EU considers phasing out 1 and 2 cent coins
brusselstimes.com
brusselstimes.com
Half cents coins were minted until 1857. When they were phased out they were worth the equivalent of 58 cents in 2020 dollars.
If we have to have sub-quarter, i wish it was 12.5 cents instead.
The common pattern is 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, ...
Australia got rid of theirs in 1992.
Whenever I go to the US I try as hard as I can to always drop them in the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny-tray lest my pockets tear from the bulk.
Such as when traveling by air or making expensive purchases. There's nothing so satisfying as plunking down a sack of pennies when purchasing stuff and saying "just let me know if it's not enough."
The above is sarcasm. I hate pennies. They are pretty much useless these days. The only joy I get from them is when someone annoys me, I can throw them at the person.
They are so useless, in fact, that it actually costs nearly twice the value of a penny ($0.0183)[0] to mint one.
That said, I'd really like it if larger denomination coins ($1/5/10) were common in the US as they are in the EU. Generally coins with value more than $0.25 aren't used (yes, $0.50 and $1 coins exist, but are rarely used/distributed).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)
Edit: Added forgotten link.
Someone is making a lot of money from the status quo, and they will fight very hard to keep it.
I grew up in Illinois ("Land of Lincoln") and it was one of the only states where you could pay toll with the penny, because Lincoln was such a powerful symbol. I guess that got killed off in 2017, however. (You can't use any coins now, it seems.)
(While researching this comment, I found it hilarious that IDOT had a COVID-19-related unpaid toll relief program, but they accidentally sent people $0.01 invoices because of how they "leveraged an existing system" to generate invoices. Another use for your penny!)
Put Lincoln on the quarter or even the back side of a dollar coin. Maybe this time make it out of titanium or something similarly like other US coins.
Though, one president might decide to out their own image on the coins.
It'll be weird in Canada when we replace the queen on our coinage...
Anecdotally (as in I might be wrong :) I remember hearing at the time the 5c piece was phased out it was worth less than when the 1/2c pieces were originally released. NB I have put zero effort into thinking if that makes sense or is true. (edit - confirmed)
[ Edit ] - We also made every other coin smaller. It's always startling to get an Australian 50c coin - even though it's the same size as ours used to be. Our's is now smaller than the AU 20c.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_New_Zealand_dolla...
In Canada as mentioned already in the comments we phased out the penny no more made after February 4, 2013.
But many business still today (Oct 2020) have items with prices ending in penny amounts. If you pay with cash it's rounded up or down but if you pay with debit, credit, or cheque the penny amount is used. Stupid because there's no incentive (ha pun!) for businesses to change (double pun!).
EDIT: And petrol stations would display the prices in sixteenths, but charge a sixteenth more.
While they're at it they could bring the notes into the 20th century by making them distinguishable from a distance and less easily damaged. If you need to distinguish the old notes from the new ones to prevent anyone getting scammed, might as well kill two or three birds with the one stone.
Also the japanese yen is an entire currency were each unit is a cent.
The problem is that eventually if your solution is to just throw out low value currency your just gonna have to throw out more because inflation.
The proper tool is to rebase your currency once you have accumulated enough inflation through numerous decades.
After long enough the old stuff is pretty much out of general circulation, but banks could still exchange for instance to the newer currency.
So stealing same thing today could be felony, but would have only been a misdemeanor when the law was written. So re-basing also helps ensures certain statues and laws remain just. You could argue that law makers should go through old laws or account for inflation to start with, but sadly that is not the reality. Tons of laws get written with fixed monetary units.
https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/mexico...
Now we still have here and there monetary values given in francs (next to euros). I guess this must be a legal thing but come on, it is time to really move ahead and not keep backward compatibility forever here as well.
An interesting denomination was in Poland where the money was denominated by 1:10000
And yes with 1 product it is still relatively easy (provided you put effort) but the more you buy in the grocery store the less oversight you get.
Instead, the product should be good on its own merit; so for me its an orange flag (or rather: proper, informative rounding is a green flag).
We see it elsewhere too. 199 instead of 200. 999 instead of 1000. Etc.
Likewise, that it is not possible to get 5 euro notes, only 10s at least from most ATMs also caused complaints.
http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/2011/02/silverbugs-why-don...
Written at the peak of the last silver blow off top in 2011.
There has to be a name for this sort of "reverse slippery slope" argument, but it isn't coming to me.
Why not do what we can today?
It literally costs MORE THAN A PENNY to make a penny. We would save over $70 million a year just by stopping making pennies.
"Fuck it, let someone else fix it." - I'm sick of this.
"Fuck it, let someone else fix it." seems to be exactly what you're advocating.
You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good - that just keeps anything from happening.
100% solutions do not exist in the real world.
This is sorta like saying "Why send a man to the moon, when we can't send even send an astronaut to the surface Venus?"
> You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good - that just keeps anything from happening.
Cool story, but they as well schedule the session to get rid of the nickel now.
> 100% solutions do not exist in the real world.
A little hyperbolic here. This is of course false.
It is much easier to sell getting rid of the nickel after successfully getting rid of the penny.
Why? Do you think this would be the solution if humans lived for 200 years on average?
Why haven't we solved roadworks, you fix the roads but then in 2 years it needs to be done all over again.
Plenty, since there are full articles being written about it.
And my friend, your second paragraph is irrelevant. This topic is about the removing coins from circulation, and my point is that they aren't going far enough if the goal is what they say it is.
The alternative here is to not have inflation and I don't see that happening (especially just to avoid phasing out denominations).
Clearly not true, nor am I advocating that.
It's a waste of time because there are stronger, more lasting measures that can be taken to solve this problem. This whole question reduces to the cost of minting coins.
The real problem with the Euro coins is how badly they're designed. It's basically impossible to quickly tell the difference between 2 and 5, and 20 and 50. Very similar size, exact same color. If we're ditching 1 and 2, we should also make the 20 cent piece bronze or something.
If it's really, really a problem, there are much stronger measures that can be taken, whether that be digital solutions or all paper.
I don't see how your paragraph about differentiation is relevant here.
And then there are other gaffes such as the 2 Euro being physically almost identical to the Turkish 1 Lira.
I don't know why the opportunity wasn't taken to use distinctive shapes and colours.
A while ago I read an article that proposed replacing change with a chance to get a dollar.
So instead of 13 cents due to you:
1. you generate a random number from 1 to 100 2. if the number is <= 13, you get a dollar; otherwise you get nothing
Over the long run you would have about the same amount of money. And you would have the added benefit of not having to deal with change.
Coming up with a (verifiable) fair way to do (1) that is accessible to everyone is problematic though...
I ended up just not taking then back as change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halfpenny_(British_decimal_coi...
It's not like anyone is trying to hide evidence of inflation. Inflation is a measurable economic phenomenon, not some kind of secret. Furthermore, I think most economists would tell you that some level of inflation is good, because it encourages economic activity.
There is just a serious answer to this: freedom to trade in whatever currency you'd prefer. Legal tender (when you're forced to use a given currency in a country) sucks.
Oh wait, you wished that you could trade in whatever currency you'd prefer without granting that same privilege to your trading partner?
If one of entities involved in the exchange doesn't want to trade, there is no trade. Simple as that. There is no such thing as privilege here.
I think you don't understand the concepts of legal tender and misunderstood what I said.
No, you cannot decide to trade in whatever currency you'd prefer. This is illegal in most parts of the world. Even if you base the exchange in another currency, you'll need to have a local legal tender to do it. There are exceptions, such as Panama... but in most of the world, you'll be required to exchange to the local currency.
In most cases where you feel like you are forced to transact in the local currency, you are being forced by your trading partner not by their government.
I somewhat regularly use USD currency in countries when that’s not the local legal tender. This is very common in the Caribbean and Central America. It’s commonly accepted (though less frequently done) in Europe. In some cases, shopkeepers have even arranged to offer me currency conversion services (often on their credit card machine) to facilitate their customers' preference to use a different currency.
In some rare cases, even a government demands to transact in a currency that is not the general legal tender. (The Dominican Republic charges tourists an exit fee that is denominated and paid specifically in USD.)
> For private transactions, I can often use a different currency provided my trading partner agrees. > In most cases where you feel like you are forced to transact in the local currency, you are being forced by your trading partner not by their government.
No. At least in the United States, Canada, UK, Brazil, most if not all countries in Europe (and probably all countries where Euro is the currency), and Australia (that I know of), any transaction inside their own territories to be deemed legal has to be made with the national currency.
> I somewhat regularly use USD currency in countries when that’s not the local legal tender. This is very common in the Caribbean and Central America. It’s commonly accepted (though less frequently done) in Europe. In some cases, shopkeepers have even arranged to offer me currency conversion services (often on their credit card machine) to facilitate their customers' preference to use a different currency.
Paying with USD in countries with other currencies on you credit card? No wonder you think there are not restrictions on what currency you can use. You're basically letting yourself be scammed.
https://thepointsguy.com/2015/06/dynamic-currency-conversion...
The fact that it appears that the merchant is accepting your money in USD (through DCC) doesn't mean they really are. It means that the conversion is done at their end. You might say they accept you paying in cash, then sure... In this case, they do. They might do so both legal or illegally. Now you're talking about tourism or things like small restaurants... things are more relaxed. Now try to do the same for large transactions between companies and, as I said, in most places – but not all – it'll be both illegal & enforced (and the banking system complies with these laws, so this is the first barrier to do so... unless you're talking about big companies that can have a holding overseas and so on).