U.S. Mint PSA Urges Coin Redemptions

Why do you want hard-working, industrious job creators to coddle the useless eaters and takers?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The issue of a coin shortage, in my opinion, was caused by the closing of banks due to the pandemic.

 

Never mind. What was I thinking?

 

So businesses that are barely surviving as is are gust supposed to eat up to 99 cents a sale just because someone pays in cash? Should they then do the same for the employees they end up having to fire from the lost revenue?

 

Well, perhaps I didn't express myself well. The cafeteria in the building where I last worked, stopped taking cents a few years ago. I asked about it and they said that handling cents was more time and effort than they were worth. They simply adjusted their back-end prices/portions to be revenue neutral.

For years before that, people would just put their cents (and nickels) in a cup at the register...they didn't want them, either. If you needed a cent or two, you would pull from the cup. This simply ended all the time and commotion of dealing with these worthless coins.

There's ZERO (0) reason the same can't be done for nickels and dimes; they're obsolete. There's a reason why we retire the Half Cent. Today's Dime has a purchasing value less than a 1960 cent...so why do we continue with cents, nickels, and dimes today...there's no valid requirement for them and no one wants them.

 

The valid requirement for them is that if you get rid of change and everything is done by dollars prices will significantly increase to accommodate it. Your 99 cent item that used to be somewhere from $1.04-1.10 after taxes is now a minimum of $1.25 if you keep quarters and if you don't its now $2. The arguments about rounding or credit card discounts are not how retail works especially not now with businesses struggling. They aren't going to round down for you and any law that says they have to will just make them raise prices to the point they don't have to anymore

Your own comment admits that they raised prices to cover not using cents anymore. That's much worse without nickles as you now have to go to the .1 and significantly worse than that without dimes as you now have to go to the .25 and a complete disaster without change at all as you now have to go to the dollar. They almost certainly are making more with their rounding and the customer service part is to claim they're now neutral. No smart business is going to risk coming up short with rounding and will adjust to make sure it comes out in their favor

 

And that's why gasoline is always priced at a whole number of cents per gallon, and why produce is never priced at (say) three for a dollar.

Fractional prices have existed for centuries. They won't go away. If you buy one item that's priced at 99 cents, it'll round to a dollar. If you buy a hundred of them, you'll hand over a hundred-dollar bill, and get back a dollar coin, or a dollar bill if we stay stubborn.

Do you actually think that, when you go to ring up your cart full of groceries, they'll round up the price on every item individually? They'll add up all the prices, and then round your total.

 

Individually no, but they will absolutely run a program to dictate pricing to make sure they come out ahead on rounding. No intelligent well run business is going to allow rounding to lower their prices

 

They do it today. Sales taxes in my locale are 7.5%. A 99-cent purchase produces a total of $1.06425. It rings up at $1.06, and the merchant eats that $0.00425. They could choose to price the item at a dollar, and then they could round the $1.075 total up to $1.08 -- but they don't, because the psychological edge from the 99-cent price point makes more of a difference to their bottom line than the rounding.

 

Jeff, I assume you are arguing with a wall?

 

And if you get rid of the penny, nickel, dime as was suggested or all change in general the effect would be amplified. Someone may say who cares its 5 or 10 cents on a purchase, but over the course of a year that would easily be 100s of dollars for most people and thousands for others.

 

I think you're right that something will happen akin to what happened in the Eurozone when they made the switch. Prices all went up around 12% or something in France. A baguette that cost 5 francs all of a sudden cost 1E20, or 7 francs... I don't really know who profited, as it was across the board.

 

We could use the $100 bill as our lowest denominated currency. All that means is... vendors would sell in lots of $100 increments, that's all. The downside of that is...if you wanted some toothpicks, you would have to buy $100 worth of them. Who needs $100 worth of toothpicks?

THAT's why we have coins...no other reason ("To facilitate commerce"). You are correct about one thing, though. If we eliminate obsolete coinage, pricing and packaging adjustments will be required. Is that so bad?

 

That's not really true. The lower the lowest denomination is the higher prices rise. Everyone is conditioned to believe the lowest has little to no value. If you used a $100 bill as the lowest then that becomes the new penny just like in Japan where you spend somewhere around several hundred yen for a meal at McDonalds. It's a fallacy to believe prices would remain the same and the product amount would just increase

 

Are you making an argument for the return of the Half Cent? Competition is what keeps prices low...not the currency.

In fact, you could declare that everything from now on costs exactly $100. That would mean that vendors would compete with quantity instead of price.

 

The currency plays a HUGE role. You can't go back to things that have been gone almost 100 years, but once they're gone they're gone and there are increases when you eliminate low denominations

 

...if you say so.

 

Doesn't really matter if you believe me or not

 

I assume you meant "the higher the lowest denomination is".

The lowest denomination in the US has been the same since the mid-1800s. Did prices double when the half-cent was retired, and have they remained more or less the same since?

I remember being surprised the first time I went to an upscale restaurant that had menu prices in whole dollars. Yes, it was expensive. No, it wasn't significantly more expensive than a comparable restaurant that priced things at $49.99 instead of $50.

 

Easiest way to put it would be if it would benefit the consumer businesses would be fighting it