The US "Penny": Should it go or should it stay?

My favorite part of the idea is the notion that those who pay with plastic would be the only consumers who pay 'to the penny'. So that Big G can keep an eye on what we buy. Why not? They already read our email, listen to our phone conversations, track our vehicles etc.

Lets keep drinking government kool aid until ALL forms of hard currency get the axe.

Ever see the movie TIME? Seems far-fetched now, sure. But so did flight, once, and space travel.......

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The congress has the say on coin matters - and right now they are busy at home for the next few weeks boffing secretaries and garnering bribes.

 

Wouldn't both countries still be participants in the Euro? As such, couldn't you use German 1-/2-cent coins in the Netherlands? That is more of a case of arbitrage than anything. Since the EU encompasses multiple nations with a single currency standard, they EU acts more like a single economy/country for those purposes. It's like saying New Jersey decided to stop using pennies (if it were legal), but New York still used them. Yes, Jersey prices would "round-off" unless someone used pennies there.

 

Personally, I think that perhaps the only coins the US should have are Quarters and Nickels. That way for most things you could either break the dollar into 4 equal parts and get most of the value for that (if over .20 cents in value, since things will now be rounded up or down to not have the cent in there) and the quarter is easily divided into the nickels. Dimes would really be of no use to mint since two nickels suffice.

 

Yes, I could of course take my German, French, etc. low-denomination coins to the Netherlands and spend them there. Actually businesses in NL are not forced to round totals - but there are only very few places that do not round.

So if a cash total gets rounded, and I get some 1 and 2 ct coins out, the reaction may be a stern look and a sigh from the cashier but s/he would take them. However, the total would still be rounded if I use cash. When I go to the Netherlands for, say, two or three hours only and happen to have 1 or 2 cent coins with me, I will simply leave them where they are. If I go there for a weekend or vacation, I'll get rid of them quickly and then use 0.05 as the smallest coin ...

Christian

 

get rid of "cents" as a U.S unit of currency, as well as a coin. denominate the Nickel as a "Half-Dime", the Dime as "one dime" the Quarter as "2.5 dimes" and the Half dollar as "5 dimes". then 10 dimes would equal $1 instead of 100c. also dime needs a currency symbol.

 

This makes no sense as a policy. If you're able to pay in cents, why would they still round? I mean, let's say your total is 3.74E, and you happen to have two 2-cent E pieces, you would pay 3.74E, and the cashier would insist that you still owe 1-cent E?

 

My bet would be that very quickly merchants would just charge both the same rounded price. Removes the headache of having to find out how the customer plans to pay for the purchase so you know how to ring it up. Also makes totaling out the register easier.

Yes because the register would most likely be set to automatically round to the nearest .05 so the register would show 3.75E. Today's electronic cash registers already have the software in them to be able to round to the nearest .01, .05, .1 etc (and possibly set so it can round or not depending on cash or credit). It is just a matter of settings on the machine. My bet is that merchants will just set the machine to round to the nearest .05 and then charge everyone the same thing. It's easier.

 

That is how it works, right. With cash payments only of course. By the way, attached is an example of how it works with US dollars. Not in the US but in Bonaire, a Caribbean island which is part of the Netherlands. When the Neth. Antilles were dissolved in 2010, that island adopted the USD. In October the same rounding rules for cash totals as in the "European Netherlands" were introduced ...

Christian

 

Read a artical titke somewhere that said there trying to make the cent smaller too cut production cost i didnt read the artical

 

The US "Penny": Should it go or should it stay?


Definitely!


But the cent should stay.

 

I don't think you could make the cent small enough to make it profitable. And once you get past a certain point in size the manufacturing cost start to go back up again due to difficulty in handling them. You might be able to low cost through size reduction to break even, but you will probably be talking about a cent 10 mm or less in diameter, or about 2/3 the size of a silver three cent piece. (Think aspirin tablet but thinner) NO ONE will want to use them and they would become even more of a "one way" coin.

 

They used three denomination sets in China until a few years ago, 10 Fen = 1 Jiao, and 10 Jiao = 1 Yuan. Now the Fen is pretty worthless and has dropped from usage - but when I was there in 2006 they were still using 1, 2, and 5 Jiao notes but were trying to replace them with coins.

 

We need to either move or lose a decimal point. If we lose the cent, then we will need more nickels but, are still in the same boat, since nickels cost more to produce than face value. So now we lose the nickel and might as well price everything on the shelf to the 10th of a dollar. This leaves us with a dime which is like the "new" cent, a useless quarter since you have to use them in pairs, an oversized 50 cent piece, plus the paper dollar argument. Eventually we'll stop printing dollars and go to dollar coins. At that point we might as well take the 5 dollar note along with it, plus coin a new $2.5 coin just to have something to put commemoratives on, and this gets us back to where we started. Who knows, in a hundred years there may be a thread here about needing to lose the dime.

 

I'm for the cent as I've stated in several other threads on this same topic. On the other hand, I bet that money will virtually disappear in the next 50 years as a result of our technology explosion (except in museums). Here is my top list of things that won't be around by 2100: money, books, watches, checks, stamps, cameras, maps, photographs, and ice on the north pole in mid summer. On the other hand, we will still have coin collectors, stamp collectors, photograph collectors, book collectors, map collectors, watch collectors, camera collectors, and people taking vacation on cruise ships that go "over the top". OK, nobody will probably be collecting ckecks but I bet we still have debt collectors.

 

Don't count on it! Just turn on CSPAN for ten minutes and see how dysfunctional our elected officials operate. Lobbyists will keep the dollar bill going strong at the taxpayer's expense for generations to come!

 

Isn't the point to coinage simply to have the intrinsic value be lower than the denominated value? It doesn't have to be immediately profitable for the Mint, it just needs to NOT be profitable for someone to take the coins out of circulation with the intent to destroy them for metal content.

 

The fact that Swiss timepieces exist today likely invalidates the above prediction:
Quartz clocks have been around since 1927;
Quartz watches have been around since 1967;
Tuning fork watches have been around since 1960.

None of that mattered for Swiss watchmakers. They merely changed their marketing. When they were told that their watches don't keep time accurately, they responded that those who can afford their watches don't need to be on time... or some approximation of that.

The point is that most of the things you named will be around. The thing that I would expect to be gone by 2100 is the home phone (excluding VOIP). It's nearly non-viable today. Imagine how much less utility there will be for a traditional home phone when cities install WiFi arrays and broadcast/transmission gets cheaper for mobiles. Eventually, we'll be looking at mobile devices costing the equivalent of one meal per year.

 

The watch is heading the same way as the horse and buggy. It may still be around by 2100 but not much around. It may be around someones wrist as jewelry but not to tell time. Why would you. Time is on your iphone or whatever we're using to commnicate in 87 years. It will automatically update to cesium standard time to the peco second. It will be as useless as well, jewelry.

 

The topic is heading the same way as the dead horse. It may still be around by the end of the day, but either back on topic or split off with the past few posts being moved to General Discussion.

Christian