12 ms·

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value c

I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a choke-hold on retailers, and the whole thing is basically a scheme that funnels money from the poor to the wealthy via interest and fees on the consumer, interchange fees, and rewards programs.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
But add a $3.50 coin so that we can strongly incentivize coffee to stay below a certain price.
- rustystump 1y ago
  Also for the memes…
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    It would be exceedingly funny is 75% of the value. Maybe make it be a $3.33 coin?
  - binarymax 1y ago
    $0.67 coin is on the way
    - nostrademons 1y ago
      $0.666. Half the population would think it's the mark of the beast, the other half rounds up to 6-7.
      - redfern314 1y ago
        and the third half of the population thinks it's egregious that a repeating fraction has been truncated!
  - balamatom 1y ago
    It's worth about $2.70
- quijoteuniv 1y ago
  Just take a zero out of everything and change the name from dollar to something else!
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    *dllar*
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - edm0nd 1y ago
      dolla
  - forinti 1y ago
    US Peso
  - Galacta7 1y ago
    Night City eurodollars?
  - cpeterso 1y ago
    Decadollars 100 dollars = 10 decadollars
  - wffurr 1y ago
    USA Fun Ticket
  - RobotToaster 1y ago
    There used to be a $10 coin called an eagle, may as well be violently American and call it eagles.
  - dennis_jeeves2 1y ago
    Old trick. The last I checked about 10+ countries have done it.
- binarymax 1y ago
  My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(
  - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
    Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.
    - drivebyhooting 1y ago
      I wonder if the gourmet high end plastic ends up in the brew.
      - wffurr 1y ago
        It pairs wonderfully with all the plastic in your water.
      - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
        As opposed to the plastic pipes your water runs through, the plastic water filter, plastic coffee maker, and plastic travel mug you pour it into?
        drivebyhooting 1y ago
        I usually don’t run high pressure boiling water through my plastic pipes.
    - 0_____0 1y ago
      If you go through coffee regularly, it's actually quite a nice thing to invest in. There are a really amazing number of craft roasters throughout the country, and simply having a quality grinder is enough. And you don't need a crazy espresso setup to enjoy it. My setup consists of a motorized flat burr grinder, a 20$ kettle from target, and a pour over funnel. The quality is so much higher than anything you can get from a pod that's been sitting around with pre ground coffee, and it only takes a couple minutes while you're waiting for Claude to rewrite your codebase in Rust or whatever it is "Hackers" do these days
- jimbokun 1y ago
  One of the things I admire most about Italy is how they have held the line on the price of an espresso. It’s still just slightly over €1 if you drink it standing at the bar. They really have their priorities straight when it comes to food and drink prices.
  - sgerenser 1y ago
    So they charge more for an espresso if you want to drink it seated? Or take it away?
    - jimbokun 1y ago
      It costs more to drink it seated. I don’t think I ever took away a coffee during any of my vacations in Italy, and very rarely so anyone else doing so, either. Either drinking it standing at the bar or seated at a table.
- jabbany 1y ago
  I know this is supposed to be a joke but... businesses have pushed for this the other way around in the past, asking for a new coin to raise prices. > The Coca-Cola Company sought ways to increase the five cent price, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_1886_to_1959 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_...]
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    The wikipedia article says that this was specifically the price of a 6.5oz Coke. The obvious way to raise the price by 50% is to cut the amount by a third, selling 4.33oz Cokes. https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/cocacola_bottle_sizes_1950s1960s/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/coca... suggests that Coca-Cola was comfortable producing bottles in several different sizes. Now, a 4 1/3 oz Coke is obviously too small to be worth bothering with. But that's also true of a 6 1/2 oz Coke. These sizes seem more like something you dispense with an eyedropper than something you drink. A normal can is 12 oz! Who'd want to buy a six-ounce beverage? You can address both problems at once by doubling the price and increasing the volume all the way up to 8.67 oz.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      When I was a kid, most sodas had a short can size of 8oz available, good for "lunches" and similar. Funny story, Coca Cola just announced thin 7.5oz cans last month, to be available in January. Shrinkflation is often done by phasing out an old size, often by jacking up the price first to aid the sales of the "family size" version on its way out, and then introducing a "New" size that's just a bit smaller.
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        When I was a kid, there already weren't 8oz cans. But even if there had been, an 8oz can is 23% bigger than a 6.5oz bottle. 6.5oz is ludicrously small. How did that become a commercial size in the first place? As far as I can tell, a juice box today is 6.75oz, but you buy them in bulk and they're not actually large enough to be good for a small child's lunch.
JJMcJ 1y ago
The last time a coin was dropped was the half penny in the late 1850s, when I think it was worth about 25 cents today, so there is a precedent for what you are suggesting.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago
  CCP Grey has a nice video and discusses the precedent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U
jjk7 1y ago
Only if the increased revenue from rounding doesn't go into retailers pockets but rather is redistributed somehow. i.e. to reduce sales tax
jrochkind1 1y ago
A noticeable number of places around me in an urban area in the USA already now have signs up saying they won't make any coin change at all! Pay with a card, or exact change, or they'll round up to the dollar keep the difference. Sometimes the sign says "due to the penny shortage" and has been up for a year or whatever, I dunno. But they aren't just not giving you pennies in your change, they are refusing any coins in your change. I am curious as to the motivation, I could guess but it's not obvious to me. They will still take coins as payment, just not give them as change.
- jjmarr 1y ago
  You can either put payments into the register or the safe. If it goes into the safe, it's nearly impossible to steal because there's a time lock preventing the cashier from accessing it. But you can't make change. This means you have a optimization problem to have the minimum possible cash in the register to meet all change needs. Eliminating denominations makes the optimization problem easier, if nothing else.
  - jrochkind1 1y ago
    I wouldn't think there is enough coinage in a register to be interesting as a theft target, but i don't know! I think they would still make bill change, but maybe I misunderstood, sure. Next time I see one I'll use cash to find out!
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 1y ago
If the Pennies go away, you can no longer get things for pennies on the dollar.
- droptablemain 1y ago
  The famous little jingle "shave and a haircut, two bits" Most people today have no clue what a "bit" is. I imagine the future will hold something similar for the penny in all the idioms and cultural phrases we have. What the hell is a penny?
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    What is a bit, a penny?
    - dec0dedab0de 1y ago
      1/8, so 2 bits is a quarter. it comes from old spanish coins that they would cut into eight pieces, or bits. I learned that after watching one of the pirates of the Caribbean movies and googling pieces of eight.
      - retrocog 1y ago
        THIS exactly and oops, I replied too quickly :)
    - patrickthebold 1y ago
      Half a quarter.
  - retrocog 1y ago
    Exactly. Two bits is a quarter because the US silver dollar was modeled on the Spanish Pillar Dollar, also called pieces of eight. Hence 2/8 (two bits) = 1/4.
  - fstarship 1y ago
    It’s kind of like lots of imperial measurements where we use metric still have these in idioms.
nerdsniper 1y ago
The half-penny was discontinued in 1857. Adjusted for inflation it was worth 37 cents in todays money when it was discontinued.
cft 1y ago
And hell, put Bank of Zimbabwe on the bills.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  I don't like inflation either. The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks and a lot of pretending that it doesn't cause issues in the long run. But it's here to stay, nothing we can do about it.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks Please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoDKqlcR4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoDKqlcR4Y
b112 1y ago
I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. And the math seems fair enough: https://www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/theme2-info-eng.html https://www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/theme2-info-eng.htm... Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. Rounding is to be applied after all taxes are paid, etc. Of course, there was also central guidance and, well, everyone just followed it. It's called "having a society". People blathering on about stores fixing the rounding are morons, there's no way to do so if you buy more than one item. No one gets ripped off with the above method. In the end, it just works out. And really, who cares?! It's a penny.
- ryanmcbride 1y ago
  Rounding is such a weird boogeyman to me because people are like "the companies are just going to use it to get more money from the customers" but, they're doing that anyway. They don't need this excuse to raise prices they'll just do it anyway. Same thing when people complain that raising minimum wage will increase prices, meanwhile prices have increased for 50 years completely separate from wages. They don't need the excuse to raise prices they're just gonna do it anyway. If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation, but regulation is communism and therefore bad. I'm so god damn tired.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - 542458 1y ago
    > If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation Or competition. Consumer electronics are much cheaper than they were in the past, and that's not because of regulation. (To be clear, I'm not saying that regulation is wrong or anything, I'm saying that "use regulation to lower prices" and "remove barriers to competition to lower prices" are both tools in the toolbox.
toast0 1y ago
Nickles are likely to go shortly after. You can do everything you can with nickles with dimes and quarters, nickles have worse economics than pennies, and have had their minting suppressed below the market needs for years. Once pennies leave circulation, the problems with nickles will become urgent and they'll quickly leave. Dimes are small and cheap to make though, so they'll probably stick around.
- axiolite 1y ago
  It's impractical to eliminate the nickel and penny, while keeping the quarter and dime. The most practical way forward is to keep only the dime, but people will be quite upset about the loss of the quarter.
  - toast0 1y ago
    It might be a little bit cumbersome, but I don't think it's impractical. With only quarters and dimes it's difficult to pay $0.05 or $0.15, but it's possible. If I owe you $0.05, I must give you a quarter and you give me two dimes. Or I give you a $20, you give me $19 in paper money, three quarters and two dimes. If I owe you $0.15, I must give you a quarter and you give me one dime. If I owe you $0.95, I can't give you $1 and get change, I'd need to give you $1.25 and get three dimes back. Or give you $2, get three quarters and three dimes. Owing $19.95 or $19.85 would be most inconvenient, since many people seem to live life with only $20 bills in their wallet and there would be a lot of extra change required. But, if we stopped minting pennies because they cost too much (3.7 cents), it's hard to imagine we're going to keep producing nickels when they cost 13.8 cents to mint. Dimes are much cheaper than nickels (5.8 cents), and quarters aren't too bad relative to face value (14.7 cents). Article with values [1], which I rounded to millidollars. I'd bet people would rather keep dimes than quarters, but rounding everything to quarters is a big step. I certainly would prefer quarters --- it's been a long time since arcade machines took dimes, and I only have quarter mechs (most of my games are on free play, and I can reuse the quarters I need forever, or add a credit button, but still). [1] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/heres-how-much-the-us-spends-on-minting-its-coins-and-cash/4193546/ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/...
TheJoeMan 1y ago
Quick, someone file a trademark for “Take a Quarter, Leave a Quarter”
zer00eyz 1y ago
> It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. The problem: the dollar is almost global in its usage. The penny may not be important to the US, but it dam well is every where else where dollars are still in use frequently, along side, or in place of the local/native currency. Getting rid of the penny will have implications, getting rid of more coins would endanger the use of the dollar globally. There is still a large portion of the world where 100 dollar bill and a Rolex will get you home safely.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  There are also plenty of places where flashing a 100 dollar bill and a Rolex will ensure you don't get home at all.
- diogocp 1y ago
  Approximately nobody uses US coins outside the US. Even in countries where the dollar is widely accepted, trying to use coins will get you weird looks at best.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  In what part of the world do they use US pennies? The US currency system sure. But pennies, specifically?
  - zahlman 1y ago
    Before Canada stopped using its penny, it was common to find American pennies in circulation. It's still fairly common to find American nickels, quarters and dimes in circulation. (Probably mostly dimes if I had to guess.) They're generally accepted at par because nobody is even really looking at them and if they did it wouldn't really represent being, well, short-changed.
    - whycome 1y ago
      I’ve found that self-checkouts in Canada are a great way to get rid of piles of change. You can pretty much dump it in. Curiously, it will reject all the US coins and spit them back out.
wat10000 1y ago
It's a little silly. The smallest denomination the US has ever had was a half cent. In terms of relative purchasing power, it was more valuable than a dime is today. The country didn't collapse.
firefax 1y ago
>I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. Let's do it like Japan does, only one type of currency. And that currency will be the penny. One dollar note? No buddy... that's a one hundred cent note now. We may or may not continue to mint one dollar coins (previously one cent coins), but everything will make... cents. (I guess this style of humor is better delivered verbally?)
- toast0 1y ago
  JPY has the benefit that people probably don't try to use floating point numbers for currency. (ignoring the central joke of your comment)
- extraduder_ire 1y ago
  The sen still exists. There's even a few 50 sen coins still floating around.
mathgradthrow 1y ago
Nothing avoids rounding.
Babkock 1y ago
Some people are poor. Did you know that? Some people live in poverty. I'm sure that is a big surprise to you. Some Americans still have to spend nickels and dimes. Crazy, right? Some people don't have infinite Bitcoin from mommy and daddy.
- BenjiWiebe 1y ago
  I'm in favor of keeping dimes. However, to put it into perspective, a dime is only 50 seconds of labor at Kansas' minimum wage ($7.25/hr). It's hard to find a situation where a dime truly makes much difference. And remember the rounding. You won't always lose 10c just because dimes don't exist.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  Some people are poor. What about it? Removing a coin doesn't change the average price people pay for things. Think about doing it the other way. Would bringing back the half penny help poor people?
mulmen 1y ago
I’d like to see an estimation of how often coinage is actually used. I play a lot of pinball so I handle quarters frequently but I can’t really think of what I do with the smaller denominations except collect them in a jar. I wouldn’t mind having larger coin denominations though. Dollar and five dollar coins would be very convenient.
RobotToaster 1y ago
Why is everyone talking about rounding? I've read there's enough pennies in bank vaults to last for years.
ayaros 1y ago
While minting this currency the government continues to nickel and dime the American people.
dec0dedab0de 1y ago
i want them to make coins for all the current bills, and expand bills to higher amounts. Cash has not kept up with inflation.
mattmaroon 1y ago
Governments should simply put a cap on credit card merchant fees of half a percent or something like that, which I’m pretty sure is what they do in other countries. Problem solved.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  Good luck getting anything like that to pass here though!
waynecochran 1y ago
Also, we can store 1/4 exactly in binary, but not 1/100, 1/20, or 1/10. So that solves another problem.
jrussino 1y ago
> Quarters can stay, for now. I'd say just drop the second decimal place and have dimes and half-dollar coins.
thescriptkiddie 1y ago
also bring back the 50-cent piece, eliminate the redundant dollar bill, and replace the 2 dollar bill with a new 2 dollar coin
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
So lets just adopt low overhead (read cheap) wireless QR-based payments like China has? Is there really a good reason to do cash anymore? We don't have to choose between expensive credit cards and cash, there are other solutions out there that are taking over the rest of the world.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  The big reason is less government traceability and surveillance. People like cash, we don't need everything to be digital and easily controlled. The fact that China does it doesn't really give me a lot of confidence that it's necessarily an awesome idea.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    It’s not just China though, it’s almost every country going through a cashless transition at this point, so if it is awesome idea in Chad and Laos as well as Sweden and Australia, what does it mean elsewhere? Are we the only country that is rich enough to avoid a transition? The biggest issue in the states is that given a choice, the cash holdout businesses become increasing larger targets for theft (eg marijuana dispensaries in the Seattle area) as other businesses opt out.
epistasis 1y ago
Your proposal lacks common cents! (Which I fully agree with) I'd like to get a dollar coin that is distinctive enough to not be confused with the quarter. Last time I got change for cash, the cashier mistook a dollar coin for a quarter when giving me coins.
EasyMark 1y ago
I don't want people using cards more, as I don't want a cashless society. Government knows enough about it, why make it easier? I'm find with getting rid of pennies and nickles though, we can do that.
k2enemy 1y ago
It is a misconception that credit card rewards are a transfer of wealth from poor to rich: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/credit-card-rewards-interchange/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/credit-card-r...
nixpulvis 1y ago
Get rid of the nickel, dime, and quarter. Increase the 1/2 dollar and dollar coins, and add new 2, and 5 dollar coins.
jacquesm 1y ago
So why would you drive to increase that choke hold? Cash is the way for small retailers to allow people who have very little money to stay away from the lure of easy credit. If you force them to use cards they will lose track of their spending completely and that will surely not help.
sschueller 1y ago
Quarters don't make sense to me. We don't have $25 notes either why should be have 25c coins?
- bloak 1y ago
  I don't know the history of it but I noticed that the currency of the Netherlands, before they switched to the euro, consistently used quarters: Coins: 0.05, 0.10, 0.25, 1, 2.5, 5 Bank notes: 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 OK, there seems to be a gap there, but no coin or bank note is worth 2 * 10^X. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder Is there another currency that consistently prefers 2.5 * 10^X to 2 * 10^X?
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
Make a dollar coin, the size of a current-half-dollar. Make a half-dollar coin, the size of the current quarter. Make a quarter, the size of the current dime. Get rid of all other coins. Also remove the $1.00 bill. Start using $2.00 bills (as smallest cash) and stock ATMs with $50 and $10 bills. Create a new $1000.00 note. ---- [not actually] fun fact: removal of the penny results in more nickels being minted, which will actually result in a net-cost for removing penny from circulation.
DoctorOW 1y ago
> I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. Counterpoint: Get rid of nickels and quarters. In the digital age, it's far more practical to round to the nearest $0.1 than $0.05.

datadrivenangel 1y ago

But add a $3.50 coin so that we can strongly incentivize coffee to stay below a certain price.

rustystump 1y ago
Also for the memes…
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  It would be exceedingly funny is 75% of the value. Maybe make it be a $3.33 coin?
- binarymax 1y ago
  $0.67 coin is on the way
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    $0.666. Half the population would think it's the mark of the beast, the other half rounds up to 6-7.
    - redfern314 1y ago
      and the third half of the population thinks it's egregious that a repeating fraction has been truncated!
- balamatom 1y ago
  It's worth about $2.70
quijoteuniv 1y ago
Just take a zero out of everything and change the name from dollar to something else!
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  *dllar*
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - edm0nd 1y ago
    dolla
- forinti 1y ago
  US Peso
- Galacta7 1y ago
  Night City eurodollars?
- cpeterso 1y ago
  Decadollars 100 dollars = 10 decadollars
- wffurr 1y ago
  USA Fun Ticket
- RobotToaster 1y ago
  There used to be a $10 coin called an eagle, may as well be violently American and call it eagles.
- dennis_jeeves2 1y ago
  Old trick. The last I checked about 10+ countries have done it.
binarymax 1y ago
My local just went from $3.50 to $4 this week :(
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
  Gourmet high-end Keurig pods are like $0.50 each. Make your own coffee.
  - drivebyhooting 1y ago
    I wonder if the gourmet high end plastic ends up in the brew.
    - wffurr 1y ago
      It pairs wonderfully with all the plastic in your water.
    - sugarpimpdorsey 1y ago
      As opposed to the plastic pipes your water runs through, the plastic water filter, plastic coffee maker, and plastic travel mug you pour it into?
      - drivebyhooting 1y ago
        I usually don’t run high pressure boiling water through my plastic pipes.
  - 0_____0 1y ago
    If you go through coffee regularly, it's actually quite a nice thing to invest in. There are a really amazing number of craft roasters throughout the country, and simply having a quality grinder is enough. And you don't need a crazy espresso setup to enjoy it. My setup consists of a motorized flat burr grinder, a 20$ kettle from target, and a pour over funnel. The quality is so much higher than anything you can get from a pod that's been sitting around with pre ground coffee, and it only takes a couple minutes while you're waiting for Claude to rewrite your codebase in Rust or whatever it is "Hackers" do these days
jimbokun 1y ago
One of the things I admire most about Italy is how they have held the line on the price of an espresso. It’s still just slightly over €1 if you drink it standing at the bar. They really have their priorities straight when it comes to food and drink prices.
- sgerenser 1y ago
  So they charge more for an espresso if you want to drink it seated? Or take it away?
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    It costs more to drink it seated. I don’t think I ever took away a coffee during any of my vacations in Italy, and very rarely so anyone else doing so, either. Either drinking it standing at the bar or seated at a table.
jabbany 1y ago
I know this is supposed to be a joke but... businesses have pushed for this the other way around in the past, asking for a new coin to raise prices. > The Coca-Cola Company sought ways to increase the five cent price, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_1886_to_1959 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_...]
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  The wikipedia article says that this was specifically the price of a 6.5oz Coke. The obvious way to raise the price by 50% is to cut the amount by a third, selling 4.33oz Cokes. https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/cocacola_bottle_sizes_1950s1960s/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/coca... suggests that Coca-Cola was comfortable producing bottles in several different sizes. Now, a 4 1/3 oz Coke is obviously too small to be worth bothering with. But that's also true of a 6 1/2 oz Coke. These sizes seem more like something you dispense with an eyedropper than something you drink. A normal can is 12 oz! Who'd want to buy a six-ounce beverage? You can address both problems at once by doubling the price and increasing the volume all the way up to 8.67 oz.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    When I was a kid, most sodas had a short can size of 8oz available, good for "lunches" and similar. Funny story, Coca Cola just announced thin 7.5oz cans last month, to be available in January. Shrinkflation is often done by phasing out an old size, often by jacking up the price first to aid the sales of the "family size" version on its way out, and then introducing a "New" size that's just a bit smaller.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      When I was a kid, there already weren't 8oz cans. But even if there had been, an 8oz can is 23% bigger than a 6.5oz bottle. 6.5oz is ludicrously small. How did that become a commercial size in the first place? As far as I can tell, a juice box today is 6.75oz, but you buy them in bulk and they're not actually large enough to be good for a small child's lunch.

JJMcJ 1y ago

The last time a coin was dropped was the half penny in the late 1850s, when I think it was worth about 25 cents today, so there is a precedent for what you are suggesting.

EvanAnderson 1y ago
CCP Grey has a nice video and discusses the precedent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U

jjk7 1y ago

Only if the increased revenue from rounding doesn't go into retailers pockets but rather is redistributed somehow. i.e. to reduce sales tax

jrochkind1 1y ago

A noticeable number of places around me in an urban area in the USA already now have signs up saying they won't make any coin change at all! Pay with a card, or exact change, or they'll round up to the dollar keep the difference. Sometimes the sign says "due to the penny shortage" and has been up for a year or whatever, I dunno. But they aren't just not giving you pennies in your change, they are refusing any coins in your change. I am curious as to the motivation, I could guess but it's not obvious to me. They will still take coins as payment, just not give them as change.

jjmarr 1y ago
You can either put payments into the register or the safe. If it goes into the safe, it's nearly impossible to steal because there's a time lock preventing the cashier from accessing it. But you can't make change. This means you have a optimization problem to have the minimum possible cash in the register to meet all change needs. Eliminating denominations makes the optimization problem easier, if nothing else.
- jrochkind1 1y ago
  I wouldn't think there is enough coinage in a register to be interesting as a theft target, but i don't know! I think they would still make bill change, but maybe I misunderstood, sure. Next time I see one I'll use cash to find out!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

darth_avocado 1y ago

If the Pennies go away, you can no longer get things for pennies on the dollar.

droptablemain 1y ago
The famous little jingle "shave and a haircut, two bits" Most people today have no clue what a "bit" is. I imagine the future will hold something similar for the penny in all the idioms and cultural phrases we have. What the hell is a penny?
- barbazoo 1y ago
  What is a bit, a penny?
  - dec0dedab0de 1y ago
    1/8, so 2 bits is a quarter. it comes from old spanish coins that they would cut into eight pieces, or bits. I learned that after watching one of the pirates of the Caribbean movies and googling pieces of eight.
    - retrocog 1y ago
      THIS exactly and oops, I replied too quickly :)
  - patrickthebold 1y ago
    Half a quarter.
- retrocog 1y ago
  Exactly. Two bits is a quarter because the US silver dollar was modeled on the Spanish Pillar Dollar, also called pieces of eight. Hence 2/8 (two bits) = 1/4.
- fstarship 1y ago
  It’s kind of like lots of imperial measurements where we use metric still have these in idioms.

nerdsniper 1y ago

The half-penny was discontinued in 1857. Adjusted for inflation it was worth 37 cents in todays money when it was discontinued.

cft 1y ago

And hell, put Bank of Zimbabwe on the bills.

Night_Thastus 1y ago
I don't like inflation either. The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks and a lot of pretending that it doesn't cause issues in the long run. But it's here to stay, nothing we can do about it.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > The fact that it's 'normal' or 'required for growth' to me sounds like economic bollocks Please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoDKqlcR4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoDKqlcR4Y

b112 1y ago

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. And the math seems fair enough: https://www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/theme2-info-eng.html https://www.budget.canada.ca/2012/themes/theme2-info-eng.htm... Basically, if something is $1.01 or $1.02, you round down. If it's $1.03 or $1.04, you round up. Rounding is to be applied after all taxes are paid, etc. Of course, there was also central guidance and, well, everyone just followed it. It's called "having a society". People blathering on about stores fixing the rounding are morons, there's no way to do so if you buy more than one item. No one gets ripped off with the above method. In the end, it just works out. And really, who cares?! It's a penny.

ryanmcbride 1y ago
Rounding is such a weird boogeyman to me because people are like "the companies are just going to use it to get more money from the customers" but, they're doing that anyway. They don't need this excuse to raise prices they'll just do it anyway. Same thing when people complain that raising minimum wage will increase prices, meanwhile prices have increased for 50 years completely separate from wages. They don't need the excuse to raise prices they're just gonna do it anyway. If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation, but regulation is communism and therefore bad. I'm so god damn tired.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 542458 1y ago
  > If they want companies to not raise prices the only answer is regulation Or competition. Consumer electronics are much cheaper than they were in the past, and that's not because of regulation. (To be clear, I'm not saying that regulation is wrong or anything, I'm saying that "use regulation to lower prices" and "remove barriers to competition to lower prices" are both tools in the toolbox.

toast0 1y ago

Nickles are likely to go shortly after. You can do everything you can with nickles with dimes and quarters, nickles have worse economics than pennies, and have had their minting suppressed below the market needs for years. Once pennies leave circulation, the problems with nickles will become urgent and they'll quickly leave. Dimes are small and cheap to make though, so they'll probably stick around.

axiolite 1y ago
It's impractical to eliminate the nickel and penny, while keeping the quarter and dime. The most practical way forward is to keep only the dime, but people will be quite upset about the loss of the quarter.
- toast0 1y ago
  It might be a little bit cumbersome, but I don't think it's impractical. With only quarters and dimes it's difficult to pay $0.05 or $0.15, but it's possible. If I owe you $0.05, I must give you a quarter and you give me two dimes. Or I give you a $20, you give me $19 in paper money, three quarters and two dimes. If I owe you $0.15, I must give you a quarter and you give me one dime. If I owe you $0.95, I can't give you $1 and get change, I'd need to give you $1.25 and get three dimes back. Or give you $2, get three quarters and three dimes. Owing $19.95 or $19.85 would be most inconvenient, since many people seem to live life with only $20 bills in their wallet and there would be a lot of extra change required. But, if we stopped minting pennies because they cost too much (3.7 cents), it's hard to imagine we're going to keep producing nickels when they cost 13.8 cents to mint. Dimes are much cheaper than nickels (5.8 cents), and quarters aren't too bad relative to face value (14.7 cents). Article with values [1], which I rounded to millidollars. I'd bet people would rather keep dimes than quarters, but rounding everything to quarters is a big step. I certainly would prefer quarters --- it's been a long time since arcade machines took dimes, and I only have quarter mechs (most of my games are on free play, and I can reuse the quarters I need forever, or add a credit button, but still). [1] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/heres-how-much-the-us-spends-on-minting-its-coins-and-cash/4193546/ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/...

TheJoeMan 1y ago

Quick, someone file a trademark for “Take a Quarter, Leave a Quarter”

zer00eyz 1y ago

> It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. The problem: the dollar is almost global in its usage. The penny may not be important to the US, but it dam well is every where else where dollars are still in use frequently, along side, or in place of the local/native currency. Getting rid of the penny will have implications, getting rid of more coins would endanger the use of the dollar globally. There is still a large portion of the world where 100 dollar bill and a Rolex will get you home safely.

zdragnar 1y ago
There are also plenty of places where flashing a 100 dollar bill and a Rolex will ensure you don't get home at all.
diogocp 1y ago
Approximately nobody uses US coins outside the US. Even in countries where the dollar is widely accepted, trying to use coins will get you weird looks at best.
Night_Thastus 1y ago
In what part of the world do they use US pennies? The US currency system sure. But pennies, specifically?
- zahlman 1y ago
  Before Canada stopped using its penny, it was common to find American pennies in circulation. It's still fairly common to find American nickels, quarters and dimes in circulation. (Probably mostly dimes if I had to guess.) They're generally accepted at par because nobody is even really looking at them and if they did it wouldn't really represent being, well, short-changed.
  - whycome 1y ago
    I’ve found that self-checkouts in Canada are a great way to get rid of piles of change. You can pretty much dump it in. Curiously, it will reject all the US coins and spit them back out.

wat10000 1y ago

It's a little silly. The smallest denomination the US has ever had was a half cent. In terms of relative purchasing power, it was more valuable than a dime is today. The country didn't collapse.

firefax 1y ago

>I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. Let's do it like Japan does, only one type of currency. And that currency will be the penny. One dollar note? No buddy... that's a one hundred cent note now. We may or may not continue to mint one dollar coins (previously one cent coins), but everything will make... cents. (I guess this style of humor is better delivered verbally?)

toast0 1y ago
JPY has the benefit that people probably don't try to use floating point numbers for currency. (ignoring the central joke of your comment)
extraduder_ire 1y ago
The sen still exists. There's even a few 50 sen coins still floating around.

mathgradthrow 1y ago

Nothing avoids rounding.

Babkock 1y ago

Some people are poor. Did you know that? Some people live in poverty. I'm sure that is a big surprise to you. Some Americans still have to spend nickels and dimes. Crazy, right? Some people don't have infinite Bitcoin from mommy and daddy.

BenjiWiebe 1y ago
I'm in favor of keeping dimes. However, to put it into perspective, a dime is only 50 seconds of labor at Kansas' minimum wage ($7.25/hr). It's hard to find a situation where a dime truly makes much difference. And remember the rounding. You won't always lose 10c just because dimes don't exist.
Dylan16807 1y ago
Some people are poor. What about it? Removing a coin doesn't change the average price people pay for things. Think about doing it the other way. Would bringing back the half penny help poor people?

mulmen 1y ago

I’d like to see an estimation of how often coinage is actually used. I play a lot of pinball so I handle quarters frequently but I can’t really think of what I do with the smaller denominations except collect them in a jar. I wouldn’t mind having larger coin denominations though. Dollar and five dollar coins would be very convenient.

RobotToaster 1y ago

Why is everyone talking about rounding? I've read there's enough pennies in bank vaults to last for years.

ayaros 1y ago

While minting this currency the government continues to nickel and dime the American people.

dec0dedab0de 1y ago

i want them to make coins for all the current bills, and expand bills to higher amounts. Cash has not kept up with inflation.

mattmaroon 1y ago

Governments should simply put a cap on credit card merchant fees of half a percent or something like that, which I’m pretty sure is what they do in other countries. Problem solved.

Night_Thastus 1y ago
Good luck getting anything like that to pass here though!

waynecochran 1y ago

Also, we can store 1/4 exactly in binary, but not 1/100, 1/20, or 1/10. So that solves another problem.

jrussino 1y ago

> Quarters can stay, for now. I'd say just drop the second decimal place and have dimes and half-dollar coins.

thescriptkiddie 1y ago

also bring back the 50-cent piece, eliminate the redundant dollar bill, and replace the 2 dollar bill with a new 2 dollar coin

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

So lets just adopt low overhead (read cheap) wireless QR-based payments like China has? Is there really a good reason to do cash anymore? We don't have to choose between expensive credit cards and cash, there are other solutions out there that are taking over the rest of the world.

EasyMark 1y ago
The big reason is less government traceability and surveillance. People like cash, we don't need everything to be digital and easily controlled. The fact that China does it doesn't really give me a lot of confidence that it's necessarily an awesome idea.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  It’s not just China though, it’s almost every country going through a cashless transition at this point, so if it is awesome idea in Chad and Laos as well as Sweden and Australia, what does it mean elsewhere? Are we the only country that is rich enough to avoid a transition? The biggest issue in the states is that given a choice, the cash holdout businesses become increasing larger targets for theft (eg marijuana dispensaries in the Seattle area) as other businesses opt out.

epistasis 1y ago

Your proposal lacks common cents! (Which I fully agree with) I'd like to get a dollar coin that is distinctive enough to not be confused with the quarter. Last time I got change for cash, the cashier mistook a dollar coin for a quarter when giving me coins.

EasyMark 1y ago

I don't want people using cards more, as I don't want a cashless society. Government knows enough about it, why make it easier? I'm find with getting rid of pennies and nickles though, we can do that.

k2enemy 1y ago

It is a misconception that credit card rewards are a transfer of wealth from poor to rich: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/credit-card-rewards-interchange/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/credit-card-r...

nixpulvis 1y ago

Get rid of the nickel, dime, and quarter. Increase the 1/2 dollar and dollar coins, and add new 2, and 5 dollar coins.

jacquesm 1y ago

So why would you drive to increase that choke hold? Cash is the way for small retailers to allow people who have very little money to stay away from the lure of easy credit. If you force them to use cards they will lose track of their spending completely and that will surely not help.

sschueller 1y ago

Quarters don't make sense to me. We don't have $25 notes either why should be have 25c coins?

bloak 1y ago
I don't know the history of it but I noticed that the currency of the Netherlands, before they switched to the euro, consistently used quarters: Coins: 0.05, 0.10, 0.25, 1, 2.5, 5 Bank notes: 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 OK, there seems to be a gap there, but no coin or bank note is worth 2 * 10^X. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder Is there another currency that consistently prefers 2.5 * 10^X to 2 * 10^X?

ProllyInfamous 1y ago

Make a dollar coin, the size of a current-half-dollar. Make a half-dollar coin, the size of the current quarter. Make a quarter, the size of the current dime. Get rid of all other coins. Also remove the $1.00 bill. Start using $2.00 bills (as smallest cash) and stock ATMs with $50 and $10 bills. Create a new $1000.00 note. ---- [not actually] fun fact: removal of the penny results in more nickels being minted, which will actually result in a net-cost for removing penny from circulation.

DoctorOW 1y ago

> I'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. Counterpoint: Get rid of nickels and quarters. In the digital age, it's far more practical to round to the nearest $0.1 than $0.05.