29 ms·

Is It Time to Kill the Penny?

257 points by jpkoning 6y ago

SeanFerree 6y ago
I hope not! I love rolling pennies and taking them to the bank :)
drapery 6y ago
One time I was in Krogers and saw a man buying 6 onions with nickels, dimes, pennies. He took a long time but he bought his onions. I personally don't care one way or another but those who miss the penny the most, won't likely get a voice.
- efa 6y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying getting rid of the penny would hurt poor people?
  - drapery 6y ago
    Yeah pretty much. Most of the poor are unbanked and every penny counts.
ggm 6y ago
why not rebase the currency /100? two upsides: * we can do counting on our fingers again for shopping * large numbers of C-list celebreties are no longer millionaires
Blueskytech 6y ago
We shouldn't kill the penny because it is a reminder that our currency has been inflated and is no longer worth a small fraction of what it once was. Never forget that pre-1965 coinage besides the penny was made of 90 percent silver. A face value of 1.40 in pre-1965 dimes and quarters is worth 20.00 today, the fact that a penny, not even made of copper, is too expensive to make should be concerning.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  (1) Inflation doesn't matter if you're not hoarding cash. By and large, real estate tracks inflation across the United States. Stock indices exceed inflation. Inflation doesn't matter to you if you aren't holding cash. (2) It doesn't matter how we got here, we're here, and it's useless.
  - Blueskytech 6y ago
    You are of course correct until Exters pyramid collapses which becomes more and more a distinct possibility as the currency is debased.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Nit: the nickle wasn't made of silver, either.
  - Blueskytech 6y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out you are correct and I should have been more precise in my language.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Eh, no worries. As I said, it's a nit, not anything that actually matters.
jchook 6y ago
In Chile they have 1 peso pieces so small and light you can blow them from your hand like fairy dust. 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.
deleted 6y ago
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crobertsbmw 6y ago
Yes. Let’s kill the nickel too!
el-salvador 6y ago
My country uses the US Dollar as currency but since tax is added to prices we dont use pennies as much as in the US. * 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)
tehjoker 6y ago
It's really funny to talk about the government making or losing money when producing money ("seigniorage"). It really shows how money is just pretend numbers and the foundries can create or destroy it at will depending on the political winds (inflation being good for debtors and deflation being good for creditors). There's a reason the monied interests are against inflation of more than 2%, and it's because it would cause the debts logged as assets in their books to be worth less. Honestly, they would prefer deflation, but they were forced to accept some inflation as the cost of a growing economy.
logicalmonster 6y ago
My favored strategy would be be to put Harriet Tubman on the penny as the best path forward. This puts a wanted social change into the culture (Putting a black person on US currency) without removing any president from existing bills (Lincoln still stays on the $5) and erasing history. Additionally, the first black person on US currency should appear on a coin rather than paper money as they’re harder to deface. Given the media situation in this country, I’m 100% sure the media will find or invent some disfigured paper bills with racist slurs to generate controversy and inflame racial tensions even further.
- analog31 6y ago
  I've never understood the "erasing history" thing. Isn't the history the same? If I deface a penny, am I losing a certain quantity of history?
esturk 6y ago
One thing this Pandemic brought about is the importance of contactless payment. Exchanging cash is unhygenic. Signing credit card receipts is unhygienic. Doing away with pennies should just be a starter.
- fiblye 6y ago
  Replacing all money with copper-coated currency like pennies would probably be more hygienic, considering copper is one of the most effective anti-microbial things out there.
inoffensivename 6y ago
It was time to kill the penny years ago. Australia got rid of one and two cent coins in 1992 and nobody missed them.
jpkoning 6y ago
Go for it, America. We got rid of the penny up here in Canada in 2012. Doing so removed a degree of hassle from everyone's commercial lives.
fit2rule 6y ago
Why kill it? Why not just re-value it instead? For example, make its value $1000. Would maybe be a neat solution to the 1% problem.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > Why not just re-value it instead? > 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.
  - latch 6y ago
    Singapore & Brunei (1) had a $10000 bill until 2014 (worth ~7400 USD), and still have a $1000 bill (as does Switzerland with its better exchange rate) (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.
    - nordsieck 6y ago
      > 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. ___ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate_system
  - def8cefe 6y ago
    >Also, it's WAY easier to counterfeit a coin than a bill. 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.
  - paulie_a 6y ago
zeepzeep 6y ago
Yes, we don't need such small amounts of money. Just always round up, when paying and when giving the rest back. > 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.
- bruce511 6y ago
  Actually, the pricing of individual items doesn't change. (Not least because of GST the price you pay at the till is not the sticker price.) 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.
  - tedd-the-tiger 6y ago
    > GST. Found the Australian!
    - mkl 6y ago
      GST exists in a bunch of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST The coins probably narrow it down though.
      - bruce511 6y ago
        In the interest of full disclosure I was talking about USA GST (Sales Tax) not the tax where I live. In the US the price on the shelf seems to be a "rough indication" of how much you may pay when you get to the till... That I noticed this suggests I live in a VAT country not a GST country :)
    - dafoex 6y ago
      At the risk of making a flippant comment, they /are/ called Bruce.
UI_at_80x24 6y ago
Yes. 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-you-need-to-know-1.1174547 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-all...
- grawprog 6y ago
  >Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky didn't fall. 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.
ThePadawan 6y ago
I moved from a country that has pennies (Germany, so EUR cents) to one that doesn't (Switzerland, CHF) age 18. 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.
- nix23 6y ago
  But the foifraepller is still more expensive to manufacture the it's own worth.
- undersuit 6y ago
  I guess the question is... do you feel good about wasting one, two, three, and four?
ShaneMcGowan 6y ago
No, coin collectors have enough problems as it is
DrBazza 6y ago
I remember reading years ago that the reluctance to get rid of a penny is usual the unease in the central bank of a particular country to accept that the currency has inflated. I imagine retailers would still price things at £9.95 instead to perpetuate the 'psychological trick' that "it's not really £10!".
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  They certainly have continued the $xxx9.99 tradition here in Canada.
jlengrand 6y ago
I come from France, where we use pennies and live in the Netherlands where we don't. 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 .
- wartijn_ 6y ago
  You should be able to pay with 1 and 2 cent coins in The Netherlands. You just won't get them as change and the amount charged will be rounded to the nearest 5 cents in most, but not all, shops. But I wouldn't be surprised if many cashiers don't know they should accept those coins.
  - jlengrand 6y ago
    Interesting. I've tried in quite a few places and never got them accepted.
    - wartijn_ 6y ago
      Here is the government website that says so and its translation (with a really long url, but the translation is better than that of Google Translate). 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-antwoord/mogen-winkeliers-betalingen-afronden-op-0-eurocent-of-5-eurocent https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-en-... https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkeliers%20betalingen%20afronden%20op%200%20eurocent%20of%205%20eurocent%3F%0A%0AWanneer%20u%20contant%20betaalt%2C%20mogen%20winkeliers%20in%20Nederland%20het%20totaalbedrag%20afronden%20op%200%20eurocent%20of%205%20eurocent.%20Zij%20moeten%20wel%20duidelijk%20aangeven%20met%20raamstickers%20of%20kassastickers%20dat%20ze%20de%20afrondingsregel%20toepassen.%0AAlleen%20afronden%20bij%20contante%20betalingen%0A%0AAfronden%20mag%20alleen%20wanneer%20u%20met%20contant%20geld%20betaalt.%20Met%20betaalmiddelen%20zoals%20een%20pinpas%20of%20een%20creditcard%20betaalt%20u%20het%20exacte%20bedrag.%0ARekenvoorbeeld%20afronden%20betalingen%0A%0AHet%20eindbedrag%20op%20de%20kassabon%20wordt%20bij%20contant%20betalen%20afgerond%20op%200%20cent%20of%205%20cent.%20Zo%20wordt%20%E2%82%AC%2023%2C37%20afgerond%20op%20%E2%82%AC%2023%2C35.%20En%20%E2%82%AC%208%2C89%20wordt%20%E2%82%AC%208%2C90.%0A1%20en%202%20eurocent%20blijven%20wettig%20betaalmiddel%0A%0ADe%20munten%20van%201%20en%202%20eurocent%20blijven%20een%20wettig%20betaalmiddel.%20U%20kunt%20met%20deze%20munten%20afrekenen.%20Heeft%20een%20winkelier%20vooraf%20duidelijk%20gemaakt%20dat%20hij%20afrondt%3F%20Dan%20hoeft%20hij%20geen%20munten%20van%201%20en%202%20eurocent%20wisselgeld%20te%20geven https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkeliers....
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Go further. I haven't used coins in 10 years. Get coins - put them all in the 'penny tray'. Or give them to the cashier. Or hand them to somebody nearby. All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  Trashing money is illegal and sounds very unethical to me.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Nope. Currency (paper money) is protected; I don't think coins are at all. Witness all the jewelry made from coins.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    It’s a lot more nuanced than “illegal” and definitely depends on your region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality
  - jcims 6y ago
    Why unethical? You’re giving everyone a small gift of deflation.
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      It's more ethical and efficient to burn paper money, if that's your goal.
- nix23 6y ago
  >All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store That Joe is a BIG Asshole move.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    ? How can this affect you at all? Is this some projection of insecurity? Remember <$1 in change would buy ... almost nothing. Some gum? 20 minutes on a parking meter?
FartyMcFarter 6y ago
I guess it's easier to kill the penny than to divide all prices by a factor of 2.
pottspotts 6y ago
About 10 years ago my friends and I made a Web site, removethepenny.com (no longer active) and starting calling around to see who would support us. I recall speaking to someone who was very angry that we cared so little for the metal industry. I think this has been known for a long time but special interests have kept it on life support for obvious reasons.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  I'm not sure the reasons are so obvious. Surely very little metal is turned into pennies compared to the quantities consumed by industrial processes.
  - jdhawk 6y ago
    last year they made 8.4BN pennies, which would be about 21 million KG of Zinc, worth about ~$40 million?
    - lostapathy 6y ago
      That's a lot of money, but not "change public policy" levels of cash, either. 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.
      - jdhawk 6y ago
        I'd imagine you also have to take into account all coin to cash machines that issue gift cards for change, and take decent percentages. They probably make several orders of magnitude more than the mineral companies.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - missedthecue 6y ago
      If their profit margin is around 8% or so, which I assume would be reasonable for mining & industrial firms, that's a really small amount and not worth the lobbying cost
einpoklum 6y ago
I really like it that they offer you, instead of a site with a lot of junk and JS, a plain text version! That's much nicer news than the story itself :-) ... 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.
- mc32 6y ago
  Yeah but what will the gas pumps do? Their prices are “$3.29.9” per gallon, do they Mae it “$3.29.5“ now? Personally yeah, I don’t think we need pence.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    They're already denominated in a unit that doesn't exist. Why would they change?
    - gerikson 6y ago
      The US dollar was designed to be subdivided into cents (hundreds) and mills (thousands). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage
      - cwhiz 6y ago
        Practical reality in 2020 is different than whatever the intended design was. There is no possible way to pay with a fraction of a penny.
        mark-r 6y ago
        "Practical reality" hasn't changed. There never was a way to pay anything with a fraction of a penny, even when cards made it theoretically possible. The final price just gets adjusted to a whole penny amount.
jhoechtl 6y ago
Wow that text only version is great, can I have that of every website please? (Without an ad-blocker)
Symbiote 6y ago
There's a list of countries which have removed their smallest denomination coins on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  For one political party in the US, the fact that other countries have done it is considered proof that it is an anti-American idea.
uneekone 6y ago
Yes you are right agreed with you
spartas 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI
cgrealy 6y ago
Do it. In NZ, we got rid of everything below $0.10 and pretty much no one cares. That said, a large portion of the country is cashless anyway. I almost never have cash on me.
- mkl 6y ago
  And we started a long time ago. 1 and 2 cent coins were demonetised in 1990, $1 and $2 coins replaced notes in 1991, all notes were switched to tough washable polymer in 1999, 5 cent coins were dropped in 2006 (and most other coins were reduced in size at the same time). I also almost never use cash. It's not like we have a low-value currency unit either (e.g. Yen). Prices in NZ dollars are usually less than double the US dollar price in the US (and our prices include sales tax and shipping to NZ).
- pantaloony 6y ago
  Yeah, if the US does this the nickel ($.05) should go too while we’re at it. We’ve put off getting rid of the penny so long that even 5x a penny is worthless. Switch to $.10, $.50, and $1 coins.
parenthesis 6y ago
I'm old enough to remember halfpenny coins here in the UK. I've got a few someplace that I kept. 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.
- vmilner 6y ago
  I remember Polo mints going from 4.5p to 5p in ~1975. (I was 7 and such things were important...). It's curious that the minimum possible percentage increase then was 11%, but now, when Polo mints are around 60p, the minimum possible increase is 1.7%. Getting rid of all coins < 5p would return us to the same "granularity". (And possibly be inflationary.)
klyrs 6y ago
As an American living in Canada, I gotta say. Pennies and dollar bills SUCK. We have $1 and $2 coins and they're actually useful. Every time I visit home, I end up with piles of pennies and wads of stinky, tattered, overcirculated garbage bills. 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.
- filoeleven 6y ago
  > I say take it further: nickels should go too, and probably dimes. 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.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Yes, nickles should definitely go. But since money is decimal, dimes make more sense. (10 cents exactly) But because of quarters you still probably need nickels. Or you could just go binary use halves, quarters and eighths.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    > But because of quarters you still probably need nickels. Only in the presence of dimes. That's why I say, cut them too.
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      Good point. Binary money is ideal. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3yjfefUD8 A $2 Bill At Taco Bell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbp-UyLH2ng 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/police-called-after-student-tries-to-buy-lunch-with-2-bill/#7fc74c6cf1a2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/05/04/pol...
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cascom 6y ago
I’d rather we do a reverse split of the dollar - say 10:1 - 10 old dollars = 1 new dollar, essentially take us back to 1950’s pricing, coins become relevant again! + it has the added benefit of undoing all the changes in laws/refs that were not inflation adjusted. Not holding my breath...
- war1025 6y ago
  If you think about it this way, it really does make a decent argument for switching larger denominations to coins. 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.
greggman3 6y ago
Seems to me it mostly doesn't matter if 95-99% of all transactions go digital. So basically it's less work to do nothing about the penny because the issue will solve itself.
ipython 6y ago
Even as far back as the 90s I remember the PX on military bases rounding to the nearest nickel. Surprised more places don’t do the same. Ah apparently it’s on overseas bases: https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11 https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11
Asooka 6y ago
There is a much simpler solution. Obviously people want their "0.01" coin, so we should instead envalue the currency. Cancel the dollar, make dollar2.0 which is exactly 10 times as valuable and done. You eliminate everything below 10cents effectively, the metal industry is happy to supply material for new coins, coin collectors are happy to get new coins, banks are delighted to make a bit of profit skimming a few dollars off people's accounts when converting their currency in their databases, everybody[1] wins! [1] for some fraction of "everybody"
- saalweachter 6y ago
  If you envalue by 100:1 you could probably start making silver dimes, quarters and dollars again.
MH15 6y ago
At some point us in the US will have to figure out how to cope with the issues our Democracy has with making changes and overcoming momentum. It seems our government is uniquely unsuited in this capacity in comparison to other modern democracies as seen with healthcare, income inequality, and the recent pandemic response.
- paxys 6y ago
  It's more about overcoming lobbying than momentum.
- hagy 6y ago
  I think the best approach is for the US to move more concerns to the state level. E.g., it would be great if states would start implementing their own universal healthcare for their residents. 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.
  - harryh 6y ago
    it would be great if states would start implementing their own universal healthcare for their residents 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.
    - Cerium 6y ago
      Full benefits could phase in over time. You could get increasing discounts on public services until you reach full state membership. This would be no different than out of state school fees.
Brendinooo 6y ago
The melt value of a copper penny (1982 or prior) is worth more than the face value. However, it's illegal to melt down legal tender currency. AND, fun fact, it's illegal to leave the US with more than $5 worth of pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with a bag of pennies and melt them there. 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.
- harryh 6y ago
  In case anyone else is curious, apparently a pre-1982 penny could be worth about 1.8 cents when melted down: http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penny-Value.html http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penn...
- yetanta 6y ago
  The thing is melting it costs money too. Also most pennies have other metals mixed in for durability. Usually zinc. So to get the copper value you have to get those other metals out. That also costs money. Most places that recycle metals do not take pennies for melt value. They usually just do not want to mess with it. I would estimate it would have to be closer to 4-5 cents per penny before it would be profitable. But that is just a guess.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
  > it's illegal to leave the US with more than $5 worth of pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with a bag of pennies and melt them there. What law would that violate?
  - bazzargh 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/crimeaday/status/739973139539632128 https://twitter.com/crimeaday/status/739973139539632128 "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 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...)
atlgator 6y ago
I'd rather see us move away from physical money altogether.
donatj 6y ago
Honestly, I've wondered from time to time what effect (if any, clearly) penny's having an actual metallurgical value goes towards stemming inflation and creating not a "gold standard" but rather an accidental "copper and nickel standard"?
tacocataco 6y ago
All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel that plastic cash would make more of a difference. CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U
- gjs278 6y ago
  if you think you are going to get covid from paper cash, you’re a paranoid germ freak. it’s not even worth living in with worldview like that. just touch the paper.
- tmabraham 6y ago
  I was looking if someone had posted this video :)
- andrewxdiamond 6y ago
  “Paper” cash is actually linen. You can wash it with hot water no problem
  - eumenides1 6y ago
    In Canada, cash is all plastic. Not quite the plastic OP was thinking about. Love me my plastic colorful money.
  - jmcqk6 6y ago
    Everyone knows money laundering is against the law.
- kstenerud 6y ago
  "Paper" money is actually a cloth composite, which can be washed.
  - jpindar 6y ago
    It can also be ironed. If you have a bunch of crumpled bills and you wish they took up less space and were easier to handle, iron them.
ryandvm 6y ago
The US penny is perhaps the most illustrative example of why I am wary that the US government can do ANYTHING efficiently. 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.
- derefr 6y ago
  > can't even figure out how to stop making a coin that is worthless 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.
- lolsal 6y ago
  > It costs more to mint them than they're worth. 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.
dafoex 6y ago
I know this is about the US penny, but from a UK perspective I think it'd be much more useful to kill the two pence piece. Those coins are massive and, in my experience, never used except to put in those charity buckets. One pennies, however small their monetary value, at least help you make up odd prices, but twos are always just too much to make up a £2.47 bus fare.
- dafoex 6y ago
  £2.46, even. If only the bus driver would fat finger the ticket machine, maybe 2p coins would have a use.
- jayflux 6y ago
  Most likely both the 1p and 2p would go and prices would be rounded to the nearest 5p (so you wouldn’t need a penny to make up the odd price). But the UK govt already said they’re not doing this.
corpMaverick 6y ago
Yes, please do it. They are just a hassle.
hinkley 6y ago
The Japanese 'penny' is (was?) made of aluminum. It looked less like currency and more like a token from a deluxe version of a board game. It was just too insubstantial. 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.
- patrickmcmanus 6y ago
  a 1 yen coin has a mass of 1 gram - which can be handy for measuring stuff.
ZacharyPitts 6y ago
And the nickel, and the dime... and maybe the quarter
- umvi 6y ago
  So the minimum you can pay for something is $0.50? 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.
gonational 6y ago
The nickel then becomes the new penny. 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...”.
- awillen 6y ago
  So like... San Francisco right now?
- undersuit 6y ago
  This comment is at the very bottom of the comments right now and I'm glad I looked for it. 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.
jscipione 6y ago
There are billions more pennies lying in jars in people's houses than are in regular circulation. Even if we were to stop minting new pennies today we could coax the population to turn their pennies in and we wouldn't run out for centuries to come. There is no shortage of pennies. I don't care what Canada does, you're not going to take my pennies away.
- coding123 6y ago
  A good way - a single day where each turned in penny gives you 3 "cents" in exchange. Of course you would be giving out only dollar or higher bills in such a program.
all_blue_chucks 6y ago
The only coins we need are dimes. Round cash transactions to the nearest $0.1. Make everyone's lives simpler.
irrational 6y ago
But then how would we make souvenir flattened pennies for .26 at tourist traps? 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.
- undersuit 6y ago
  The US Mints could just sell blanks to the tourist traps and they in turn could raise the price to $1. 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.
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    > 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.
gojomo 6y ago
The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5¢, as described by Austan Goolsbee here: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html 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¢.)
- ebg13 6y ago
  > The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5¢ But they say "ONE CENT" on them.
  - gojomo 6y ago
    They also say, 'Liberty', 'In God We Trust', & 'E Pluribus Unum'. Lots of writing on government-issued materials is false, ceremonial, outdated, or overridden by later acts. If it really bothers you, you can file that off your pennies before spending them at 5¢ value. We won't mind.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      I would check 18 U.S. Code §331 (fraudulently defacing currency) before doing that.
      - gojomo 6y ago
        There would be no fraud in scratching 'ONE CENT' off of pennies that were, by law, worth 5¢. 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-2-bills/ https://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-own... – not someone whose actions are limited by obscure dead-letter laws.)
hilbert42 6y ago
Australia dropped the copper 'penny' (one cent) along with its two-cent coin ages ago and nobody complained except for a few electronics people like me who used them as heat sinks for diodes and other electronic components. (Yuh simply drill a hole and solder them onto the wire leads of hot components.) 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.
dhosek 6y ago
When someone posted an article about the coin shortage on Facebook recently, I realized that I haven't used cash for a purchase since sometime before the lockdown started. And even before that, my primary use of cash was the collections basket at church—which the lockdown has ended up transforming into a credit card transaction now. Our formerly cash transactions for our cleaning lady have converted into Zelle payments. Friends who also commented mentioned tipping delivery people although I prefer contactless delivery and always include the tip in the original payment rather than have to come close enough to a delivery person to hand off cash. Cash has long been on a decline and I think the pandemic is accelerating this to the point where it's going to end up being moot.
- vl 6y ago
  I was in Home Depot yesterday, buying $220 of equipment. Credit card system went down on all registers. So I had to pay with cash.
- dhosek 6y ago
  Coin-only laundry machines are probably the biggest drivers of persistent cash usage in most of my acquaintances' lives. I'm guessing that apartment buildings big enough to have in-building laundry rooms but small enough to not be able to justify a cashless payment system may just end up shifting to not charging for laundry.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    I think that gap is growing smaller. 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)
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    Until I made the (in hindsight, fortuitous) move into a house with a washing machine, I and many other millions of people in the US used cash weekly at the laundromat. Even their laundry service only took cash.
shmerl 6y ago
I'd like this dumb trend to price things with #.99 to go away. It's so annoying. May be dropping pennies will help that.
Cactus2018 6y ago
In the Netherlands > In 1980, production of the 1-cent coin ceased and was demonetized three years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder#Coins 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 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.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  The claim that 0.01€ coins produced elsewhere remain legal tender in the rounding countries, does not hold for Finland. No supermarket is going to accept 1- or 2-cent coins for payment even if you had enough to add up to the nearest 5-cent unit.
  - eMSF 6y ago
    That doesn't mean they aren't still legal tender in Finland (which they are). Somewhat relatedly, some places also don't accept all the banknotes – that is, the largest denominations – a rule which clearly has nothing to do with the rounding rules of cents.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      It feels like the discussion of "legal tender" on this thread is based on how things work in the USA. In Finland, one can be compelled to pay all kinds of debts and obligations by bank transfer, and cash is not accepted. Even banks won’t take the 1- and 2-cent coins, and so these coins are de facto so marginalized that calling them "legal tender" misses the point.
OldHand2018 6y ago
> By the 1990s, Kolbe says, he was introducing new legislation to kill the penny with every new session of Congress. But he kept facing resistance — for example, from the speaker of the House at the time, Dennis Hastert, who represented a district in Illinois, the home state of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, is on the penny, and Kolbe says that proved to be a major roadblock. 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.
manicpolymath 6y ago
April 10, 2025 is when the penny should cease, so we can commemorate it on nickel/dime/quarter day 05/10/25. And yes, it should be April 10 and not October 05 because this will be an American holiday dang it.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  May...
Uhhrrr 6y ago
The first time I read a proposal like this I thought it was a terrible idea, but the penny has lost more than half its value since then. I'm much more sympathetic now.
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
Kill every coin except the quarter.
femto113 6y ago
Do not understand why we still mint them--there are enough pennies in existence to last forever, the problem is they are just sitting in jars on shelves. Instead of minting new ones the treasury (through banks) should just start buying them for 2 cents each until enough come back into circulation.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Lobbyists is the one and only answer. The zinc lobby is strong.
crazygringo 6y ago
Can we get rid of nickels and dimes too? 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.)
- Wohlf 6y ago
  >standardize on a single sales tax rate across the country My modest proposal, do what Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon have all done and eliminate it. Sales tax is annoying and regressive.
  - jakeogh 6y ago
    I'll take sales tax over income tax; it's unconstutional in more than one way and an astounding waste of resources. RIP Aaron Russo.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > it's unconstutional in more than one way 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.
      - jakeogh 6y ago
        Lets assume the 16th was ratified (it wasnt, but set that aside). One might ask the IRS Comissioner where the law is, plenty of IRS agents have tried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNeVu8wUak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNeVu8wUak 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.
bane 6y ago
I've actually found that I virtually never use cash anymore, virtually every place has a PoS now that accepts some kind of card of digital payment system. Heck, my favorite BBQ place which is run on weekends out of a vacant gravel lot uses square. 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.
baron816 6y ago
All coins are pretty terrible. When the US was trying to push those dollar coins, there was an argument that the government would make money by selling the new coins (through seigniorage), but that argument was counteracted by the fact that people just wouldn’t use those coins and it would end up sitting in a jar somewhere rather than in a bank earning interest (the velocity of money would be reduced). 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.
robbrown451 6y ago
Pennies are just extra surfaces for coronavirus to ride on.
AceyMan 6y ago
Early on in the current administration I half-joked that it'd all be worth if if at the end of it we (a) switched to ISO216, (b) bailed on Fahrenheit, and (c) ditched the penny. Now that would be a legacy any POTUS could be proud about.
dutch3000 6y ago
no. tired of these lame discussions about something as trivial as a penny. nobody should waste time on contemplating such a question.
- beervirus 6y ago
  Think of all the time that everyone would save going forward not having to deal with pennies. It's worth spending some time up front for a benefit like that.
  - dutch3000 6y ago
    i reject a future driven solely by efficiency. therefore, i support the penny.
    - beervirus 6y ago
      That's fine. But "nobody should waste time on contemplating such a question" doesn't make much sense.
      - dutch3000 6y ago
        besides, there’s a coin shortage. we need more. ;)

257 points by jpkoning 6y ago

I hope not! I love rolling pennies and taking them to the bank :)

One time I was in Krogers and saw a man buying 6 onions with nickels, dimes, pennies. He took a long time but he bought his onions. I personally don't care one way or another but those who miss the penny the most, won't likely get a voice.

efa 6y ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying getting rid of the penny would hurt poor people?
- drapery 6y ago
  Yeah pretty much. Most of the poor are unbanked and every penny counts.

ggm 6y ago

why not rebase the currency /100? two upsides: * we can do counting on our fingers again for shopping * large numbers of C-list celebreties are no longer millionaires

Blueskytech 6y ago

We shouldn't kill the penny because it is a reminder that our currency has been inflated and is no longer worth a small fraction of what it once was. Never forget that pre-1965 coinage besides the penny was made of 90 percent silver. A face value of 1.40 in pre-1965 dimes and quarters is worth 20.00 today, the fact that a penny, not even made of copper, is too expensive to make should be concerning.

arcticbull 6y ago
(1) Inflation doesn't matter if you're not hoarding cash. By and large, real estate tracks inflation across the United States. Stock indices exceed inflation. Inflation doesn't matter to you if you aren't holding cash. (2) It doesn't matter how we got here, we're here, and it's useless.
- Blueskytech 6y ago
  You are of course correct until Exters pyramid collapses which becomes more and more a distinct possibility as the currency is debased.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Nit: the nickle wasn't made of silver, either.
- Blueskytech 6y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out you are correct and I should have been more precise in my language.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Eh, no worries. As I said, it's a nit, not anything that actually matters.

jchook 6y ago

In Chile they have 1 peso pieces so small and light you can blow them from your hand like fairy dust. 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.

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crobertsbmw 6y ago

Yes. Let’s kill the nickel too!

el-salvador 6y ago

My country uses the US Dollar as currency but since tax is added to prices we dont use pennies as much as in the US. * 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)

tehjoker 6y ago

It's really funny to talk about the government making or losing money when producing money ("seigniorage"). It really shows how money is just pretend numbers and the foundries can create or destroy it at will depending on the political winds (inflation being good for debtors and deflation being good for creditors). There's a reason the monied interests are against inflation of more than 2%, and it's because it would cause the debts logged as assets in their books to be worth less. Honestly, they would prefer deflation, but they were forced to accept some inflation as the cost of a growing economy.

logicalmonster 6y ago

My favored strategy would be be to put Harriet Tubman on the penny as the best path forward. This puts a wanted social change into the culture (Putting a black person on US currency) without removing any president from existing bills (Lincoln still stays on the $5) and erasing history. Additionally, the first black person on US currency should appear on a coin rather than paper money as they’re harder to deface. Given the media situation in this country, I’m 100% sure the media will find or invent some disfigured paper bills with racist slurs to generate controversy and inflame racial tensions even further.

analog31 6y ago
I've never understood the "erasing history" thing. Isn't the history the same? If I deface a penny, am I losing a certain quantity of history?

esturk 6y ago

One thing this Pandemic brought about is the importance of contactless payment. Exchanging cash is unhygenic. Signing credit card receipts is unhygienic. Doing away with pennies should just be a starter.

fiblye 6y ago
Replacing all money with copper-coated currency like pennies would probably be more hygienic, considering copper is one of the most effective anti-microbial things out there.

inoffensivename 6y ago

It was time to kill the penny years ago. Australia got rid of one and two cent coins in 1992 and nobody missed them.

jpkoning 6y ago

Go for it, America. We got rid of the penny up here in Canada in 2012. Doing so removed a degree of hassle from everyone's commercial lives.

fit2rule 6y ago

Why kill it? Why not just re-value it instead? For example, make its value $1000. Would maybe be a neat solution to the 1% problem.

nordsieck 6y ago
> Why not just re-value it instead? > 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.
- latch 6y ago
  Singapore & Brunei (1) had a $10000 bill until 2014 (worth ~7400 USD), and still have a $1000 bill (as does Switzerland with its better exchange rate) (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.
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > 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. ___ 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate_system
- def8cefe 6y ago
  >Also, it's WAY easier to counterfeit a coin than a bill. 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.
- paulie_a 6y ago

zeepzeep 6y ago

Yes, we don't need such small amounts of money. Just always round up, when paying and when giving the rest back. > 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.

bruce511 6y ago
Actually, the pricing of individual items doesn't change. (Not least because of GST the price you pay at the till is not the sticker price.) 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.
- tedd-the-tiger 6y ago
  > GST. Found the Australian!
  - mkl 6y ago
    GST exists in a bunch of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST The coins probably narrow it down though.
    - bruce511 6y ago
      In the interest of full disclosure I was talking about USA GST (Sales Tax) not the tax where I live. In the US the price on the shelf seems to be a "rough indication" of how much you may pay when you get to the till... That I noticed this suggests I live in a VAT country not a GST country :)
  - dafoex 6y ago
    At the risk of making a flippant comment, they /are/ called Bruce.

UI_at_80x24 6y ago

Yes. 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-you-need-to-know-1.1174547 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-all...

grawprog 6y ago
>Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky didn't fall. 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.

ThePadawan 6y ago

I moved from a country that has pennies (Germany, so EUR cents) to one that doesn't (Switzerland, CHF) age 18. 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.

nix23 6y ago
But the foifraepller is still more expensive to manufacture the it's own worth.
undersuit 6y ago
I guess the question is... do you feel good about wasting one, two, three, and four?

ShaneMcGowan 6y ago

No, coin collectors have enough problems as it is

DrBazza 6y ago

I remember reading years ago that the reluctance to get rid of a penny is usual the unease in the central bank of a particular country to accept that the currency has inflated. I imagine retailers would still price things at £9.95 instead to perpetuate the 'psychological trick' that "it's not really £10!".

Ensorceled 6y ago
They certainly have continued the $xxx9.99 tradition here in Canada.

jlengrand 6y ago

I come from France, where we use pennies and live in the Netherlands where we don't. 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 .

wartijn_ 6y ago
You should be able to pay with 1 and 2 cent coins in The Netherlands. You just won't get them as change and the amount charged will be rounded to the nearest 5 cents in most, but not all, shops. But I wouldn't be surprised if many cashiers don't know they should accept those coins.
- jlengrand 6y ago
  Interesting. I've tried in quite a few places and never got them accepted.
  - wartijn_ 6y ago
    Here is the government website that says so and its translation (with a really long url, but the translation is better than that of Google Translate). 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-antwoord/mogen-winkeliers-betalingen-afronden-op-0-eurocent-of-5-eurocent https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-en-... https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkeliers%20betalingen%20afronden%20op%200%20eurocent%20of%205%20eurocent%3F%0A%0AWanneer%20u%20contant%20betaalt%2C%20mogen%20winkeliers%20in%20Nederland%20het%20totaalbedrag%20afronden%20op%200%20eurocent%20of%205%20eurocent.%20Zij%20moeten%20wel%20duidelijk%20aangeven%20met%20raamstickers%20of%20kassastickers%20dat%20ze%20de%20afrondingsregel%20toepassen.%0AAlleen%20afronden%20bij%20contante%20betalingen%0A%0AAfronden%20mag%20alleen%20wanneer%20u%20met%20contant%20geld%20betaalt.%20Met%20betaalmiddelen%20zoals%20een%20pinpas%20of%20een%20creditcard%20betaalt%20u%20het%20exacte%20bedrag.%0ARekenvoorbeeld%20afronden%20betalingen%0A%0AHet%20eindbedrag%20op%20de%20kassabon%20wordt%20bij%20contant%20betalen%20afgerond%20op%200%20cent%20of%205%20cent.%20Zo%20wordt%20%E2%82%AC%2023%2C37%20afgerond%20op%20%E2%82%AC%2023%2C35.%20En%20%E2%82%AC%208%2C89%20wordt%20%E2%82%AC%208%2C90.%0A1%20en%202%20eurocent%20blijven%20wettig%20betaalmiddel%0A%0ADe%20munten%20van%201%20en%202%20eurocent%20blijven%20een%20wettig%20betaalmiddel.%20U%20kunt%20met%20deze%20munten%20afrekenen.%20Heeft%20een%20winkelier%20vooraf%20duidelijk%20gemaakt%20dat%20hij%20afrondt%3F%20Dan%20hoeft%20hij%20geen%20munten%20van%201%20en%202%20eurocent%20wisselgeld%20te%20geven https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkeliers....

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Go further. I haven't used coins in 10 years. Get coins - put them all in the 'penny tray'. Or give them to the cashier. Or hand them to somebody nearby. All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store.

jhoechtl 6y ago
Trashing money is illegal and sounds very unethical to me.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Nope. Currency (paper money) is protected; I don't think coins are at all. Witness all the jewelry made from coins.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  It’s a lot more nuanced than “illegal” and definitely depends on your region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality
- jcims 6y ago
  Why unethical? You’re giving everyone a small gift of deflation.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    It's more ethical and efficient to burn paper money, if that's your goal.
nix23 6y ago
>All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store That Joe is a BIG Asshole move.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  ? How can this affect you at all? Is this some projection of insecurity? Remember <$1 in change would buy ... almost nothing. Some gum? 20 minutes on a parking meter?

FartyMcFarter 6y ago

I guess it's easier to kill the penny than to divide all prices by a factor of 2.

pottspotts 6y ago

About 10 years ago my friends and I made a Web site, removethepenny.com (no longer active) and starting calling around to see who would support us. I recall speaking to someone who was very angry that we cared so little for the metal industry. I think this has been known for a long time but special interests have kept it on life support for obvious reasons.

lostapathy 6y ago
I'm not sure the reasons are so obvious. Surely very little metal is turned into pennies compared to the quantities consumed by industrial processes.
- jdhawk 6y ago
  last year they made 8.4BN pennies, which would be about 21 million KG of Zinc, worth about ~$40 million?
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    That's a lot of money, but not "change public policy" levels of cash, either. 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.
    - jdhawk 6y ago
      I'd imagine you also have to take into account all coin to cash machines that issue gift cards for change, and take decent percentages. They probably make several orders of magnitude more than the mineral companies.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    If their profit margin is around 8% or so, which I assume would be reasonable for mining & industrial firms, that's a really small amount and not worth the lobbying cost

einpoklum 6y ago

I really like it that they offer you, instead of a site with a lot of junk and JS, a plain text version! That's much nicer news than the story itself :-) ... 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.

mc32 6y ago
Yeah but what will the gas pumps do? Their prices are “$3.29.9” per gallon, do they Mae it “$3.29.5“ now? Personally yeah, I don’t think we need pence.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  They're already denominated in a unit that doesn't exist. Why would they change?
  - gerikson 6y ago
    The US dollar was designed to be subdivided into cents (hundreds) and mills (thousands). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      Practical reality in 2020 is different than whatever the intended design was. There is no possible way to pay with a fraction of a penny.
      - mark-r 6y ago
        "Practical reality" hasn't changed. There never was a way to pay anything with a fraction of a penny, even when cards made it theoretically possible. The final price just gets adjusted to a whole penny amount.

jhoechtl 6y ago

Wow that text only version is great, can I have that of every website please? (Without an ad-blocker)

Symbiote 6y ago

There's a list of countries which have removed their smallest denomination coins on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
For one political party in the US, the fact that other countries have done it is considered proof that it is an anti-American idea.

uneekone 6y ago

Yes you are right agreed with you

spartas 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI

cgrealy 6y ago

Do it. In NZ, we got rid of everything below $0.10 and pretty much no one cares. That said, a large portion of the country is cashless anyway. I almost never have cash on me.

mkl 6y ago
And we started a long time ago. 1 and 2 cent coins were demonetised in 1990, $1 and $2 coins replaced notes in 1991, all notes were switched to tough washable polymer in 1999, 5 cent coins were dropped in 2006 (and most other coins were reduced in size at the same time). I also almost never use cash. It's not like we have a low-value currency unit either (e.g. Yen). Prices in NZ dollars are usually less than double the US dollar price in the US (and our prices include sales tax and shipping to NZ).
pantaloony 6y ago
Yeah, if the US does this the nickel ($.05) should go too while we’re at it. We’ve put off getting rid of the penny so long that even 5x a penny is worthless. Switch to $.10, $.50, and $1 coins.

parenthesis 6y ago

I'm old enough to remember halfpenny coins here in the UK. I've got a few someplace that I kept. 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.

vmilner 6y ago
I remember Polo mints going from 4.5p to 5p in ~1975. (I was 7 and such things were important...). It's curious that the minimum possible percentage increase then was 11%, but now, when Polo mints are around 60p, the minimum possible increase is 1.7%. Getting rid of all coins < 5p would return us to the same "granularity". (And possibly be inflationary.)

klyrs 6y ago

As an American living in Canada, I gotta say. Pennies and dollar bills SUCK. We have $1 and $2 coins and they're actually useful. Every time I visit home, I end up with piles of pennies and wads of stinky, tattered, overcirculated garbage bills. 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.

filoeleven 6y ago
> I say take it further: nickels should go too, and probably dimes. 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.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Yes, nickles should definitely go. But since money is decimal, dimes make more sense. (10 cents exactly) But because of quarters you still probably need nickels. Or you could just go binary use halves, quarters and eighths.
- klyrs 6y ago
  > But because of quarters you still probably need nickels. Only in the presence of dimes. That's why I say, cut them too.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Good point. Binary money is ideal. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3yjfefUD8 A $2 Bill At Taco Bell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbp-UyLH2ng 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/police-called-after-student-tries-to-buy-lunch-with-2-bill/#7fc74c6cf1a2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/05/04/pol...

deleted 6y ago

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cascom 6y ago

I’d rather we do a reverse split of the dollar - say 10:1 - 10 old dollars = 1 new dollar, essentially take us back to 1950’s pricing, coins become relevant again! + it has the added benefit of undoing all the changes in laws/refs that were not inflation adjusted. Not holding my breath...

war1025 6y ago
If you think about it this way, it really does make a decent argument for switching larger denominations to coins. 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.

greggman3 6y ago

Seems to me it mostly doesn't matter if 95-99% of all transactions go digital. So basically it's less work to do nothing about the penny because the issue will solve itself.

ipython 6y ago

Even as far back as the 90s I remember the PX on military bases rounding to the nearest nickel. Surprised more places don’t do the same. Ah apparently it’s on overseas bases: https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11 https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11

Asooka 6y ago

There is a much simpler solution. Obviously people want their "0.01" coin, so we should instead envalue the currency. Cancel the dollar, make dollar2.0 which is exactly 10 times as valuable and done. You eliminate everything below 10cents effectively, the metal industry is happy to supply material for new coins, coin collectors are happy to get new coins, banks are delighted to make a bit of profit skimming a few dollars off people's accounts when converting their currency in their databases, everybody[1] wins! [1] for some fraction of "everybody"

saalweachter 6y ago
If you envalue by 100:1 you could probably start making silver dimes, quarters and dollars again.

MH15 6y ago

At some point us in the US will have to figure out how to cope with the issues our Democracy has with making changes and overcoming momentum. It seems our government is uniquely unsuited in this capacity in comparison to other modern democracies as seen with healthcare, income inequality, and the recent pandemic response.

paxys 6y ago
It's more about overcoming lobbying than momentum.
hagy 6y ago
I think the best approach is for the US to move more concerns to the state level. E.g., it would be great if states would start implementing their own universal healthcare for their residents. 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.
- harryh 6y ago
  it would be great if states would start implementing their own universal healthcare for their residents 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.
  - Cerium 6y ago
    Full benefits could phase in over time. You could get increasing discounts on public services until you reach full state membership. This would be no different than out of state school fees.

Brendinooo 6y ago

The melt value of a copper penny (1982 or prior) is worth more than the face value. However, it's illegal to melt down legal tender currency. AND, fun fact, it's illegal to leave the US with more than $5 worth of pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with a bag of pennies and melt them there. 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.

harryh 6y ago
In case anyone else is curious, apparently a pre-1982 penny could be worth about 1.8 cents when melted down: http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penny-Value.html http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penn...
yetanta 6y ago
The thing is melting it costs money too. Also most pennies have other metals mixed in for durability. Usually zinc. So to get the copper value you have to get those other metals out. That also costs money. Most places that recycle metals do not take pennies for melt value. They usually just do not want to mess with it. I would estimate it would have to be closer to 4-5 cents per penny before it would be profitable. But that is just a guess.
x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
> it's illegal to leave the US with more than $5 worth of pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with a bag of pennies and melt them there. What law would that violate?
- bazzargh 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/crimeaday/status/739973139539632128 https://twitter.com/crimeaday/status/739973139539632128 "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 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...)

atlgator 6y ago

I'd rather see us move away from physical money altogether.

donatj 6y ago

Honestly, I've wondered from time to time what effect (if any, clearly) penny's having an actual metallurgical value goes towards stemming inflation and creating not a "gold standard" but rather an accidental "copper and nickel standard"?

tacocataco 6y ago

All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel that plastic cash would make more of a difference. CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U

gjs278 6y ago
if you think you are going to get covid from paper cash, you’re a paranoid germ freak. it’s not even worth living in with worldview like that. just touch the paper.
tmabraham 6y ago
I was looking if someone had posted this video :)
andrewxdiamond 6y ago
“Paper” cash is actually linen. You can wash it with hot water no problem
- eumenides1 6y ago
  In Canada, cash is all plastic. Not quite the plastic OP was thinking about. Love me my plastic colorful money.
- jmcqk6 6y ago
  Everyone knows money laundering is against the law.
kstenerud 6y ago
"Paper" money is actually a cloth composite, which can be washed.
- jpindar 6y ago
  It can also be ironed. If you have a bunch of crumpled bills and you wish they took up less space and were easier to handle, iron them.

ryandvm 6y ago

The US penny is perhaps the most illustrative example of why I am wary that the US government can do ANYTHING efficiently. 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.

derefr 6y ago
> can't even figure out how to stop making a coin that is worthless 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.
lolsal 6y ago
> It costs more to mint them than they're worth. 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.

dafoex 6y ago

I know this is about the US penny, but from a UK perspective I think it'd be much more useful to kill the two pence piece. Those coins are massive and, in my experience, never used except to put in those charity buckets. One pennies, however small their monetary value, at least help you make up odd prices, but twos are always just too much to make up a £2.47 bus fare.

dafoex 6y ago
£2.46, even. If only the bus driver would fat finger the ticket machine, maybe 2p coins would have a use.
jayflux 6y ago
Most likely both the 1p and 2p would go and prices would be rounded to the nearest 5p (so you wouldn’t need a penny to make up the odd price). But the UK govt already said they’re not doing this.

corpMaverick 6y ago

Yes, please do it. They are just a hassle.

hinkley 6y ago

The Japanese 'penny' is (was?) made of aluminum. It looked less like currency and more like a token from a deluxe version of a board game. It was just too insubstantial. 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.

patrickmcmanus 6y ago
a 1 yen coin has a mass of 1 gram - which can be handy for measuring stuff.

ZacharyPitts 6y ago

And the nickel, and the dime... and maybe the quarter

umvi 6y ago
So the minimum you can pay for something is $0.50? 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.

gonational 6y ago

The nickel then becomes the new penny. 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...”.

awillen 6y ago
So like... San Francisco right now?
undersuit 6y ago
This comment is at the very bottom of the comments right now and I'm glad I looked for it. 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.

jscipione 6y ago

There are billions more pennies lying in jars in people's houses than are in regular circulation. Even if we were to stop minting new pennies today we could coax the population to turn their pennies in and we wouldn't run out for centuries to come. There is no shortage of pennies. I don't care what Canada does, you're not going to take my pennies away.

coding123 6y ago
A good way - a single day where each turned in penny gives you 3 "cents" in exchange. Of course you would be giving out only dollar or higher bills in such a program.

all_blue_chucks 6y ago

The only coins we need are dimes. Round cash transactions to the nearest $0.1. Make everyone's lives simpler.

irrational 6y ago

But then how would we make souvenir flattened pennies for .26 at tourist traps? 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.

undersuit 6y ago
The US Mints could just sell blanks to the tourist traps and they in turn could raise the price to $1. 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.
- jackson1442 6y ago
  > 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.

gojomo 6y ago

The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5¢, as described by Austan Goolsbee here: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html 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¢.)

ebg13 6y ago
> The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5¢ But they say "ONE CENT" on them.
- gojomo 6y ago
  They also say, 'Liberty', 'In God We Trust', & 'E Pluribus Unum'. Lots of writing on government-issued materials is false, ceremonial, outdated, or overridden by later acts. If it really bothers you, you can file that off your pennies before spending them at 5¢ value. We won't mind.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I would check 18 U.S. Code §331 (fraudulently defacing currency) before doing that.
    - gojomo 6y ago
      There would be no fraud in scratching 'ONE CENT' off of pennies that were, by law, worth 5¢. 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-2-bills/ https://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-own... – not someone whose actions are limited by obscure dead-letter laws.)

hilbert42 6y ago

Australia dropped the copper 'penny' (one cent) along with its two-cent coin ages ago and nobody complained except for a few electronics people like me who used them as heat sinks for diodes and other electronic components. (Yuh simply drill a hole and solder them onto the wire leads of hot components.) 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.

dhosek 6y ago

When someone posted an article about the coin shortage on Facebook recently, I realized that I haven't used cash for a purchase since sometime before the lockdown started. And even before that, my primary use of cash was the collections basket at church—which the lockdown has ended up transforming into a credit card transaction now. Our formerly cash transactions for our cleaning lady have converted into Zelle payments. Friends who also commented mentioned tipping delivery people although I prefer contactless delivery and always include the tip in the original payment rather than have to come close enough to a delivery person to hand off cash. Cash has long been on a decline and I think the pandemic is accelerating this to the point where it's going to end up being moot.

vl 6y ago
I was in Home Depot yesterday, buying $220 of equipment. Credit card system went down on all registers. So I had to pay with cash.
dhosek 6y ago
Coin-only laundry machines are probably the biggest drivers of persistent cash usage in most of my acquaintances' lives. I'm guessing that apartment buildings big enough to have in-building laundry rooms but small enough to not be able to justify a cashless payment system may just end up shifting to not charging for laundry.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I think that gap is growing smaller. 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)
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  Until I made the (in hindsight, fortuitous) move into a house with a washing machine, I and many other millions of people in the US used cash weekly at the laundromat. Even their laundry service only took cash.

shmerl 6y ago

I'd like this dumb trend to price things with #.99 to go away. It's so annoying. May be dropping pennies will help that.

Cactus2018 6y ago

In the Netherlands > In 1980, production of the 1-cent coin ceased and was demonetized three years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder#Coins 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 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.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
The claim that 0.01€ coins produced elsewhere remain legal tender in the rounding countries, does not hold for Finland. No supermarket is going to accept 1- or 2-cent coins for payment even if you had enough to add up to the nearest 5-cent unit.
- eMSF 6y ago
  That doesn't mean they aren't still legal tender in Finland (which they are). Somewhat relatedly, some places also don't accept all the banknotes – that is, the largest denominations – a rule which clearly has nothing to do with the rounding rules of cents.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    It feels like the discussion of "legal tender" on this thread is based on how things work in the USA. In Finland, one can be compelled to pay all kinds of debts and obligations by bank transfer, and cash is not accepted. Even banks won’t take the 1- and 2-cent coins, and so these coins are de facto so marginalized that calling them "legal tender" misses the point.

OldHand2018 6y ago

> By the 1990s, Kolbe says, he was introducing new legislation to kill the penny with every new session of Congress. But he kept facing resistance — for example, from the speaker of the House at the time, Dennis Hastert, who represented a district in Illinois, the home state of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course, is on the penny, and Kolbe says that proved to be a major roadblock. 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.

manicpolymath 6y ago

April 10, 2025 is when the penny should cease, so we can commemorate it on nickel/dime/quarter day 05/10/25. And yes, it should be April 10 and not October 05 because this will be an American holiday dang it.

smileysteve 6y ago
May...

Uhhrrr 6y ago

The first time I read a proposal like this I thought it was a terrible idea, but the penny has lost more than half its value since then. I'm much more sympathetic now.

aahhahahaaa 6y ago

Kill every coin except the quarter.

femto113 6y ago

Do not understand why we still mint them--there are enough pennies in existence to last forever, the problem is they are just sitting in jars on shelves. Instead of minting new ones the treasury (through banks) should just start buying them for 2 cents each until enough come back into circulation.

jedberg 6y ago
Lobbyists is the one and only answer. The zinc lobby is strong.

crazygringo 6y ago

Can we get rid of nickels and dimes too? 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.)

Wohlf 6y ago
>standardize on a single sales tax rate across the country My modest proposal, do what Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon have all done and eliminate it. Sales tax is annoying and regressive.
- jakeogh 6y ago
  I'll take sales tax over income tax; it's unconstutional in more than one way and an astounding waste of resources. RIP Aaron Russo.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > it's unconstutional in more than one way 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.
    - jakeogh 6y ago
      Lets assume the 16th was ratified (it wasnt, but set that aside). One might ask the IRS Comissioner where the law is, plenty of IRS agents have tried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNeVu8wUak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNeVu8wUak 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.

bane 6y ago

I've actually found that I virtually never use cash anymore, virtually every place has a PoS now that accepts some kind of card of digital payment system. Heck, my favorite BBQ place which is run on weekends out of a vacant gravel lot uses square. 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.

baron816 6y ago

All coins are pretty terrible. When the US was trying to push those dollar coins, there was an argument that the government would make money by selling the new coins (through seigniorage), but that argument was counteracted by the fact that people just wouldn’t use those coins and it would end up sitting in a jar somewhere rather than in a bank earning interest (the velocity of money would be reduced). 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.

robbrown451 6y ago

Pennies are just extra surfaces for coronavirus to ride on.

AceyMan 6y ago

Early on in the current administration I half-joked that it'd all be worth if if at the end of it we (a) switched to ISO216, (b) bailed on Fahrenheit, and (c) ditched the penny. Now that would be a legacy any POTUS could be proud about.

dutch3000 6y ago

no. tired of these lame discussions about something as trivial as a penny. nobody should waste time on contemplating such a question.

beervirus 6y ago
Think of all the time that everyone would save going forward not having to deal with pennies. It's worth spending some time up front for a benefit like that.
- dutch3000 6y ago
  i reject a future driven solely by efficiency. therefore, i support the penny.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    That's fine. But "nobody should waste time on contemplating such a question" doesn't make much sense.
    - dutch3000 6y ago
      besides, there’s a coin shortage. we need more. ;)