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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

As a Canadian it baffles me that other countries are still messing with pennies. We stopped minting ours in 2012 and haven't looked back. I'm a proponent of cash, but the penny is obsolete. So too is any change smaller than a quarter, IMO.

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Unfortunately, people like the penny in the US because it has Abe Lincoln on it. He was a Republican, and freed the slaves, so both political parties like him. That makes removing his coin somewhat difficult.

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!)

I mean he’s on the $5 bill as well. Isn’t that enough Lincoln for one countries currency?

This is why it's a good idea to put boring things like birds or bridges on currency.

Also: what will happen to the idiomatic expression "my two cents"?

It'll stick around. People still "drop a dime" on others, but payphones are largely a thing of the past and certainly aren't 10c anymore.

You still hear the phrase “spend a penny” even in countries that haven’t had pennies in decades.

Then put him on the dime. Eisenhower was a good guy and he'd probably say the same thing.

FDR is on the dime and The March of Dimes likely would have an issue with him being replaced.

Silly me

In the spirit of this idea:

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.

I mean, I don't get why there is one-person-per-coin anyway. They already have one-off runs for special commemorations so it's not like there's fear of confusion (or fear of counterfeit). Keep one side standard and put all kinds of people on them.

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...

Nothing is wrong with a 1 cent coin. It's just inflation has eroded it's value. The US penny for instance had the same purchasing power as a quarter today in 1913.

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.

That sounds right but how do you do this? In France there used to be the old Franc that was replaced by the new Franc at a rate of 1000:1 I think

Also an interesting effect people don't consider about inflation is laws. For instance grand theft in the US is generally a 1000 dollars, but those laws don't account for inflation. Most these grand theft laws also were written in the 20's.

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.

I found that Mexico has interesting law that considers inflation. The unit is called UMA.

https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/mexico...

The rate was 1:100. It was done in 1958 but many prople were counting in the old currency until at latest the franc changed to euro.

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

That's pretty much what you do. You print and mint new versions that worth 1:X of the old currency is. Also you quit printing and minting the old currency.

After long enough the old stuff is pretty much out of general circulation, but banks could still exchange for instance to the newer currency.

As an Australian, it also baffles me. We withdrew 1 and 2 cent coins from circulation in 1992, and prices are simply rounded to the nearest 5c when paying with cash. Maximum 3c difference per transaction, which averages out in the long run.

Yeah, NZ phased ours out late 80s/1990. 2004 we phased out the 5c piece as well.

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...

I'd say 99% of my transactions are apple pay now, with 1% being rare place that doesn't take paywave. I still have couple buck of cash for those super rare cash purchases on side of the road (damn they need alipay or something like that - NZ is kinda stuck with 'good enough' banking and failing to see innovation from Revolut and the like in Europe - that said surprised how much cash still used in Europe).

>and prices are simply rounded to the nearest 5c when paying with cash

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!).

And with debit/credit transactions, it's still calculated to the penny, so there's no issues with rounding there.

Depends. Gas pumps actually calculate and bill in mills (1/10th cents).

Half cents coins were minted until 1857. When they were phased out they were worth the equivalent of 58 cents in 2020 dollars.

If Americans included sales taxes in prices, like virtually every where else, it wouldn't be a big deal, people would choose prices that were round numbers .... but instead every sales act (except petrol) requires math that most people can't do in their heads

As an Australian who immigrated to Canada, it baffles me it took you guys so long!

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.

As an American, I think pennies should only be used when appropriate.

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.

Of course it's easy to see why Pennies are still made in the US (at a loss, as you said), and it's the same reason so many things are the way they are (Healthcare, education, roads, etc.)

Someone is making a lot of money from the status quo, and they will fight very hard to keep it.

i'd much rather we (speaking as an american, but applicable more broadly) just rebased down 1 order of magnitude, so whatever a dollar buys today, you could instead buy with a dime. we could even let change appreciate immediately, which would be a nice little gift for the folks who tend to hold change (not rich people), but issue different paper money while exchanging the old bills out of circulation. concommitantly, we should rethink inflation as economy driver and impetus of the time value of money, which causes this devaluation in the first place.

> but issue different paper money while exchanging the old bills out of circulation

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.

I say eliminate pennies, nickels, and quarters. That way you can just drop the 100ths place all together and prices will be like: 1.5, 2.3, 9.9 instead of 1.25, 3.75, etc.

Americans do love to divide into powers of two (½, ¼, and ⅛) rather then tenths. If anything they would be more likely to issue an eighth dollar as they phase out the penny, the nickle and the dime. And you would see prizes such as 4 dollar and ⅜ cents (and they would probably write it as $4–¢⅜).

EDIT: And petrol stations would display the prices in sixteenths, but charge a sixteenth more.

The 1/8 dollar was a feature of the old Spanish dollar (hence the term "pieces of eight", the eight pieces being known as "bits" -- "two bits" is then a quarter), which is where the Americans got it in the first place. In fact, up to 2001 American stock exchanges expressed prices in 1/8 and 1/16 dollar increments (apparently 1/16 was only introduced at the NYSE in 1997).

Amazing, I had no idea. This was only meant as a stab at Americans and their love for their love for inches. Here is a wikipedia article about bits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_%28money%29

As a canadian, if they could get rid of the nickle and dime too, that'd be great.

If we have to have sub-quarter, i wish it was 12.5 cents instead.

Best would be to replace 25 cents with 20 cents.

Maybe we could redefine the quarter to be worth 20 cents? You could take 4 quarters to the bank, and get back 5 with "20" stamped on them. Machines that accept quarters just need to tweak the quantity. It'd be nice to have a smaller 50-cent coin also.

Why would it be best, considering the enormous cost of replacing 25 cent coins with 20 cent coins? What advantage does 20 cent coins have over 25 cent coins?

Because it lets you round prices to 10 cents (drop a digit), rather than 5.

Technically you'd have to round to 20 cents, since you can't get 10, 30, 50 etc. cents from 20s.

We already have 10 cent coins.

The common pattern is 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, ...

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