Whitehouse.gov petition to eliminate the penny | Hacker News Reader

Whitehouse.gov petition to eliminate the penny

wwws.whitehouse.gov

6 pointsmartingordon9 comments

Please no political activism on HN. There is not much interesting on the linked site so I assume this was submitted as call for participation.

Why stop at the penny? Isn't it about time we rid ourselves of all these filthy, wretched little buttons? Let's leave the 19th century behind us and begin gradually phasing out the whole anachronistic lot: pennies, nickels, quarters and (in Canada) loonies and toonies.

You have to have a lowest common denomination coin. Otherwise when I give $1 to the 99c store, what will they give me in change?

Or is the idea that every single business in the entire USA will change their pricing structures to multiples of 5? Good luck with that!

Lots and lots of countries don't have that, and it's no problem. The smallest coin we have in Denmark is the 0.5 Kroner one, worth roughly 10 cents. If you have to pay 1.24 Kroner, you pay 1 and if you have to pay 0.75 Kroner, you pay 1. You win some and you loose some - evens out in the long run.

> You win some and you lose some - evens out in the long run.

I believe you that it works, but I'm totally shocked at this... surely everyone just starts rounding up to .75? It will add up! You've literally blown my mind with this; how do people carry on like this? It's like you've just told me up is down and down is up, I just do not comprehend at all how people can use this system?

Seriously, I know that sounds sarcastic but it's just thrown my brain.

The United States already handles this just fine. So easily that folks don't really even notice, in fact.

Ever notice how gas stations usually give prices out to 1/1000 of a dollar (e.g, $3.459/gal) even though our smallest currency denomination is for only 1/100 of a dollar?

It happens with sales tax, too. In Chicago, the tax on a $29.99 video game is $2.924025. We'd just round down to $2.92, and the government lets that odd 0.4025¢ slide. It doesn't really add up, because there's also cases where the tax owed is something like $2.925975 and gets rounded up to $2.93.

Don't know about Denmark, but I believe in some countries with a similar situation by law they have to round to the nearest multiple of the smallest denomination coin, so it evens out.

Of course, if you pay via credit card or bank card other electronic means, as more and more people do even for small amounts, you pay the exact price.

It works in Finland, the lowest coin value is 5 cents. If you pay by cash the price is rounded up or down. They've also got rid of cheques.

There's plenty of precedent for it in other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Stat...

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