There are more of them circulating in the USA than in Canada these days because the RCM is actively removing them from circulation. The only people in the USA pulling them from circulation are fools like me.
Include me in the fools list. Canadian cents and all the 1983D Lincolns, especially since that last copper one found.
As a young boy with a paper route I made one cent per newspaper. The daily paper cost a nickel and Sunday was 25 cents, of which a nickel was mine. At the time a cent was worth something. All of the neighborhood stores had penny candy and candy bars sold for a nickel. Now it is tough to find one for less than a buck. Sad.
I can relate to that. I sold the "Grit" newspaper, a weekly out of Pa. I had 35 customers and kept 3 cents per paper back in the 60's. It would buy me five 12 cent comic books and rest was for penny candy. I thought I was king of the hill!
It's been quite a few decades since I was a young boy, and I have no idea what paper boys earn today, but certainly more than a cent.
I think we've missed the window for that. Image processing, sensors and machine learning have progressed a lot faster than the technologies for electronic implants. Why require people to get a chip, when your systems can just recognize them -- from their face, from their fingerprints, from their walk, from the patterns of warmth under their skin, from the sound of their voice, from the smell of their breath, or the taste of the DNA in their stray skin flakes.
You're missing my point. If I pay with a credit card, the store gets socked with a transaction fee plus a percentage off the top; for a very small purchase, they may actually lose money. But the credit-card cartel prevents them from passing that cost directly through to the customer, or even setting a lower limit on the size of credit-card transactions. (Yes, some merchants do it, but they're non-compliant and could be busted for it.) So: do I pay cash, selflessly helping to keep costs down for my fellow man (maybe -- still not sure about the marginal cost of handling cash)? Or do I use my charge card, which gives me 1% back plus a bunch of price and warranty protections (at a 2% or so cost to the merchant)?
The merchant cannot add the cost as a separate surcharge, so they just raise the price to cover the card company's charge.
But not on a per-transaction basis. For any given transaction, I pay the same price whether I use the card or cash.
Yes, you do. Like I said, life is not fair. Most people pay with cards. Cash payers are a minority. Majority rules. Live with it.
The store's prices are set to cover all costs and fees for each product, including your "very small purchase." They don't lose if a card is used, and they actually make money on your cash purchase.