Okay, it's not MY mint. I'm second generation American. My father's parents were from Belgium. Apparently the Belgium mint will no longer be striking Euros for their country starting 1 January 2018. They'll farm that job out to the lowest bidder and sell off their equipment. Hmmmm, Euros struck in the US THAT would be -- interesting.
Cease production of the cent and use that capacity to mint coinage for other countries. Really I just want to finally close my small cent albums; they are all full until the new year rolls around.
I know there's been a push to discontinue the One Cent coin, but I've often wondered what the computer programming would be like used to set up the algorithms that would round your total at the cash register up or down; I'm pretty sure it would not benefit the consumer. I managed a retail store when I was in college 45 years ago, and one of my tasks was to send a weekly financial report to the district office. I remember that I used a formula that reduced the amount of sales tax collected which was then used, obviously, in reporting taxes collected to the state. This figure was, typically, large enough to make it a profitable practice; who knows just how much unreported income resulted? It could have been thousands per month for each district. Obviously these algorithms, once the penny is gone, are going to be rounding down to benefit the business, not the consumer, in much the same way. Eventually the wiser money types in business might go about structuring their prices to make for a natural round up to the next nickel. That'll keep the penny-pinchers like me at bay.
I don't know about anybody else, but I was taught how to round in elementary school. It's not rocket science, and it's not "unfair" to either party. I was going to say more, but I've said it before, and it's off-topic for the thread, so I'll hold my peace. I trust the Mint and the officials directing it to continue making nonsensical decisions, and I imagine we'll be littering with cents for many years to come.
They wouldn't install new machinery for counterfeiting . . . they're smarter than that. It's called "second shift", just like with all of the other goods they make with the tooling and machinery fronted by foreign manufacturers on Chinese soil.
Doubtful. There's a surplus of Euros being struck by all the other mints. All they have to do is import some from the rest of the Eurozone which was supposed to be the idea all along.
Not to go off topic but to address post # 6. Most people don't use cash anymore anyway. If you are using a debit or credit card the amount will stay the same. Rounding up or down to the nearest .05 or .10 can't cost you more than .02 cents in any one transaction, and there are times when you are going to benefit by 1 or 2 cents. By the end of the year you are not going to be plus or minus more or less than a quarter. And that is after hundreds of transactions. You can always put everything on a debit or credit card. The costs involved in minting, distributing etc. all these billions of cents are greater than any asset that can come out of it. It's a pointless denomination. How much money is paid in salaries? Machine maintenance and tooling? Creation of dies? Creation of new designs? Cost of metal? Cost of shipping? Utilities? The cent has outlived it's usefulness. Where, if all of this energy, work, and time were spent minting coins for other countries, there would be a profit involved on our side of the ledger. People have debated this point, but almost half a TRILLON cents have been produced since 1959. Enough to last for a long time before rounding is nec. without minting any new ones. As for the cheating tax algorithm, a good audit will take care of that.
No cease production and use the increased capacity to slow down the presses and restore some higher relief to the coins. Electronic cash registers have had the rounding programs built into them for over 30 years now. Just a matter of setting the switches to turn it on. You CAN do that, as long as you never sell more than one item at a time. Once you start selling multiple items it is impossible to always have it round up. Especially since the rounding is applied after the sales tax is applied. Oh you could increase all your prices a nickel higher on each item, but you competitor that doesn't will eat your lunch because it will always be cheaper to shop at his establishment.
It wouldn't be the first time a European coin was made in the USA. U.S. mint produced the 1944 Belgium 2-Franc coin using the same planchet as the 1943 U.S. steel cent.
