Much the same thing they do now when someone buys 3.22 lb of ground beef at $3.99/lb. They will round, up or down according to the nearest multiple of five, or ten, or twenty-five, or 100 cents.
Math is hard.... I think that is pretty clear, as an inference, don't you? Or are you one of the lucky people that buy 5,000 gallon tankers at an even $1.00 a gallon, all in? Hint: 5,000 X 1 = 5,000. Or, do you buy in 3/10 multiples and use an abacus?
Really? Then your Butcher is probably cheating you. Or, are you one of the fellows that belong to the club that thinks it is a great idea to steal from the financial entity by "rounding off" the excess Cent transactions, at the end of the day? The point is, I think you miss the point. I suspect that you would be a wildcat in a store that was off 3 cents when they charge you, or stand at the gas pump perfecting your finger stroke on the trigger, to sllllooowwwwwllllyyy ,so slllooowllyy until the 1/10th thingy lines up jjjuuuuussssstttt right with the Cents, as long as the Cents on the total don't end in a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9, because, well, now the total is $23.76 and that is irritating to you, so just sqeeeeezzzzeeee that trigger a liiiitttle bit more, and....krap, it ends up on 3. So...... Finally! Got it to come out right! But now, OCD test is in effect, because the number of gallons don't add up without 1/10s. and....
The mods sure did have a lot of fun with this oneI'm always late to the party which is a good thing I guess.
I'm not sure how I could make that any clearer. I have no idea what your point is -- at this point, at least.
Is the Cent on life support any more than the Nickel? The Nickel has Copper in it. Copper has gone up in price. I'm sure it costs more to produce a Nickel now than it is worth. And the paper dollars too, as someone mentioned above. Don't those also cost more to keep circulated than they are worth? The US Mint is a self-supporting government entity. It makes a whole lot of profit from the collectors items that it sells, and that supports the cost of producing the circulation money - the coins and the paper notes. Things that are broken get fixed. Things that aren't broken, don't get fixed. Especially in government. The Mint is a government entity that isn't broken and will therefore not get fixed, even if certain parts of it should get tweaked in our opinion - like cents, paper dollars, etc. The only reason the cent got tweaked in 1982 was because of the sudden and extreme rise in the cost of copper in the late 1970's coupled with the fact that the Mint did not produce or sell 1/4 of the collectors items back then compared to what they produce and sell now. So they couldn't sustain the sudden, extreme price difference in one of their circulation coins. Not that they could necessarily sustain it now. I don't know either way. Ask the Comptroller of the US Mint. But in my humble opinion, unless there is another sudden and extreme rise in the cost of one of the main materials that cents are made of, I doubt they will pull the cent. But that's just my humble opinion. There are lots of other opinions out there, but it's all speculation.
I've read where the proposed shift towards solar and electric power will push copper prices even higher. At the very least, changes to the nickel's composition will most likely occur. I can't find it now, but a while back I was reading some legislation where it says that the Mint "shall produce coins in support of commerce". $100 "could" be the lowest denomination currency, but that would mean everyone would have to buy products in $100 increments. Pricing competition would be in volume instead of price. That might be fine for buying a car, but not so much if you're buying something like "toothpicks". Few people need $100 worth of toothpicks at any one time. This is why we produce coins...in support of commerce. Meaning, their value has a specific commercial purpose. Inflation has rendered the lower denominations worthless for commerce. There's nothing you can buy anymore for 1¢, 5¢, or even 10¢. Even a gumball costs a quarter today. The bottom line is...we're creating coins that no longer support commerce. I wish I could find that reference again. I believe it creates the requirement for a redenomination of our coinage.
That's an excellent point. One could argue that the cent impedes commerce, slowing cash transactions as people waste time counting or gathering them. Not to mention creating litter.
That's pretty easy to do really simply by looking at the past inflationary cycles. We've sure had a lot of them and there's no reason to think those current or yet to come will be any different precisely because of everything that has already happened. They've been trying to get rid of the cent for almost 50 years now. And it was the inflation of the 70's that caused the composition change in '82. And in just recent years they were looking at composition change for the nickel, for the same basic reasons. My point is, we've been here and done all this before going clear back to the half cent and the trime ! And nothing ever changes until one of two things happen. The people voice their willingness to accept the change, or the government simply forces it upon them leaving them no choice in the matter.
