What Would Occur If The United States Only Minted Cents Every 3 Years?

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Making about 30 per person per year doesn't add up to millions per capita extant

Many get tossed like they were a cigarrette but.

 

Also, this is auditable. This is because some states allow rounding in the sales tax collection, and they want to make sure the merchants aren't cheating them.

Seriously, why would a merchant raise the price to gain a penny a unit. ALso, remember most people buy more than 1 item, so there isn't a way except for raising all prices to get more in the till really, something the merchants have done a lot lately. How would anyone be able to pinpoint a cause of rising prices was attributable to no cents?

I believe its a red herring argument.

 

Good questions. I think demand for cents would gradually increase if supply was reduced. I would like to see legislation passed to allow melting copper cents. That would empty the jars, piggy banks, etc. TC

 

SO how many here would have a problem if your total was $29.83 paying $29.85? Or if it was $12.72 paying $12.70? I certainly wouldnt bat an eye about it personally.

 

That would be interesting if individual prices did not change, but only the final price was rounded up.

 

I've run and posted the figures before. Most households have change jars, cans, drawers etc where they toss their surplus coins so they don't weigh down their pockets or purses. And each household of FOUR people, only need to toss back or lose ONE coin per WEEK to consume the entire annual production of the mint. So if you have more than about 12 coins, you have more than your entire annual production allowance. If you toss aside your change each day, how long does it take you to accumulate two rolls of cents? Not long, but that is nearly ten YEARS worth of your cent allowance. So you can see that if coin hoards are not returned to the bank on a very rapid cycle (Like every time you accumulate fifty cents worth of cents) that DECADES worth of production are just sitting out there in change jars.

But people don't take their change back to the bank that often. And by the time they do they have decades worth of their coinage allowance in that jar. Even if they take them back annually. Now that is where the majority of the cents come from to the banks each year, not the mint. The mint doesn't make another five billion cents each year because the economy NEEDS five billion more cents, they make them to replace the five billion cents that have disappeared from circulation over the last year. And believe it or not, often when a shortage does develop, rather than encourage people to pay with exact change or to return their cent hoards to circulation it often causes the opposite reaction with people deliberately hoarding the ones the get. "Because there is a shortage!" And when banks and businesses start offering to pay a premium for cents it frequently just makes the problem worse. "If they will pay me 55 cents a roll this week, maybe they will pay 60 cents next week." So instead of returning them for the offered premium they hoard even more hoping for a higher premium. And the shortage gets worse. And this can happen even with the mint putting billions of cents into circulation. Stop production for two years which effectively takes ten billion cents out of the equation and you get serious shortages developing quickly.

 

I'm a coin heretic and I favor the abolition of the current One Cent Coin. (I also agree with Sarah Palin: it's ugly and doesn't look like 'real money.') Penny-pleading is just rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic after the big ship starts listing, folks.

Far more importantly, I believe - given the unsustainable & insurmountable deficits (Federal, State & Muni) and parabolic debt (Federal, State, Muni, Corporate and private) - we are approaching Zero Hour for Paper. The inherent instability of this Late Phase Capitalist System is woefully and terminally compounded by record-high LEVERAGE. Can the markets sustain severe inflation? No: by the logic of Murphy's Law and statistical likelyhood, toxic derivative instruments will inevitably vaporize hedge fund trillion$ in another 'Black Swan Event.' Most American capital goes to Money Heaven at that point: kiss your pension fund/401k bub-bye then.

By my reckoning, this supercycle deflationary crash began in 2000 and will last ~21 years. So the Dot.Bomb of 2000-2 and Bear Stearns' and Lehman's Collapse in 2007/8 will look like minor corrections in the aftermath of the Big One: an unparalleled exogenous event in US history that hits circa 2017-22. Specifically, what will presage and herald the Collapse of the Dollar within the next 10 years? I suppose the implosion of US Treasury Bond market - when the Biggest Bubble in History pops - followed immediately by a ~14 day bank holiday (all 'paper' accounts frozen, then revalued) and ultimately the introduction of a new, debit-card based e-currency.

If it's true (as US Treasury Dept officials have speculated) that ~85% of US paper currency is OUTSIDE the US Borders, rest assured those foreign Dollar-holders will get the biggest haircut. Not that any of us will feel better off, though.

In summary, the Dollar's Collapse will also be the end of Paper scrip ...and those silly token zinc pennies. Moot, moot, moot. So at this stage in the game, twelve years into it, I believe it's much more important to grasp THE BIG PICTURE than mourn the loss of the quaint, silly Penny. "Just my two cents" lol

 

Well, the topic is "What Would Occur If The United States Only Minted Cents Every 3 Years?" I explained in detail WHY the penny will cease to minted within ten years. Whether you 'like' or agree with my opinion on topic is irrelevant, btw.

"90% of your comments have nothing to do with the topic at hand."
Absolutely false. That also reads narrowly judgmental and hostile. Are you harassing me? If so, please stop that.

 

Like I have told my students in college chem classes I teach - Don't ever get the idea that this class (or forum) is a democracy.

 

I like to think of the forum as a benevolent monarchy wherein much freedom is granted unto the subjects and policing power is used judiciously.

 

Get rid of pennies, nickels. Don't need em anymore, government has printed the money into oblivion over the last 100 years since the creation of the Federal Reserve and its only going to get worse.

 

Calm down crackpot, I mean tinpot, everything is going to be alright.

 

If we minted them every three years nothing really would happen because they would mint more in upwards of 20 some billion pennies people will still have 3 dollars in pennies in a jar the only people who will be mad are the people who love lincoln. but if they did do this they would still have them in proof sets to appease these people.

 

great

 

I've got an idea!

The Mint should stop making cents altogether. Instead, the US should buy them from Zambia. $1 USD = 5,132 Kwacha (Zambian Dollar). That's 513,200 cents for every US dollar. It would only cost the US $200 for 50 million coins every year.

Chris

 

I would bet that tokens such as hard times tokens or civil war tokens would emerge to fill any gap in a small change shortage.

These would be supplied to merchants at a discount, ie, 1000 cent tokens for 8.95.

They would probably end up being collected also, this would make any sort of dictates from the government unnecessary.

 

Since pennies are the main product of the mint ( in numbers), making them only every three years is silly....almost as silly as making them in the first place.

If you need 8 billion a year, why try to make 24 billion one year ( where do you store them ? ) and none the next two years ? That is pretty (__*__)9.

Staffing the mints properly would be tough, too !