What Would Occur If The United States Only Minted Cents Every 3 Years?

Because the cent costs more to mint than its face value, but will not be done away with, what would happen if it was only minted every 3 years? Would hoarded cents come out or would people hoard more? Or what other outcomes?

What would happen?

 

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I don't think much would happen. Since the majority of the cents I get in change are over 3 years old...I don't think we would see much of a difference.

 

What if the mint never made another coin? How soon would we notice?

 

Perhaps we would put postage stamps in small round containers and use them for change

 

I would guess that they would continue to mint the coins each day and only change the year every three years. Otherwise, they would have to upgrade their coin presses and layoff their cent people for two out of every three years. I'm not a big fan of ending the cent like our northern neighbors. If we make 10 billion cents a year and it costs two cents to make, the cent would cost $100 million for the US government. The US GPD is about $15 trillion. The cost of the cent would be 0.000067% of the GDP. It is my opinion that the removal of the cent will have more of an impact on inflation than on its cost to the US. Plus, I started in this hobby by collecting pennies and don't want to see them go away.

 

+++++++++1111111

 

If you agree, I think +1 is more appropriate.

 

Three months into the first year of no production there will be cent shortages. But four to five months banks and businesses will be offering premiums for cents. By six to seven months businesses will be switching over to rounding to the nearest five cent on their own without it being official. Requests for cents by businesses from the banks drop and the premiums offered disappear. Before the end of the year every or nearly every business will be rounding. During the second year of no production everyone is rounding and it becomes firmly established as accepted practice. The next year production starts again but with no businesses requesting cents, no banks order cents. With no banks ordering cents, the Fed does not request cents from the mint. Fairly quickly the mint has plenty of cents on hand and production stops again because they can't get rid of them. With no orders there is no reason to ever start production up again.

 

And exactly the reason for an uptick in inflation. You can bet that most will round up. Of course, it will level off in the outgoing years.

 

The one and only reason our goverment likes us is because we are sooooo willing to pay more by dropping the cents and rounding it off to the higher numbers.
We all complain if gas goes up a few pennys but we are all for doing away with our penny and asking others to just pay more.
As for me a penny is a penny and i earn each one of them to make a dollar.
When your boss pays you do you think if your pay is 359.21 cent he will give you 359.25 cents.
You will get the less not the more so why would you want to pay more on everything you buy?

 

Only if they don't use cash registers. Most modern digital registers already have the software in them to round to the nearest five cents. (up and down) Now if you don't use those settings then on every transaction you get to stare the customer in the eye and ask for a higher price than is shown on the register which they can see. And then explain why you are asking for more money than the register says. Great way to get return customers.

OK, so you will adjust your prices so it will always round up. Good luck with that. Since the rounding happens after the sales taxes are applied I don't know how you are going to set your prices so that no matter how many or what mix of products your customer buys, after the taxes are applied it will always round up. Now if you totaled everything up so you could figure out how much you would have to add so that with taxes the rounding would always be up. How do you explain that extra item on the register tape? Extra so total will round up?

So maybe you just raise your prices so that even if it were to always round down you would still make the same amount. Fine I'll keep my prices where they are, undercut my competitors, and take away their business. Sorry but "always rounding up" is not going to happen. And if you just use the built in rounding the ups will average out with the downs and it will average out to no change. So no inflation bump.

 

OK, I stand corrected. Everyone that sells will round up. Everyone that owes you including employers, investment companies, etc. will round down. Some how, it will lead to inflation with less money to buy stuff with.

 

Lately, every now and then; like once or twice every other week, I receive wheat backs in change. So I don't think there would be much difference.

 

With the billions of coins minted, why would the shortages happen so fast?

 

Because of people like you and me who take them out of circulation and save them

 

Here's my question....they mint tens of billions of cents yearly. People don't use them. So, where are they? Attrition may account for a miniscule percentage, but overall, there should be trillions of cents just lying around somewhere, more than enough to last hundreds of years, if not longer. So, why don't the numbers add up and just why would there be a shortage when there should be enough cents for every person in this country to be a millionaire several times over?
Guy

 

So, if the Mint only minted cents every 3 years, would John and Jane Doe Public break out the jar of cents?