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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:/
by 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 agoThey 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 Lots of writing on government-issued materials is false, ceremonial, outdated, or overridden by later acts.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 agoI would check 18 U.S. Code §331 (fraudulently defacing currency) before doing that.
- gojomo 6y agoThere 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.)
- scarface74 6y agoWhat sort of monster would call the police on a fellow person for passing a damaged penny? These types: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-african-american-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-vid... https://www.dailydot.com/irl/black-man-police-comcast/ https://www.dailydot.com/irl/black-man-police-comcast/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/03/cops-draw-guns-cuff-black-man-his-new-home-when-neighbor-calls-911/3135193001/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/03/cops-draw-gun... https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/23/ohio-cops-called-black-kids-playing-football-join-game/ https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/23/ohio-cops-called-black-kids-p...
- InitialLastName 6y agoHow is Woz a currency hacker in that link? He literally just buys sheets from [0] and glues them together. [0]https://catalog.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-currency/ https://catalog.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-currency/
- gojomo 6y agoThe $2 bills are currency. He recombines them to create funny & thought-provoking situations, including encounters with local police & Secret Service, that test the boundaries of what's allowed & what's trusted. What other definition of 'hacking' do you use?
- Bjartr 6y agoUnless you are committing fraud, like falsely trying to claim it has a value other than what it actually does, defacing currency isn't illegal. So trying to pass off a penny as being worth 5 cents today by filing it down would violate that law, but if they really were worth 5 cents, it would be fine.
- SamBam 6y agoI assume they would be redeemable at banks for nickels.
- gojomo 6y agoAnd payable to any establishment that accepted traditional nickels as well.
- ngngngng 6y agoSo I should start collecting pennies then, yes? 500% returns you say?
- gojomo 6y agoI do think enough people believing this could happen, and thus hoarding pennies, could increase its likelihood. It'd grow a popular constituency for the rebasing, and create a change shortage that's most-easily addressed by incentivizing the release of instantly-more-valuable penny hoards. Fill your jars, then pass the idea on! (Does anyone know someone high up in this '4chan' memetic-prankster cooperative I keep hearing about? Nah, they'd probably just trick Congress into doing something useless like rebasing the penny to 4¢.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- clairity 6y agohow about rebasing the dollar to $10 so that the penny has the worth of 10¢, and then apply a one-time progressive wealth tax to pay for saving the economy from collapse while also addressing the regressiveness of that action? maybe call it an anti-revolution tax.
- wnissen 6y agoThis is the only sensible solution. I don't know of a single thing that I could buy with a nickel, let alone a penny. I think there is some candy that's still sold for a dime, so having a penny worth that much would have at least some utility. The U.S. half-cent coin was withdrawn in 1857, when it was worth about $.15 today!