Is the Cent Wothless?

Nothing wrong with telling the truth...

 

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I agree, it's not that complicated...but it would make it a whole lot simpler if it was included on the price tag. This way, people who live in places were taxing is different (such as no sales tax states or foreign countries) or those who find the calculation hard don't have to worry about it. Let me give you an example, I live in Oregon...the land of no sales tax. Washington to the north and California to the south both have sales tax. Yes, I am smart enough to calculate the tax in my head when I travel there...but I have no idea what the tax rates in those states are. It seems like it would be very simple to just print it on the label.

 

Sales tax is not charged on each item, but rather on the total purchase price of all taxable items bought. The two values might be different, with the sales tax calculated on the total being more accurate.

There are many items with the price marked on the package. It would be cumbersome (and more expensive for the consumer) to have manufacturers have to mark different prices on the same item in different states.

Paul

 

Fabricating cost for the clad strip is much higher and the die life is lower so more dies are needed to make the same number of coins. Also the mint has to figure in wear and tear on the blanking equipment. (Yes the wear and tear on the blanking equipment is figured into the price of the cent planchets as well, but the clad material is harder on the equipment so costs are higher.) This results in higher cost per coin.

A point I've made for years. We always compalin about the ugly low relief on our coins. It IS possible o have higher relief coins again, all you have to do is eliminate the cent. Then you can turn all that surplus capacity over to production of the other coins. With that many more presses turning them out you can run them at a slower speed and still make as many coins as before, but with the slower speed there is now more time for metal flow and higher relief becomes possible.

 

I hardly doubt that costs are higher on the dime than a penny but that it's triple the cost is an exercise in creative accounting. A cent die can average about 1 1/2 million strikes now and a dime only about half of this. You might even figure a third since they are changing dies a little more often now days. Even if you figure it costs $1000 for a die (this has to be way too high) the cost per coin is a mere .2c. The cost of cent dies needs to be subtracted here. Blanking dies have to be far cheaper.

Dimes should be a little cheaper to handle due to their smaller size and lower weight.

I suspect if you add in the real costs of making pennies that the cost is actually higher. Much of the payroll is going to employees who are responsible for some aspect of penny production and the die shop wouldn't have been necessary without the need for thousands of cent dies each year. They spend half their effort making a coin that's less than worthless and transfer the costs of this onto higher denominations.

Of course now they're geared to making 20 billion coins a year and if they stop the cent then there's huge idle capacity and this will dramatically affect the costs of the other coins. But this could be mitigated in many ways and the bottom line was, is, and will remain that pennies are a senseless waste of time and resources.

It was one of your posts that I got this idea. Thanks. I'm sure you're right.

 

And also add in taxes, if a dollar is passed 17 times in PA, they collect $1.02 in taxes, and most dollars last longer than that. Pennies are passed thousands of times, after it is passed 2000 times, they have collected $12.00 just in state taxes on one cent!

 

Most cents are just passed a couple of times before they get dumped into a box or jar someplace and are removed from circulation, possibly for years. Today it would probably take decades before it trades hands enough times to earn that $12 in taxes, and it takes 20,000 passes not 2000.

 

oops, off by a factor of 10. Cents used to circulate much more. you don't see many highly worn memorial cents

 

i dont think the cent is worthless, i still find myself using it everyday

 

totally

 

in a theory of how much people use it, i use it all the time and it should not be eliminated