Minting Pennies

This has been an interesting discussion all except for the name calling of folks with a different opinion... what?... are we 12 year olds bickering over bubblegum?

 

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Interesting thought. But if you look at 1858, when the US no longer produced the half cent, the flying eagle cent went from 17,450,000 to 24,600,000 (an increase of about 41%) while the total half dime mintage went from 8,660,000 to 5,160,000 and dime mintage went from 7,120,000 to 1,890,000. I'm sure there are other factors in play, but it might contradict your assertion.

Looking at nickel production in Canada makes it hard to determine a trend/connection between cent and 5 cent production.
http://www.saskatooncoinclub.ca/articles/02_coin_mintages.html

It could very well be that I'm wrong on my assertion, but we won't know until it happens.

 

People would have used two half cents instead of a penny in many instances.

I suppose nickel production might increase for other reasons if the penny wee abolished. Some people probably use pennies as inexpensive washers and rather than switch to dimes they might use nickels. Some people might just like having coins around and if there were no pennies they'd switch to nickels.

My guess is it would have the opposite effect. The value of a gallon of coins would increase substantially so people might redeem them more often. This is difficult to predict though. Coins would build up more slowly in the home but the value per gallon would soar.

I believe all these considerations are irrelevant since it is simple madness to mint a coin that costs more to use and produce than it is worth. We spend billions every year just to keep the Brink's truck in tires and the rail cars on trucks.

 

I've always been a huge fan of throwing out trash and keeping anything useful until the last breath is out of it. Instead we made appliances that last a couple years until we throw them away still new and maintain a penny that is like a stinking albatross tied around the neck of the economy.

 

Part of the problem with rounding is sales tax. In Tucson the effective rate is 8.6 cents per dollar. Every business is on the hook for this (except on food) and so that means they will never round down.

 

Having lived in a country that had gotten rid of the penny and gone to rounding I can say you do get taken advantage of. If it was 2 cents or lower is was supposed to round down, 3 cents or higher round up. Credit cards had no rounding. But from my experiences there, most places still just rounded up with everything (cash related, credit cards weren’t as big of a problem). Now I’m sure most people are like “oh it’s just a penny or two, it’s fine” but it adds up. The system works as long as people use the system as intended and don’t take advantage. Which sadly, a lot of people do.

Just my two cents. Please don’t hurt me or call me uneducated names.

 

Odd. That is not how things work in NL for example. You can easily check that by looking at the cash register receipt. It will say "Totaal 13.84 - Kontant (cash) 13.85", or "Totaal 11.92 - Kontant 11.90". Pretty transparent, and no, it does not "add up" unless you always buy one single item and pay cash. In such a case, the threshold price (ending in 8 or 9) of a single item will also be the total price and rounded up to 0. But that sounds like a "constructed scenario" to me.

Christian

 

That's not what I was asking you to prove. This is what I was asking you to prove:

I was very careful to cut out the rest of your comments to ensure you knew I was asking you to prove that the primary reason the public was against it was rounding and them not believing it works. I do not believe you can demonstrate this.

P.S. I missed your ridiculous "I'm always smarter than you" comment at the end. You are not mathematics, you are a human and fallible. The sooner you get that through your head, the better.

 

No. Nice Try. You've going to have to do better than it being "self-evident" or using an anecdotal 5 random people on a coin thread. I'm not going to let you off the hook that easily; I certainly wouldn't expect you to do the same for me.

P.S. @rooman9 , @Devyn5150 , @GDJMSP is under the strong impression that you two don't understand mathematics.

 

Along with the printing of $1 bills.

 

Now, there was a claim made that those who voice concern about rounding benefiting the seller "don't understand mathematics", and to argue against rounding in any way is in itself arguing against mathematics. As such, I’d like to break down the rounding in simple numbers to help explain a reasonable, mathematics-based concern for administering the rounding system. My argument: would be very easy to manipulate the system by changing all store item prices to certain numbers.


Here is the rounding data by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 intervals. 5 is obviously not used, as no rounding is needed.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Results: 4/10 round up, 4/10 round down, 2/10 stay even. Favors buyer on the first 3 purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Buyer is NEVER in the negative when increments of 1 are used.

2,4,6,8,10

Results: 2/5 round up, 2/5 round down, 1/5 stay even. Favors buyer on up to 3 item purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Buyer is NEVER in the negative when increments of two are used.

3,6,9,12,15

Results: 2/5 round up, 2/5 round down, 1/5 stay even. Favors buyer on up to three item purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Buyer is NEVER in the negative when increments of 3 are used.

4,8,12,16,20

Results: 2/5 round up, 2/5 round down, 1/5 stay even. Favors seller on single item purchases up to 3 item purchases, but evens out after the 4th purchase. Seller is NEVER in the negative when increments of 4 are used.

6,12,18,24,30

Results: 2/5 round up, 2/5 round down, 1/5 stay even. Favors buyer on up to 3 purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Buyer is NEVER in the negative when increments of 6 are used.

7,14,21,28,35,42,49,56,63,70

Results: 4/10 round up, 4/10 round down, 2/10 stay even. Favors buyer on up to 3 purchases but evens out on the 4th purchase. Buyer is NEVER in the negative when increments of 7 are used. As long as the buyer purchases 8 items or less, the buyer comes out on top.

8,16,24,32,40

Results: 2/5 round up, 2/5 round down, 1/5 stay even. Favors seller on up to 3 purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Seller is NEVER in the negative when increments of 8 are used.

9,18,27,36,45,54,63,72,81,90

Results: 4/10 round up, 4/10 round down, 2/10 stay even. Favors seller on up to 3 purchases, but evens out on the 4th purchase. Seller is NEVER in the negative when increments of 9 are used. Also, any time a buyer purchases 8 items or less, the seller makes a little money.


Also, when credit cards are used, no rounding is performed, and the seller receives the money each time and there is no benefit to the buyer.


What does this teach us class? Buyers benefit from rounding any time the items end in a 1, 2, 3, 6 or 7. If a seller wanted to take advantage of the system, all they would have to do is price all items at ending in 4, 8, or 9 cents. We see this very same thing at the gas station, where gas is 3.2199 and it gets rounded up in favor of the seller every time. Gas stations already use rounding. Assuming a gas station would make only 1 cent a day rounding, at approximately 168,000 gas stations in the US (https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/quizzes/answerQuiz16.shtml) that means that gas stations earn approximately $1,680 extra dollars per day from consumers by rounding up, or $611,520 per year. Sure, it's only a fraction of a cent from each consumer, but they add up.



@GDJMSP I'm still waiting on your scientific data to support your outlandish claim, but in the meantime, perhaps you can try to show me where I've erred in my calculations and the conclusion I drew. If you're unable to do that, then perhaps you can at least admit that there are people skeptical of the rounding system and human greed who do understand mathematics. I dare even ask you to admit that the rounding system could be manipulated.

 

In order to do that they will have to give up their electronic cash registers or as I said before ask their customers to pay more than the register says they owe.

 

This was in Australia and yes I’d check the register. To each their own. I was just giving my experiences with the situation. The truth is we can all argue about this endlessly but only congress or the President can change this in the US. So let’s all calm down and stop calling each other idiots and such.

 

Only total purchases with sales tax is rounded.

 

New math.

 

I'd refuse to pay it if they rounded up incorrectly.

Many people would and then everyone would know which stores are cheating people.

They do that a lot here. A million employees but not one to mark prices. Then they charge more than is marked on the shelf. There's one store here I catch every time.

 

Most people don’t think twice about these kinds of things and pay anyway.

 

That really doesn’t change anything I wrote. The point of saying how many items one must purchase is to show that the buyer or seller makes out when one or just a few items are purchased. Yes, the total will be rounded, but if there are only three items, and they all end in a 4, the seller gains. The 5 or 10 numbers I listed out continue their same pattern to infinity. Thus, the first few purchases represent a model for that interval.

Now, as to the taxes part, that actually makes things easier for the seller to hide that they’re manipulating the system is to set the pre-tax amount for every item to ensure the item ends in a 4, 8, or 9. Then, the prices will look more arbitrary, but will always benefit the seller at check out. It is very possible to exploit this system and if I were working in those corporations, it would be a recommendation I would have to increase revenue. After all, the goal of any business is to make money.

My general rule of thumb for matters like this is: if you think a system can’t be exploited, you probably aren’t thinking hard enough.