Also, why is gas always ab extra 9/10 of a penny? Reminds me of paying 3123 RON for a Big Mac in Romania -- that last digit is just noise at the consumer level.
A lobbying group funded by the producer of the blanks used to make pennies opposes penny abolition [1]. There is no similarly-motivated group promoting it. (Citizens to Retire the Penny exists, but their last news item is from 2019 [2].)
When the U.S. eliminated the half cent it was worth 14 cents [3], so there is a good case of nixing the nickel alongside the penny, whenever we get around to it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents
[2] http://www.retirethepenny.org
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Sta...
> > A lobbying group...
It is astonishing how many problems in this country start with those three words.
Others have replied to the why, but it is technically 9 Mills. The thousandths unit was established in the Coinage Act of 1792 as the smallest unit of the dollar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#United_States
This is some useless trivia that I know for some reason :)
(You are correct that amounts below 100 ROL were totally meaningless.)
Maybe the people who make the note readers can lobby to abolish coins.
I gather from research online it comes back to the practice of generally renting furnished apartments, a preference for wood building construction, a practice of having non-water-proofed wet areas, historical custom (perhaps coinciding with apartments being constructed post-war when these appliances were large and highly expensive?), and the chicken-and-egg problem of there not being a market for smaller appliances and therefore there not being great supply of smaller appliances.
I just think it's because it's weird to have a washing machine in your kitchen for Americans, and nobody has managed to find the right marketing tone to make this feel normal. Also, for landlords to tolerate this, put hook-ups in, or simply offer it as a feature, you'd have to start with upper-middle class people wanting one and have it trickle down. But Americans get bigger places as a sign of wealth, so they really just want normal sized machines in-unit.
Coming from the UK, where the washing machine is always in the kitchen and having a laundry room is seen as extravagant, I think this is great because washing machines are noisy and shaky and sometime leaky. Having a separate wet room with drainage for this is a good idea. It means you can wash/dry at any time too (e.g. even if you are eating in the kitchen/diner area and want some peace!)
Same reason things are $.99, $19.95, $299.99 instead of $1.00, $20.00, $300.00.
In the US, there's many places that have 2 or 3 gas stations in near vicinity and price competition is fierce. So the $0.01 matters, people will drive to the gas station down the block to save that penny per gallon.
… and some people will drive down the block for those 2 cents, even though they may not realize that it’s only 2 cents. It’s just “cheaper” to them.