'help' the poor instead of actually helping the poor? Probably not, but I wince when I hear people say that pennies are worthless.
That's irrelevant since pennies are multiple use. In fact they probably get used in hundred thousands of transactions in their typical lifetime.
* Most prices are given in 5 cent multiples. * The pennies I get are usually from change in supermarkets or from produfts with .99 prices Vending machine and parking machines don't accept pennies
I do find the Dollar Coin annoying, which we use instead of the Dollar Bill. It's very easy to get lots of dollar coins as change.
I wish we used the $1 and $2 bill though. It would be very useful for the average transaction amount we have here. Our neighbouring countries all have bills near that amount.
(Minimum wage $1.78/h)
The smallest coin is 0.05CHF. It's still worth enough that you might use a handful of them to make change for a small amount like, say, 0.40CHF.
Grocery prices either have a resolution of 0.05CHF (all major retailers) or if not, your bill will be rounded to a resolution 0.05CHF to the customers advantage (e.g. at Lidl).
I have never ever once missed the equivalent of the 1- or 2-cent EUR coin. They were a pain to have in your wallet, and an insult to any tip jar or piggy bank.
I have no rational idea why the concept hasn't caught on more widely.
I hear this a lot, and I think its a weak argument. The original coinage act (1792?) authorized a $5 coin. Replace the Lincoln penny with the Lincoln $5 coin; you continue to have a Lincoln coin, you trade a useless coin for one that will be very useful for the next 100 years, and now all US currency with Lincoln on it is $5. Win-win-win.
I personally don't care one way or another but those who miss the penny the most, won't likely get a voice.
Now that would be a legacy any POTUS could be proud about.
The government should put less money into designing and minting/printing new money and instead focus its resources on making the “unbanked” banked. Doing so through the post office has been talked about for years.
[1] for some fraction of "everybody"
At exactly one cent each, they were much cheaper than their proper catalogue equivalents, we were left all adrift when our cheap source of coppers ran out.
So guys begin stocking up now while you've still the chance.
I also travel overseas a bit, and it's always strange to visit a country that's pretty cash heavy Japan cough cough. But even then we mostly get by with our credit cards.
The only stores that use them are big chains that operate on enormous economies of scale, e.g. Hiper Lider.
When backpacking there (on very little $) a homeless person asked me for some change. I dug into my pocket and offered him some change and he just lauuuughed at me.
Interestingly, $1 USD = ~800 Chilean pesos in 2020, but was over 2000 Chilean pesos in 2006.
As we've moved to zinc with a thinner and thinner copper jacket the US penny has drifted in that direction, but the relief is much more pronounced and makes it look more 'real'. Probably more expensive to make though.
That Joe is a BIG Asshole move.
Remember <$1 in change would buy ... almost nothing. Some gum? 20 minutes on a parking meter?
>Remember <$1 in change would buy
A meal for 80% of the world population, additionally you trow perfect medal away...you know that stuff that could be recycled, really shame on You.
I would say get rid of all change but if absolutely necessary keep the quarter. With cards being so prevelant who cares, they will stil have the exact amount. To be fair I think checks should basically be banned or not accepted anywhere. They are outdated forms of payment. We don't need to keep them on life support when they are not economically viable.
That kind of stinks... individual fruits and other produce currently cost less than $0.50. I think $0.10 should be the minimum because then you can just drop the hundredths digit and prices will be, i.e. "$3.2", "$99.9", etc.
Seriously, I haven’t used cash in so many years that I literally can’t remember the last time I touched paper money or coins. Maybe 15 years ago? As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already transitioned to a 100% digital economy and there is no longer a need for analog money.
I use cash all the time. I like to round out my errands with a beer at a brewery before biking home. Hand the server a $5 bill when I get the beer, so fast also a strong tip on the cheapest beers. I'm also forced to use cash when I purchase my medical marijuana. I drink Americanos when I purchase a coffee, $2 or $2.25 is pretty reasonable but I sometimes can get the exact change for a place charging $2.15.
I think digital and physical money has it's uses and I will use cash in my wallet first because any phone or credit card solution is slower.
Surprised you've had that experience, I've always found waiting for the cashier to make change to be a long and arduous process, while I can simply tap my watch on the reader or insert my card and move along with my day. Not to mention that I have no interest in carting around a pocket full of coin change.
two upsides:
* we can do counting on our fingers again for shopping
* large numbers of C-list celebreties are no longer millionaires
Why not just re-value it instead?
For example, make its value $1000.
Would maybe be a neat solution to the 1% problem.
> For example, make its value $1000.
The US used to have $1000 bills (and $10,000 bills, but those were only for internal gov't use). I'm pretty sure we're stuck with $100 as the top denomination to make organized crime more difficult.
Also, it's WAY easier to counterfeit a coin than a bill.
(1) I don't know what the word is (linked?) but their currency is interchangeable. You can go to a Singapore bank with $100 BND and get $100 SGD (no fee) and vice versa.
I believe the term is "pegged"[1], although what you describe sounds like it is much more involved.
___
I think that depends. Some countries do integrate security features in coins.
The important question isn't whether it's easier, it's whether it's more cost effective. It's probably easier to counterfeit a USD penny than a USD $20 bill, but it would be less economical to do so.
This propaganda is part of the inflationary process, which is intended to increase economic velocity at or faster than the rate of savings, at the expense of savings.
Soon, a dollar will be thought of the way we think of a quarter, and the quarter will become the new dime. Decent family homes will cost north of $2.5MM, and people will say, “back when I was a kid...”.
I agree by killing the penny we essentially force inflation to happen. Bread priced at $.99 can be sold at $.98 far more easily than bread priced $1 can be sold at $.95. By removing the penny our jumps become more volatile. Something increasing in cost by a penny or two might take a product from 99¢ to $1 or reduce the profit margin a bit now, but when there is no penny the $1 product that needs to cost 2¢ more is going to cost $1.05.
(2) It doesn't matter how we got here, we're here, and it's useless.