Pennys! Let's be Rid of the Pesky Things!

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Many young people don't know how to make change or count it back to you.




All the more reason to keep them. People are just plain idiotic. It's sick and disgusting. This is simple math, third grade, at best.

JMH
 
Our lowest denomination coin in New Zealand these days is a bronze 10 cent piece.We got rid of the 1 cent piece years ago,the 5 cent went last year.All the coins were reduced in size too - the 50 cent is now the size of the old 20 cent,the 20 cent now the size of the old silver 10 cent.

The penny went in 1967 when we went decimal.

''Penny washers'' were literally made from the large penny with a hole drilled through the middle.Guess you call them fender washers or something.
 
silk,
I've a heap (well maybe a half dozen) NZ coins that have been used to buy Oz goods (at 80% face value, you sneaky sods)...what's a 10c piece with a tiki face on it worth these days ?
 
Actually, it's an interesting way to see the currency of our nations devaluing.

When I was 5 years old, you could buy two "lollies" (say Jelly beans, jelly frogs, "teeth") for 1c.

My children are paying 5c each for them.

Big Charlie's were 5c, now nearly $2.

Doing away with the small change saves us a lot of money in buying wheelbarrows.
 
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I think they're working on getting rid of the dollar.


Yeah, just pulled a new U.S. dollar coin from the coffee funds container. Gold color and has John Adams on front. Statue of Liberty on back. Think they plan on all the presidents. What few I really would want would be among the first. Maybe Calvin Coolidge among the later ones.
 
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It's a good idea. Many young people don't know how to make change or count it back to you. On a recent purchase I gave the cashier a twenty, a dime a nickel and a penny for a purchase amount of $10.16. The girl gave me back the change and said, "Like the twenty will like totally cover it and you know like you don't like need the change, Mister", and gave me a blank stare. I asked her if she know how to make change and she called her manager. He saw what was happening and gave me a ten dollar bill and thanked me for shopping at Wall Mart. She punched $20.16 into the cash register and was surprised that the manager knew that the display would show $10.00. She was absolutely baffled. Getting rid of change would be a big help for this cashier.




I've had this happen soooo many times its amazing. I just would prefer to have a $5 or $10 instead of some singles and change back, yet they can't seem to grasp that concept.
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Do you really need a denomination that represents only 5 seconds of minimum wage labour?

How about setting inflation to -4% annually, and let prices slowly go back to where they were? It would be odd to get negative interest at the bank, but it doesn't violate any rules of math.
 
We lose 70 million dollars on producing the penny each year. The production cost of each penny is 1.4 cents.
 
So
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Stamp 2 cents on half of them and break even.

One potential problem would be odd sales taxes. Sure, the vendor could price the product appropriately to leave no odd cents ...but I could see some state, like my beloved PA, saying ..(as though you really buy it) "Hmmm..well, we can't lower the tax to $0.05 ..so we're forced to raise it to a dime." YES ..someone would say that.
 
Gary,
down here, it's law that the price on the shelf is the tax inclusive price.

Govt then get 1/11 of the price, remitted electronically.
 
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It's a good idea. Many young [American] people don't know how to make change or count it back to you.







Yeah, I'm sure this is a purely American problem. There are no ignorant youth anywhere else but here.

I faced this issue as a supermarket cashier 20 YEARS AGO. It's easy to say that the kids are all idiots but the truth is nobody cared enough to take the time to teach us how to count back the change and then hold us accountable for doing it. It was briefly mentioned during my formal 'training day' but never again after that. How are kids supposed to learn how to make change and count it back - or do anything else for that matter - if an adult (a parent, or in this case their manager) doesn't teach them how to do it and then supervise them until they do it consistently on their own?

I always counted back change properly (I've always been a bit old school, and it helped keep my drawer accurate) but I was in the minority. Even though I had already mastered calculus by then, if you suddenly shut down the register I couldn't add 2 + 2. Beep beep beep scanning cans and reading numbers off the machine all day and your brain turns to jello. You literally become a robot, and that's how people treated you most of the time.

Think about that next time you deal with a cashier. Ask how they are doing, show a little interest and you'll be surprised how your quality of service changes. This particular incident with the change was a great 'trainable moment' for that girl and the manager missed it.

Whether in the military or on the street, it kills me to hear an older generation complain about kids when THEY WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR TRAINING THEM.
 
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How about the fuel you burn + wear and tear on your vehicle driving to Tim Hortons/going through the drive-thru...and you're concerned about a penny?




Yup. =-) Going through the drive through is by MY choice. Giving up my 2 pennies is THEIR choice. Besides, I have a short drive to work, the only way to get the vehicle up to temp is to go through the drive though. =-)

Now, if they would eliminate the foods that require preparation from the drive through, you wouldn't have that pollution problem. Ie: Unless you want a bagel as it is on the rack, not available. Morning breakfast foods/sandwiches/anything that requires prep, gone from the drive through. Drinks and off the shelf food stuffs only. Keep the line moving... And if you have a list... Go inside for crying out loud.

Alex.
 
Matt, I disagree.

By the time that you reach an age where you are counting change back, you've experienced change being counted back countless hundreds of times. If you've not paid attention, it's not your boss' fault. If you've never seen change counted back, your parents aren't doing their job.

As to staring at a register, when I worked at a service station, I observed people. People liked it when they walked in, and their cancer stick of choice was on the counter before they got there, or I told them where the coldest drinks were. Also made sure I'd added up their total in my head before I started keying in the register.

Little tricks I developed to avoid getting bored, and sharpen my mind for university.

One of my scariest experiences was buying a loaf of bread and a litre of milk. The girl typed them into the register, and told me that it was $298 (two hundred and ninety eight dollars).

I said that she was wrong, and she turned the register to me to show me that it said $298.

That's not the manager's fault that she couldn't fundamentally realise that something around $2 and something around $1 could never tally something around $300.

When I'm tutoring, as soon as they pull out the calculator, I make them put it away.
 
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silk,
I've a heap (well maybe a half dozen) NZ coins that have been used to buy Oz goods (at 80% face value, you sneaky sods)...what's a 10c piece with a tiki face on it worth these days ?




If it's a silver 10c it's worth nothing...the 10c is now copper,with the same Tiki.

We have always taken Aussie coins,no one bothers about them.But the $1 and $2 dollar coins are reversed in size - our dollar coin is smaller than the $2,your $2 is the same size as our $1.We go on the size,not the value - like I said,no one cares...a $1 coin is a yellow one that size eh?
 
While I was stationed in Germany, back in the late 80's and early 90's the PX/BX didn't use pennies. They rounded up or down.

It's not really a ripoff, as they cannot predict how many items you will buy. In the long run 50% of the time, you will round up and 50% of the time you will round down, so unless you are buying under $2.00 worth of goods, the percentage difference to you will be under 1% per transaction. Once you exceed $20 for the purchase, it will be under 0.1% and at $200 the maximum difference will be 0.01%.

Big deal
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One potential problem would be odd sales taxes. Sure, the vendor could price the product appropriately to leave no odd cents ...but I could see some state, like my beloved PA, saying ..(as though you really buy it) "Hmmm..well, we can't lower the tax to $0.05 ..so we're forced to raise it to a dime." YES ..someone would say that.



Gary, my argument is that 30-some years ago, when inflation was one-tenth of what it is now, we did just fine without that level of denomination. We didn't complain about a half-penny charge being raised to one cent, so why should we complain about a nickel charge being raised to a dime?
 
Well, I can see the apparent senseless notion of having 2000 (former) Italian lira worth 1 Euro$ ...but when you eliminate the fine level to define value ..you cloud it. Why not eliminate $1 bills? $5? Minimum wage could be $10 and purchases could be brokered in hours of work credits. You work an hour ..you get to buy one item. 40 hours=40 items of the lowest value. Where a piece of bubble gum and a cup of coffee are on the same plane.

I think that currency is mostly a thing of the past now. I think that even finer definitions would work where you may want to sweep out all the corners of value over the full spectrum of economics. Where 1/1000 of a cent can equal hundreds of thousands of $$ in just one transaction.
 
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