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US Pennies To Be Worth Five Cents?
Z-MaxX writes to point out Reuters coverage following up on last month's news that the US Mint has made it illegal to melt or export US coins in bulk, since the value of their constituent metals — in the case of pennies and nickels — now exceeds their face value. The new story quotes Francois Velde, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who thinks the new rules will not be enough — he believes that determined speculators are already piling up pennies. Velde suggests "rebasing" the penny to be worth five cents. Quoting Velde: "These factors suggest that, sooner or later, the penny will join the farthing (one-quarter of a penny) and the hapenny (one-half of a penny) in coin museums."
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore
Hell telling people not to do this is like inviting every crook and wannabe to do so, hell now even the dumb ones will know about it.
Just make them out of something worth less than 1c, hell it doesn't even have to be a long term item... plastics should work fine. I would go ceramics but I bet they would break too easily.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The Government surely has no right to interfere with the free market in this manner, if the market dictates that it's more efficient to melt the coins down then we should not fight this through legislation.
A proper libertarian government would immediatley enact strong legislation to safeguard the free passage of coins abroad.
If this were to happen, any funds you had in penny form would immediately grow by a HUGE percentage... And it couldn't really be tracked by anyone, so the tax liability wouldn't exactly be an issue.
So is it time to begin acquiring rolls of pennies? I've got space in the basement...
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
So if the penny were rebased, my penny jar would be worth 5x as much?
If that happened there's be a lot of POS systems to rework - or you'd have to stop putting pennies in the automatic change makers.
Wish I had a link to the fed economist's original paper instead of an article about it.
I
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Pennies are often used only in POS transactions, not vending machines. So why not just make the damn thing smaller?
Clearly I'm a genius...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
We had steel pennys during WWII for a couple of years, they work fine, bring them back.
Does this mean if I buy something priced at $1.96, I have to pay $2.00 because I won't be able to make exactly $1.96?
Why not make ten bigger?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
didn't they start taking them out of circulation when there value was getting close to the cost of the raw materials, rather than waiting untill after the fact?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
and get rid of the useless penny! What we did was phase out our 1 and 2 cent coins and now just round up or round down to the nearest 5 cents. Works well.
Automated DNA sequencing software
Just stop making pennies and let the public melt them down - that way the Mint won't have to deal with disposing of them and they'll be put to some better use (recycle! or something) ... but that's just my 10 cents
I'd really like to get rid of the 9/10's penny trick all the gas stations use first. Why can't gas be on whole pennies? In the end you get screwed every time.
Copper is valuable enough that thieves are routinely stealing it wherever they can get it, even if that means taking live phone wires.
Weird how you focus on this topsy-turvy.
The U.S. is suffering inflation. It's not that the cost of metal is increasing, it's that the value of your currency is falling. Fast.
This week it very, very, nearly reached £1 = $2 for the first time in my lifetime.
You REALLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THIS INFLATION, not the value of the metal in your coins.
No one uses pennies. I've got a huge jar of them. Ever since the "Leave a penny, take a penny" concept took off, pennies have been effectively junk.
Round up any calculations that end in 3,4,8 or 9 to the next nickel, round down all calculations that end in 1,2,6 or 7. Easy.
other idiocies:
1. the nickel itself is worth more than a nickel for the same reason the penny is worth more than a penny. the penny should just be gotten rid of
2. bills are the same color (the salmon pink $10 bill is a recent relief from that) and size so they are hard to tell apart easily, and impossible to tell apart for the blind... who in fact recently sued and won the us govt over this fact
3. a dollar coin you can't tell apart from quarters easily (still, i am talking about the sacagawea: same approximate size/ weight)
the usa is the largest important economy in the world, but its currency is designed worse than the coinage/ bills of some third world countries. i wrote a story about it recently on kuro5hin. i think australia has some of the best designed currency in the world (different colors/ sizes for the blind, made of plastic, not linen, etc.)
the us should do a dramatic rethink of the design of their bills and coins, what we have now is depressingly outdated, archaic, and not very user friendly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fractional reserve banking is the biggest financial fraud humanity ever perpetuated and now the money men are worried about penny pinchers? Why don't they just print some extra dollars to make up for it?
damn pennies ...
always messing with the man
wearing a hole in the pocket of his grey flannel suit
tasting funny in his mouth
too small to cover his dead eye's
won't buy penny candy for the undertaker's kid
to small to keep up with marching time
poor pennies
damn nickels
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
Only the start of your problems. Right now, 1 Cowry shell is worth around 3840 Rupees. Once the US declares bankruptcy, the Cowry is looking like a smart alternative.
Task Mangler
That's ok, 1 == 5 for sufficiently large values of 1.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Why not just discontinue the one-cent coin and be done with it? The fact that their face value is less than the value of the metal is just one more indicator that they aren't worth bothering with anymore. Stores routinely put out penny cups for people to add/remove them to make exact change at the cashier, because they're required to conduct transactions to the nearest cent. But if we'd just discontinue the penny and round cash transactions to the nearest five cents, it'd all come out equal in the long term and we'd save a lot of juggling of zinc/copper disks.
The only negatives I can see to doing this are: 1) We wouldn't have a coin with Lincoln's picture on it. Big deal, he's still on the five dollar note. 2) The grocery store near me that for the past half century has had a mechanical horse kids can ride for a penny would have to raise the price.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The spammers will get rich on this one.
In the late sixties or early seventies, a local bank for a would pay sixty cents for a roll of fifty pennies. The offer lasted a week or two, I think.
We've known about this for years thanks to the UCB Skit.
Holding onto an assload of pennies makes em worth even more!
asspennies skit
A few similar stories...
About 15-odd years ago, South Africa replaced all their coinage (and paper currency too). One unexpected side effect was that the new 20 cent coin was a similar size to the old one cent coin. Some older badly calibrated vending machines, notably parking meters, were unable to tell them apart, so there was a sudden rush to aquire old one cent coins, and lots of people got away with very cheap parking for a while.
The problem was fairly short-lived, though -- all the old one-cent coins used this way went straight to the banks and were destroyed, so although it caused a short-term revenue issue for vending machines, it did a very effective job of removing all those old coins from circulation much quicker than they would otherwise have been.
Further back, the British decimalised their currency in the 1970s, but kept the same sizes of coin, so they were interchangable. The older silver coins (shilling, two shilling, etc) had previously been made with a pretty high content of actual silver metal, the older the coin, the more it contained. And since the coins were still in circulation, it was possible occasionally to get in your change a hundred year old coin worth a lot more than the ten pence (two shilling) face value. My grandparents kept a collection of the really old ones they got for years. I don't know what happened to it in the end, but it would probably be quite valuable. (The UK coin sizes were changed relatively recently, so you won't get the really old coins any more)
More recently, again in Britain, the news media carried excitable stories about the two pence coin being worth three pence for it's scrap copper value. It has been illegal to deface British currency for a long time, and you'd have to collect a vast number of two pence coins to make it worth the effort, so as far as I know, no-one has bothered actually trying to make any money from it, but in theory it is possible.
Why the hell are we still using coins and bills? Fiat currency is arbitrary anyway, can we please just move over to plastic entirely?
Care about privacy? Read this!
It is silly to have such a small denomination of currency. Every time you buy something you go through this stupid ritual of counting pennies that make no material difference to either the merchant or the purchaser. Or else have some obsequious interaction about whether or not to offer/accept them. Vending machines don't even take pennies. They wear out our pockets.
So get rid of them. And if you get rid of nickels too, the arithmetic will be even simpler.
it's not worth it. Just my 2 cents
Yeah, make them smaller, and render souvenir penny squishing machines, in museums and zoos across the nation, useless.. And what about penny slots? You clearly haven't thought this through.
How did the old people take it?
I once mentioned it in front an old person that we should get rid of the pennies (back then [80s] folks were actually throwing them away!) and just round up/down to the nearest nickel. This old guy had a fit! "A 100 pennies makes a dollar! Pennies built this country! Why I should I pay MORE money! I'm an a FIXED income!" Yadda, yadda, yadda.
I think, at least back in the 80s, the old folks still remembered when a penny actually bought something. I think they could take the family to a movie and dinner after buying a car with that one penny - or something like that. In other words, I think there's a lot of emotional attachment and the fear that eliminating the penny will cause inflation.
And you KNOW it'll become a campaign issue!
DEMS: "The RICH are trying to screw us by eliminating the penny!"
REPS: (oh, help me out here.)
Reevaluating existing currency? Maybe if we were as desperate as the Germans in the 20's, but at least they evalutated down. I mean hell, why don't we just reevalute 1's to be 5's, 5's to be tens, and on down the line with bills too. Look how much wealthier everyone is! An instant boost to the economy as they go shopping with their new found cash! Or maybe not.
A defense could be made that there isn't enough money in penny form to matter, but it would still be an ugly, embarrassing solution, that might even have an impact on the security of the dollar. Much better solutions would be phasing out pennies, or changing their material so they are no longer overvalued. That wouldn't stop a period of melting, but then at least the problem would be over with. Making pennies worth more to prevent people melting them down is like mailing a stereo to someone before they steal yours. It's not really solving the right problem.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Follow Australia and get rid of the useless penny! What we did was phase out our 1 and 2 cent coins and now just round up or round down to the nearest 5 cents. Works well.
Or better yet, drop a digit after the decimal, ditch pennies and nickels both and have dimes as the smallest coin. Instead of $9.99 for a product, it will be $9.9. Round to the nearest tenth the way we round to the nearest 100th today. End of problem--at least until inflation makes dollars worth dimes.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
In the way back of American currency, there were these strange things called "folding quarter dollars" that were paper money worth 25 cents. Perhaps now would be a time to stop all metal coin production and switch over to all paper currency? Hell, it wouldn't even need be paper, could be something like polyester or other durable plastic that's a recyclable.
The US dollar is losing it's value so rapidly, base metal slugs used as coinage are worth more than face value.
See, we stopped making pennies of copper in 1982. Pennies made after 82 are copper plated zinc alloy. Now even that is worth more than a penny (1.73 cents). A pre 83 copper penny is worth about 3 cents.
Pre 65 dimes, quarters and halves, also referred to as "junk silver coin" are fetching about 6 and a half times face value.
The US dollar may soon lose it's status as reserve currency in the world. When that happens, we will be faced with hyperinflation. This is happening because of our burgeoning trade deficit causing by offshoring, our rapidly growing budget deficit caused by this insane war and the government printing currency like there's no tommorrow.
Tommorrow will come and we will be confronted with a bitter reality.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
This is kinda a side-note, but I found the article didn't explain what was going on very well.
The article implies that copper prices ($4.16/pound last May) are the reason pennies can be melted down profitably.
Since pennies are 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper (says US Mint via google), the issue is that, at 154 pennies per pound, it's the zinc price rising above ~$2.00 that becomes an issue. And that happened last November (although it's now ~$0.77/pound for Zinc.) Zinc prices are the problem, not copper.
--LP
1) Show all prices after sales tax (if applicable)
2) Make everything cost a multiple of 5 cents
3) Stop producing pennies entirely, eventually they'll die out.
4) Bonus: make future nickels brown coloured. This will differentiate them from quarters, and then people in the future can have stupid small talk discussions about why something made of copper (etc) is called a "nickel".
For 3 reasons:
1) Everyone has enough change in their pockets without pennies, and pennies are too small a denomination to care about (except penny candies... just buy them in multiples of 5).
2) $1.99 bullshit will at least be replaced by $1.95, which is a little more bearable.
3) According to the article, pennies are expensive to make.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Throw away the coin purse, nerdlinger.
Read this: LINK
The comment from Jon, Dec. 29 2006:
They don't always round up. If the mills digit is 5 or higher, they round up to the nearest penny, otherwise they round down. If you want proof, here is the info from 153 of my last 164 fillups (forgot to record 11 of them). This goes back to July, 2001. Cumulative overcharge due to rounding: $0.051629. Note that some of the below are displayed in scientific notation.
He then list his last 153 gas pump transactions to confirm. If you really wanted to game the system you could fill it up so the mills digit was under 5 and 'screw over' the gas pumps. But if getting screwed over by half a cent really concerns you, you probably have bigger problems...
and it has nothing to do with the coin issue.. it's the fact that two basic metals have increased so much in such a small timeframe.
that means lots of costs will change, it just hasn't happened yet.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Actually, this inflation problem with pennies has happened before. They took copper out of pennies in the 1980's and replaced it with mostly zinc, which at the time was cheap enough to still be profitable for the mint. The problem is that now zinc prices have risen to the point that it costs more than 1 cent worth of the metal to make a penny. Copper is still more valuable than zinc, so any would-be coin melter is better off taking the time to sort through for pre 1980 pennies.
In the 1960's, the government decided to take the silver out of quarters, dimes, and half dollars due to rising silver prices. They told the public that there was no need to hoard the older coins and that the transition would be seemless. Meanwhile, they secretly told the reserve banks to sort through and retain any of the silver coins that came through their system.
First, destroying the currency is illegal last I checked.
;-)].
Second, penny slots, despite the name, don't actually take pennies [I tried
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I say we go back to rock coins.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
It's actually a "good" thing that our pennies are worth 5 cents in metals. The "bad" part though is that we kicked the gold standard so our dollar isn't actually worth as squat compared to what it once was. If we really wanted an honest currency, all our currency would hold its face value in metal or other hard resources. We might have to redo our currency where one penny is equal to such and such grams of x metal. All our other coinage could change sizes and weights to match their relative worth. The problem comes with paper money. Let's be honest, our paper money is worthless except for whatever value we currently give it. At this time, it would be more practical just to eliminate paper or coinage as form of currency in the US. The US Treasury could issue every entity that currently holds US currency an ID/debit card with 0.00$ on it. The treasury, banks, or other places could credit/debit the amount from the card as needed. I see problems in that it would be possible to walk around with all your savings on this card instead of somewhat secured behind a bank and through fraud the entire amount gets drained away. I don't think that we are quite ready for that, but it would be the easiest tech thing within our reach to replace our paper and coinage with. One bonus as well is that they could define units of currency of less than a penny by just extending the decimal place and removing a smaller slice. This would help in the on-line world where there is the crowd that wants micropayments for things.
So surely the government will give me a discount if I pay my taxes in pennies and nickels!
The only reason this is happening is due to investor uncertainty-metals always go up in value during times when investors are worried.
Once the Bush administration is gone, the price of the metals that make up the penny will drop.
Instead of eliminating the penny (which is an obsession with some people), why not change the metals used in the penny? During World War II, they had steel pennies for a while-why not do that again?
The real story here isn't that the penny is obsolete-it's that the current administration's economic policies have been very bad. Cf. also the fact that the Canadian dollar is now worth nearly $0.8 US, which is unprecedented.
"In the United States, U.S. Code Title 18, Chapter 17, Section 331 prohibits "the mutilation, diminution and falsification of United States coinage." The foregoing statute, however, does not prohibit the mutilation of coins if the mutilated coins are not used fraudulently, i.e., with the intention of creating counterfeit coinage. Because elongated coins are made mainly as souvenirs, mutilation for this purpose is legal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elongated_coin#Legali ty
OK, OK, Jeez. I'm worried, OK? If I promise to worry, will you quit yelling at me?
Actually, you're referring to the dollar/pound exchange rate, not necessarily inflation in the US. Since most goods and services purchased in the US are denominated in dollars, not pounds, the relative strength of the pound has little to do with prices in the US. In fact, consumer and manufacturer price inflation is pretty low.
British products may be more expensive in America, but this only really affects the price of my cheesy comestibles. That's not trivial, but I can make do with less. In the meantime, you should take advantage of the situation and purchase cheaper US goods. I wish I could recommend a visit here to you, but ever since the "Department of Homeland Security" was created this country has had all the charm of a prison camp.
Exchange rates are rather volatile. When I was visiting Canada on vacation in Fall 2000, the USD:CAD exchange was 0.65 USD per CAD. Canadians I talked to were concerned about two things: that their currency was going to become worthless and that it looked like a bloodthirsty Texas redneck might get elected US president. At least their currency rebounded.
I am not a crackpot.
I knew you guys had nickels and dimes, but nobody told me you guys had pennies, farthings, and ha'pennies!
;-)
You'll be telling me you've got thruppenny bits and silver sixpences next...
Somebody just let me know how many US guineas there are to the dollar
and i linked above to an acidic diatribe of a story i wrote about how absolutely useless they are
and yet i still pick them up off the street. OCD i guess
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
ill let them keep the extra few cents that would cost me to not have a giant bag of pennies around the house waiting for me to be bored enough to wrap them.
I rarely have any pennies with me. I have a wallet with a change purse. I put my change in my change purse, and when I make a purchase, I use the pennies in my change purse.
The only thing I have to think about with change is NOT spending the quarters and Loonies, as I need them for doing laundry.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I may have posted this link before, but since there are a few posts which misstate the current metal value of US coinage, here it is again: http://www.coinflation.com/ . IMO, we should lop off the last digit, and use nothing lower than a dime in cash coinage. Aside from simplifying the change, it would create a new burst of Y2K-like program rewrites for many financial systems in the US, boosting IT spend and having the side benefit of making people think about what it is that our money really represents (that is, a means of exchange and not a store of value).
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
No, it's OK, they're talking about those really really fast pennies, like the RIAA has, the ones that cause it to lose more than the GDP of Europe in lost sales.
Or it's the value of 'street pennies', which is always 5 times as much as real pennies, but only when used to buy drugs. Funny, but the value 'on the street' is always 5x the value when you bring them in from the street and spend them in a shop. The trick is to spend your money with one foot outside the shop door, to get some of the 'street' effect.
Or it's the pennies they use when measuring the piracy cost to Microsoft of pirated Windows, even though it's damn near impossible to get hold of a PC that doesn't have it preinstalled.
Those sort of pennies, you know, magic ones.
One yen coins (currently worth about 0.84 US cents) are made of aluminum. I'd go for aluminum pennies (they're fun to play with... and as they're made of less than a cent's worth of metal, they wouldn't mind if you do all those cool experiments with them). :)
and you're right, the reluctance to go to plastic money due to length of time the bills can stay in circulation is silly, considering that banks can always turn them in anyways as you say and also the fact the us govt never really changes the currency anyways!
but here's a question for someone smarter than me: no matter how brightly colored or not, doesn't plastic money foil the casual inkjet forger by default? can you print on "plastic" stock, assuming someone could get their hands on such a thing? i assume the australian plastic money uses holograms and such as well. pretty hard to forge a hologram on an inkjet printer using any sort of plastic i think
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Both my parents and I keep an eye out for abandoned pennies. Walk across a parking and we scan the ground to see if one is lying around. You'd be surprised how many pennies one finds this way. They've thought about putting all these found pennies in a jar and see how much they could collect over time.
Anyway, I took them down to D.C. a year or so ago to visit one of the Smithsonian museums. As my mom is standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me to get out (traffic coming), I notice she walks between the cars and bends down. When I get out of the car I see there is a penny lying in the street.
Only problem is, she can't pick it up. She calls my dad over who also tries to pick it up. The penny has been lying on top of joint sealant which has softened enough that the penny is now held fast to the street unless one has a screwdriver to pry it out.
As I'm standing there watching this, I remark to them, "You know, I'll bet there's a camera somewhere recording this. I'll bet someone put that penny there and is trying to find out how many people are desperate enough to try and pry that penny off the ground. Congrats, you're on Candid Camera!"
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Didn't they do this in Superman 3?
Therefore, the metal that needs to be used should be selling for a bit less than $1.81 per pound. Especially since there is overhead, etc.
Aluminium qualifies (at around a buck per pound), but it is rather soft. So it looks like we'll need something else for use in an alloy.
Any Ideas?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Of course, the government can make you turn them in and give 50 cents for fifty of them. Then they turn around and melt them down and sell them for $2.50. Maybe that's part of the new deficit reduction plan going through congress?
Hello Mr10cents!
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Since the end of the 70s, smaller Italian coins (5, 10, 20 lire: more or less .3, .6 and 1.2 cents) disappeared, since they were worth more than their nominal value. The funniest thing was that to avoid the same fate for 50 and 100 lire the Government decided to coin new coins which were identical to the old ones except that they were smaller in size!
Our bills are different color ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100). However, they are still the same size. What's interesting is that all bills have braille, so that the blind can read them.
I always thought, what happens to braille in very used bills, say, after 10 years...
Because of colouring, though, our money looks.umm... colourful. It's OK for what it is, but it doesn't have that striking appearance of the US dollar. When you hold US bills in your hands, it looks like real, solid money, and the graphics/print on them speak of a solid state.
If you're not sure what i mean, listen to the USSR anthem sang by their soldier choir - that will send shrivels down your spine, it's definitely very powerful and makes a statement. US money do the same, IMO.
It's such a naive concept I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up, but I'm not seeing how this breaks down so I offer this as a "softball" comment for an econ major to crush with an explanation.
Why couldn't the US Gov't roll back prices and value by an order of magnitude and print/ mint new money? Your $50k salary is now $5k a year, but gas is now 20 cents a gallon and milk is now 30 cents a gallon (ironic). Then your dollars and pennies are now worth what they should be.
-BA
A=A. now that's what i call math.
The UK CPI jumped to 3% last month, but the real UK rate of inflation is running closer to 5%, as it also is in the US.
Deleted
your pennys are worth more than your dollors.
I Predict A Riot
and if you say any cost is unacceptable, then you really aren't in mental acceptance of the obvious shortcomings of current us currency. any minimal cost involved in a changeover will be greatly overshadowed by the cost gains due to currency with a superior design: efficiency, ease of use, etc. but that you don't seem to give much weight to these factors brings me to point
#2. this argument baffles me. that the us currency must always look the way it does is a sort of mindset i can't comprehend. why is this so important to you? doesn't functionality and intelligent design trump sentimentality and nostalgia? it doesn't even make sense from a point of view of a traditionalist: look at how different us currency is from the 1800s. what did you say?: "There is a certain elegance and history to the look of the bills, which was established centuries ago." excuse me, what are you smoking? centuries ago? you need to familiarize yourself with the history of american currency to a level that a casual elementary school coin collector already grasps
you could be saying that the us needs to be conservative about its currency since its so important to the world economy. well that's completely wrong. #1: the euro has only been around for a few years and is already supplanting the dollar as the de facto currency for reserves/ exchange on the international market. so much for the value of tradition. and #2: counterfeiting, especially the extremely good north korean kind is an argument for a radical redesign in the interest of preserving the hegemony of the american dollar in international exchange. in other words, you have it completely backwards: international confidence in the dollar is served by radically changing its design, and is undermined by allowing it to stay the same, in its easily counterfeited form (for the excellent north korean forgers). recent changes to the $50, $20, and $10 in fact is exactly because of this kind of counterfeiting. too bad the us mint only considered counterfeiting, and not ease of use, in their recent redesigns (and so much for your vending machines can never change argument too right?)
i really don't understand sentimentality and nostalgia as the prime motivating factor when it comes to currency. frankly, who the f*** cares what the currency looks like? usability, a concept a website populated with techies should easily grasp, trumps all. or at least this concept should trump all, but it obviously doesn't with you. the concept that seems to trump all in your mind is inertia. i frankly don't understand how your thinking on the subject has any value. sentimentality and nostalgia are completely useless subjects on the topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I dont know what speculators are out there thinking that a penny is worth that much. The copper content of a penny is about 1.7 cents at current copper prices. Copper values would have to go WAY up before the penny becomes worth .05 in melted copper. Dont get me wrong, a 70% return on melting pennies is good, but 500% is absurd.
JBoyce
We should fix the problem by ditching coinage and cash in developed countries in lieu of electronic units that are based off some reasonable stable commodity or pricepoint.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Here in the UK we have the Monster Raving Loony party. They specialise in running for office on idiotic premises.
Suprisingly, many of the platforms they espouse become mainstream and actually happen. Votes at 18, "passports for pets", and all-day pub openings are just three of their policies which have now come to pass. Wikki them.
So why not try this one? One of their current policies is the issue of a 99p coin. Solves the problem of how to pay for a £1.99p item perfectly.
In your case you might want a 95c coin?
Just switch to electronic transactions....this will continue to be a problem until the end of time until we do that. There probably isn't any material left on the planet the is worth less than a penny now, so you won't be able to build any new currency....eventually it'll happen to the nickle, dime, quarter and so on. If you use electronic transactions for everything then there is nothing to worry about.
I was going to lay down a thick bed of sarcasm here, but instead I'll just ask you to consider the surveillance, privacy, economic, and tax implications of replacing a fungible, untraceable medium of exchange (cash) with one that's inextricably linked to your identity, records every transaction as an inherent part of the transaction, and can be watched in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Stealing live phone wires is for wimps, that's just 48V DC. These guys are stealing live power wires.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Actually, my dad was the one publishing a study demonstrating that rounding all cash transactions to the nearest nickel would result in just-about-0 net change for everyone involved. Google around for whaples penny. :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I guess those machines at Disney and most other amusement parks that smash pennies into a decorative memory tokens will be outlawed.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
How about redesigning all the US currency. The new designs will have the same denominations as the the old currency, but the new bills/coins are worth 10X as much. Everyone's accounts are reduced by 90% as are prices everywhere and as the old money is deposited at banks, new money is issued instead. After a couple years, old money is pretty much gone and we in essence get rid of the penny and nickel.
A modest proposal:
1. Release a new half-dollar coin that is about the size and cost of a nickel. Make it maybe a little smaller with a rough edge so that coin mechs won't see it as a nickel. The existing 50-cent coin is too big, too expensive to produce and unsupported by automated coin mechs.
2. Release a new dime design that looks and works just like current dimes except its a "tenth dollar," not ten cents.
3. Cease production of the penny and nickle.
4. Phase out production of the quarter over the course of a decade. The new system calls for tenths of a dollar and the quarter is an odd quantity.
5. At the same time, increase the mass production of the dollar coin. With room for it in the cash register, it'll see increasing use.
The result: US currency moves to a system of dollars and tenths of a dollar, leaving the old system of cents behind. Nobody feels cheated by rounding because its no different than rounding to cents is now.
It also creates a precedent for phasing out the sub-dollar coins 50 years from now.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Only a very confused Libertarian would try to "safeguard the free passage of coins abroad", the coins are state property.
What a Libertarian government might want to do was to withdraw the government from the money concept. A start would be to bind the dollar to the gold again, and the eventually goal would be that instead of government issued money, you would rely on private corporations (most likely banks) to issue money. These "bank notes" would represent a small loan from the bank to the holder of the bank note. For practical reasons, the banks might use paper for larger loans, and small pieces of engraved metal for small loans.
Since the Federal Reserve came to power, the US Dollar has lost about 95% of its value.
So over time, every coin in existence was "worth too much" in dollars.
(And it goes on. Every year the Fed creates about 10-15% more dollars and throws them into the economy. Most of it probably ends up in bubbles like the housing market or the stock market. Some of it causes prices to rise.)
Funny. Today's CAPTCHA word for me is "unabated". Indeed.
the equating of the look and the feel of the american dollar and its "heft" is just a subconcious connection that depends upon factors going on in your emotions, not in any intrinsic value to the actual design or look or feel of the bill. pick up a roman coin and you will think "gee, nice old coin" and thats it. but a germanic tribesman from roman times though would pick up the same coin and fell the "heft" you are talking about, because he equates that coin with the dominant military and economic machine of his time in his mind. same with you
you have no such equating going on in your mind about the roman coin. and that same germanic tribesman, upon seeing an american dollar, would not feel the "heft" you speak of either. he'd just think it was pretty paper, and probably wipe his ass with it. so the design of the dollar itself is not what gives you the feeling you get when you see it, it is your own mind. therefore, the design of the dollar can be changed, and 20-30 years from now, assuming the usa remains a strong country, a younger canadian tha yourself would feel the same "heft" you speak of, no matter what fruity colors a new radically different dollar would sport
i remember picking up a nazi coin in a friend's collection of coins when i was a teenager, and the thing had menace. i thought it was evil. it definitely had "heft" in my mind. but in actuality, it was quite worn and light weight and cheap looking, since the nazis needed all of their valuable metals for their war efforts. in essence, there was nothing intrinsic about the design of the nazi coin that gave it the "heft" i felt... in fact, it was quite cheap in design. my feeling about it was all psychological, and it all went on in my mind, and that feeling depended completely upon factors that had nothing whatsoever to do witht he actual look and feel of the coin itself. same with your feelings and the american dollar
in short, your canadian currency is superior to american currency. simply because its more usable than ours. and that concept completely trumps your weird psychological feeling of "heft" that you speak of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But what will happen to my 2 cents?
Or, if you kill the penny, then kill the nickle as well. Our monetary system is based on decimal values, so we need to be able to divide the dollar by a power of 10. Otherwise, when applying percentages of tax etc. you will not be able to give correct change without significant rounding.
So he'd be switching his login name to binary?
imagine all the confused crackheads if they make this switch...
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
so why can't you apply the same argument to the usa?
-we have pennies that are of neglible actual value in currency exchange and are actually worth more than a penny
-we have bills that the blind sued about and won in us court
-we have dollar coins you have to look at and make sure you aren't giving away as quarters
-we have bills the north koreans easily counterfeit
etc.
why don't these factors and many more outweigh your sentimental concerns in the same way your mind seems to find reason for them to prevail when considering europe's currency problems?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it's anonymous, no privacy concerns. so you can make financial transactions that are harder to trace than with credit/ debit cards. for this reason alone, we should always have currency, even when we'll all be swiping our cell phones like the japanese when buying things
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to lay down a thick bed of sarcasm here, but instead I'll just ask you to consider the surveillance, privacy, economic, and tax implications of replacing a fungible, untraceable medium of exchange (cash) with one that's inextricably linked to your identity, records every transaction as an inherent part of the transaction, and can be watched in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
Hey, I said that we weren't ready for it. I'd think that may be in two generations that we'd be ready though. Those are differences in the currency medium that aren't inhirently good or bad. I'd actually like it. I know it offends the slashdot but I'm being tracked crowd and Christians hey its the end of the world mark of the beast 666 crowd as well. Think of how many plastic cards that people carry around: gift cards, credit/debit cards, and DLs. It could be a good thing if all of that was tied into one currency card. I actually think those are "good things" about this form of currency medium. One thing that you didn't note was that taxes could be inherently linked with the transaction and proper local, state, and federal accounts seemlessly updated in real time instead of once a month, once a quarter or once a year. Of course, they could just part a 1-5% "transaction" tax in addition to a sales and other assorted taxes. This is actually fairly easy to envision. I'd bet that the UK would be more likely to pass it than the US though.
Given that 1/2p = near as dammit 1 US cent, I guess our experience is relevant. The removal of the 1/2p was fairly painless, although as a small chld at the time I was affected by the fact that the candy called 'halfpenny chews' could only be bought in even multiples.
Basically the Bank gave up plenty of warning, then they stopped minting the coins, then their status as legal tender was changed so they were valid only when paid into banks (who sent them off to the mint, presumably to be melted down).
More recently, we changed the size of our 5, 10 and 50p coins by a similar process. The sky didn't fall, vending machines were converted to take the new coins with no disasters, and the rounding up/down issue was lost in the general climate of inflation. I imagine we'll lose the other 'copper' coins (1p and annoyingly large 2p) by a similar process in the next decade or two.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I don't know where you got the idea that getting rid of the gold standard messed up your currency. Gold standards are terrible.
From wikipedia:
"It is generally opposed by the vast majority of governments and economists, because the gold standard has frequently been shown to provide insufficient flexibility in the supply of money and in fiscal policy, because the supply of newly mined gold is finite and must be carefully husbanded and accounted for."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
you realize that when you burn rubbish that you are releasing greenhouse gases and toxins into the air you breathe, right? so the landfill, with all of its negatives, is still superior to burning trash. so you win on all points except your last, which you are utterly wrong about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"The nickel today is not what it was fifteen years ago. Do you know what this country needs today?...A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree, we've been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now that's pretty near a hundred years' daylight saving. Now, why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!" - Groucho Marx
$1 coins would never work for them.
In the 1950s, a penny bought what a dime did in the 1990s, as we'd gone through more than a decade of double-digit inflation.
That make a modern penny worth "one mil", a unit only used for property-tax calculations because it's too small for anyone to carry around. A one-mil coin would be about the size of a thistle seed.
We should start our coins at the dime (which was once called the "silver penny") which is worth one cent, and stop giving change in mills (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
That's not as scary as what's happening to the dollar.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
so do you change your personality and your hairstyle and who you're married too the next time you go and buy a new car? it's just currency, no big deal. it's not the meaning of life
if the current currency design is inferior to another design, and billions can be saved in efficiency and ease of use by making a switch, this is true about a country's currency whether it has been reduced to rubble or whether it has been peaceful and prosperous for a thousand years
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm showing my age here, but as a young numismatist back in the early sixties in California, at any forum where the term "penny" was used to indicate the Lincoln cent, s/he would be shouted down and sarcastically informed that pennies were English coins and that was that.
I have scanned about 256 posts and no one that I can see has pointed this out. I think I am a dinosaur, if not a trilobite... Hep me outta this chair, wouldja sonny?
You sure it was only one year? I'm pretty sure the penny collection I had as a kid had three years of steel pennies in it. It's also possible that I just had three of the same year. I'll have to dig it out of the attic and check.
We have a free market economy. The government cannot dictate (although they can influence) the price of milk nor the value of a dollar.
To make this work in a free-market, you would have to divide everyone's existing wealth by 10. Otherwise, those with cash-in-hand instantly become 10x richer.
Good luck going door-to-door and collecting 90% of everyone's existing cash to keep everything balanced.
The value of our dollar is determined by a global economy. How could we ensure that our foreign trading partners recognize the new values?
How do you handle long-term contracts? Your $400 car payment just went up to effectively $4,000 a month.
any currency change would be gradual and would be planned in tandem with vending machine manufacturers
This isn't a troll (a little offtopic, perhaps), but a genuine question: I can understand the government (OUR government) giving a public statement regarding currency changes, but would they actually work in tandem with the vending machine manufactures? I mean, I know corporate entities have gained a stronghold on gov't policy through soft moneys and hard lobbyists, but so much so that our gov't treats each tiny industry as a protected species? Anyone else know the phrase "It takes money to make (a new sensor for a device to correctly detect) money"?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Wasn't the story that politicians in support of pennies come from zinc producing states, and/or are supported by zinc mining lobbyists? Whereas, the "anti-pennyists" were (mostly) found to be in collusion with copper-producers -- the basic idea being that no pennies means more nickels, and more copper needed. Everyone gets caught up in the "logic" and "efficiency" and the "historical tradition" and "we have to redesign the penny to include the Lincoln Memorial" and "how 'bout an MLK penny" When this is really all about senators and their personal pork barrel.
the us just created a huge national park in northern hawaii recently, protecting all sorts of species. something hawaiians wanted, mainland americans wanted, american politicians wanted, etc.
but this was held up for years. why? because of a vocal but small group of fisherman there. i'm talking like 12 boats
so yes, you are right: special interests strangle the ehll out of our government, and stand in the way of progress. most of them are just protectionist inertial aholes, from unions to major corporations, to small groups of fishermen. f*** them all i say. they resist change out of fear. but by doing so, they resist positive change to the benefit of all of us. if you lose your job guys, you can retrain for a better one. and if you can't do that, why should all of us suffer because you think you deserve a cushy position in life?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm okay with dropping one digit in prices. I don't really think we need the second significant figure anyway. Of course, I would also expect the states to play nice and forgo the first nickel of revenue. In orhter words, the first time you pay tax is when you hit $2 in a 5% tax state.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
pick up a roman coin and you will think "gee, nice old coin" and thats it. but a germanic tribesman from roman times though would pick up the same coin and fell the "heft" you are talking about, because he equates that coin with the dominant military and economic machine of his time in his mind.
For all i know, he could've spat on that coin, and wiped his ass with it. I wasn't there, neither were you, but knowing germanic character as passed on by history, i wouldn't be surprised if that's what they did.
the equating of the look and the feel of the american dollar and its "heft" is just a subconcious connection that depends upon factors going on in your emotions, not in any intrinsic value to the actual design or look or feel of the bill.
Let's have a bill with a happy face on it, cartoonish. And then let's compare it to a normal, valid bill of a country that we know nothing about. No intrinsic value to the actual design? I don't think so. You will know for sure what feels more real and has heft and what doesn't.
Design has impact.
It's funny you seem to dismiss my comment as my own view, yet in your post you provide nothing except your own views and opinions and feelings, as well as guesses what might have happened ~ 2000 years ago
so the design of the dollar itself is not what gives you the feeling you get when you see it, it is your own mind.
This definite conclusion, which proves your hypothesis, follows the experiment on the germanic tribesman? Nice.
therefore, the design of the dollar can be changed, and 20-30 years from now, assuming the usa remains a strong country, a younger canadian tha yourself would feel the same "heft" you speak of, no matter what fruity colors a new radically different dollar would sport
Now that's another hypothesis.
Chances are, there won't be a radical redesign of the US dollar. Enhancements - yes. If the US dollar changes to a happy face, and someone from Canada still views it as hefty - then I'd say you might be on to something, but I would have to question the sanity of your subject(s).
With your example of own experience with the nazi coin, are you attempting to explain people's psychology on perception of currency/bills based on your own feelings as a teenager?
in short, your canadian currency is superior to american currency.
Proper context - it is superior only in terms of usability (the blind can read braille, and the bills can be easily distinguished visually)
and that concept completely trumps your weird psychological feeling of "heft" that you speak of
Do you have a feeling that it does? Because no, it doesn't.
I thought the problem with the old english money was that there were so many damn coins.
Now we find out you have
mille cent
half-cent
cent
nickel
dime
quater
dollar
excuse me, but I don't see the difference between that and the penny, sixpence, etc...
I've often wondered about what the real "worth" of a penny is. When they say it's worth five cents, does that include the cost of transporting, melting down and separating out the raw materials? It's one thing to say a rod of pure copper or zinc is worth X, but another when you're talking about a big bag of pennies.
That's right, get rid of the nickel. We'd also have to drop the quarter and replace it with 20 cent pieces, but that's OK, the new coin can be made noticeably smaller than the dollar coins, which will remove resistance to using them instead of paper dollars. The transition could start as soon as the last of the "state" quarters are minted.
Right now, the U.S. has four commonly-used coins, valued at 1, 5, 10 and 25 cents. I propose "replacing" them with coins valued at 10, 20, 50 and 100 cents. This would use the same number of slots in a cash drawer, reducing retailer's opposition. The dime and dollar coins could stay the same, with the 20 and 50 cent pieces sized between those two.
The biggest source of resistance to the current dollar coin is that it's sized badly. In the past, a quarter (5.670 g) was 2.5 times the mass of a dime (2.268 g) and a silver dollar was 4 times the mass of a quarter. The new dollars broke that relationship. New coins could be introduced such that their value was directly proportional to their mass, but silver dollars were never popular due to their weight. Instead, the 20 and 50 cent pieces could have weights linearly interpolated from the current dime and dollar, of 2.916 and 4.86 grams, respectively.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
There are two problems with that:
1) "Hard currencies" and metal only have value because people agree on it beforehand. Gold has no intrinsic value assigned to it by the universe, only by human beings. So keeping your money on a gold standard is only marginally less absurd than our current system.
2) Money is a reflection of wealth, and limiting the money supply limits wealth creation and distribution. There's a reason why there are more millionaires (and billionaires) in the US today than in the 19th century: there's more money available. With an effectively unlimited wealth base, it's easier for more people to become wealthy, not just the few misers who hoard all the gold.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
or rather, it's not a war in the 20th century sense.
No draft, no ramp up of industry, no bonds, inmporperly prepared troops, and very little support.
All those things were why war helped our economy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Allow me to expand on my concerns:
1) Now all people with whom I wish to conduct transactions need to be capable of accepting electronic money. I've bought several used cars in private sales from people who were unable to accept Visa. The possibility exists of introducing generally-available third parties who can mediate the transaction (as PayPal already does, obviously), but that introduces a new cost to the transaction that is not necessarily matched for either party: there's no benefit to me or the seller individually (though you could argue we derive an indirect benefit from the society-wide benefits).
2) All those transactions are now taxed. While some would view this as a good thing, an awful lot of transactions are performed currently that are not taxed, and, in my view, should not be. For example, I helped a friend paint his house a couple years back, and he paid me $100 (plus beer and pizza). I felt no ethical or moral obligation to pay income tax on that money, much less the taxes involved in being a seller of a good or service.
3) There are privacy concerns, as well. For example, who wants to tip a stripper with a credit card? How will she accept the money without disrupting the show? Even if the logistical hurdles are overcome, who wants that particular transaction recorded in a master government database? Or, more personally, who wants that transaction recorded in a place his wife can see it (as would be mandated under some states' financial regulations regarding marriage)? While you can make a case that these sorts of transactions shouldn't happen in the first place, I think such an argument ignores human nature - not to mention that even if true, since when is it government's job to curtail legal activities?
4) Truly illicit transactions become impossible to conduct in money. This sounds like a good thing (who wants to make heroin easier to purchase?), but I don't believe it would be. The transactions would still occur (if waiving most of your Constitutional rights isn't enough of a disincentive, I sincerely doubt lack of cash would be), but now they'd be in some more chaotic barter system. I suspect this would lead to increased violence.
4a) Moreover, the economic impact of that might be significant. How much construction, cleaning, and other menial labor is paid for under the table? I suspect rather a lot. I also recall finding out that the drug trade is Florida's second- or third-largest industry. Whether or not this is a good thing, suddenly taking that out of the economy would have potentially disastrous effects.
The most important thing, here, is I don't think society as a whole will, in the foreseeable future, shift over to an entirely electronic monetary system. Even if the US government goes for it, I strongly suspect there would be sudden, widespread adoption of non-fiat fungible currency, á la the liberty dollar for all the reasons I've already stated.
Of course, it's entirely possible I've just proved your point: the government should get out of the business of selling currency, and shift to an entirely electronic system. Then let the free market decide what kind of currency it wants to use.
Hrm.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
And how do I borrow ten bucks from my friend? How do I tip a stripper? How do I pay a homelss guy to shovel my sidewalk? How do these people come up with such stupid, unworkable ideas? How do they get modded up so people actually see them?
And the UK only recently finished paying you for your "help" durring WWII. And that was early because the dollar is so weak.
From what I understand from the information gathered from various web sites, it's not the price of copper but the price of zinc that makes pennies expensive. According to wikipedia the US penny has a zinc core(97.6%) and is copper plated(2.4%).
.056 is copper.
.17 cents.
A penny weighs 2.35g, roughly 2.293 of which is zinc and
There is 453.59 g/pound. So, it would take 197.8 pennies to have a pound of zinc and 8099.8 pennies to have a pound of copper.
The current price of zinc is 1.6736 $/pound and copper, 2.6348 $/pound.
Which gives you ~.008 $/penny from zinc and ~.0003 $/penny from copper. So just the cost of the materials for a penny cost ~.83 cents, ~.0083 dollars.
What pushes the cost of a penny over a penny is the cost of production as that is nearly imposible to produce a penny for
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
it would lose its heft and prestige
happy now jackass?
but, if you tried to design a bill that had dignity, like, gee, i dunno, every f***ing country in the world does and always did, then my point remains completely valid and unassailable. silly me, i thought i didn't have to spell out the obvious on that point. silly me, i didn't figure on the jackass who would think i meant smily faces on dollar bills in my point and would smugly comment on how that was stupid. gee jackass, obviously it is stupid. gee jackass, smily faces on the dollar bill has nothing to do with my point whatsoever
and let me remind you again what my point was, since you apparently can't grasp it: how you view the currency, or hell, how you view ANY object, is mitigated psychologically by your experience with that object that has nothing to do with the actual design of the object itself. that the canadian's feeling about the us dollar is mitigated by his feelings about the united state itself. it's a pretty straightforward concept. can you grasp it?
it's actually a cornerstone psychological concept. they teach it in undergraduate psychology 101. maybe you'll take the course someday. it's called the conditioned reflex. remember pavlov's dogs? he rang a bell, and fed the dogs. pretty soon, just a ringing bell was all that was needed to get a dog to salivate. in other words, the dogs associated the bell with food. does a bell have anything intrinsically to do with food in its design? no, obviously. but in the dog's minds, the two were connected. do you understand the simple psychological concept yet?
similar to the canadian and his feelings about us currency. does a greenback have some sort of innate heft he speaks of in its design? no. but in his mind it does, due to the associations he makes between that potent symbol of the us, its currency, and the us's place in the world as dominant militarily and economically in the world. especially as it towers over its smaller northern neighbor
so, my point is dead on: radically alter the us bill to another DIGNIFIED DESIGN (something that is automatically assumed for most people reading my words, but something that apparently has to be spelled out for you) and in 20-30 years, a younger canadian, assuming the us's position in the world hasn't change, will feel exactly the same way about the new radically different us bill as the canadian who commented above does
or i suppose your next argument is that the current us bill design has some sort of magic in it that makes the canadian feel the way he does about it? you'll forgive me, oh great genius swami, but i'll be going with simple psychological concepts to explain the way the canadian feels about current us currency design, rather than magical design
jackass
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Time for the Newbux. Adjust money by x10. Pennies become worth a dime, dollars become valued at ten dollars. We keep the penny, everyone's happy. And stop borrowing to finance tax cuts, the inflation from flooding the economy with liquid high-tier wealth is killing us. Stop using foreign oil; it's become our gold standard.
Sheesh.
Some mod needs his coffee.
+1 Funny
I don't care why you're posting AC
that's the point of the common currency, that's the whole point of the existence of the eu: it lashes the countries together. such that if france tried to hurt germany or visa versa, they'd only wind up hurting themselves. like if wisconsin tried to attack michigan. now you know why they formed the eu: to get themselves out of the trap of moronic nationalism that destroyed so much of europe in the past
speaking of which, moronic nationalism, you should try and extricate your mental hygiene from that same trap, lest you repeat the same mistakes europeans of a century ago did, seeing as you think just like them
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The title of this article should be, "Senior Economist at Chicago Federal Reserve Recommends Changing Value of Penny to Five Cents".
Because that's all that actually fucking happened.
The headline is the propagation of the article's author's speculation. It's just a new take on sensationalism. Sensationalism with speculation.
Some guy who happens to know what he's talking about recommends it, but that doesn't mean dick. He's not in charge of the mint or the federal government.
Question everything
1) "Hard currencies" and metal only have value because people agree on it beforehand. Gold has no intrinsic value assigned to it by the universe, only by human beings. So keeping your money on a gold standard is only marginally less absurd than our current system.
2) Money is a reflection of wealth, and limiting the money supply limits wealth creation and distribution. There's a reason why there are more millionaires (and billionaires) in the US today than in the 19th century: there's more money available. With an effectively unlimited wealth base, it's easier for more people to become wealthy, not just the few misers who hoard all the gold
1. While the human desire for gold is, from the point of view of the universe, just as absurd as the human desire for pieces of greenish paper, the key difference is that the supply of greenish paper is limited (effectively) by the issuing government, the supply of gold is limited by the planet, the laws of physics, and the relative scarcity of particle accelerators. This means that the value of gold is tied directly to how much people like gold. The value of greenish paper is tied to how much people like greenish paper, which is in turn tied to how much greenish paper the issuing government decides to produce.
Of course, you already know this, as demonstrated by your second point, which I also disagree with:
2. This depends on your definition of wealth. Real wealth is best described as utility: that is, how much stuff you have the power to obtain. That value of wealth does not have anything to do with the numbers used to describe it. For example, at any given instant, you can convert dollars into yen at a particular exchange rate with no loss of wealth (that is, after all, what the exchange rate means). A quick check of Yahoo! indicates it's currently trading at ~121 yen to the dollar. So, if a hundred millionaire switched all her money to yen, she would suddenly become a billionaire, without changing her wealth in the slightest.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
and it has the same weight/ metallic signature of the sba dollar so the vending machine guys wouldn't have to redesign. but i would have preferred if they had made a dollar coin with a much more different weight/ size/ shape than the quarter to begin with, or scrap the sba shape/ weight/ size with the sacagawea. yes, you are right: different color, no reeded edge makes things much easier than the sba. now, why couldn't they have realized that in the first place, and given us a square coin, or a tiny coin, or a large wonky coin?
;-)
if i feel around in my pocket, i still have to make sure of the difference. yes, its a small thing, and i sound like i am nitpicking. but this is a concept a kindergartener can grasp, so i am just pissed off that the us mint can spend millions on design and not appreciate a simple usability concept that an elementary school kid can grasp. it just reeks of bureautcratic pinheadedness. allow me to be angry at that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm an American so I will admit that my knowledge of Italy (and Europe in general) is limited but what did the Italians do before the change over to the Euro. Isn't 1 Lira about equal to a 1/5 of a US cent. I can't imagine what metals they could mint a 1 Lira coin out of that would be worth less than the coin it's self. Or do they not use anything under like 50 Lira
The US doesn't have a penny. The penny is British only. The Penny or 1p is the British currency unit. We in the US have a 1 cent coin, it does not have penny written on it, it's not a penny.
It's a 1 cent coin or 1c.
Cough up a buck ya cheap bastard.
Perhaps all of these people that are advocating using only coins for $1 and $5 bills are really just good samaritans who see this as a kind of minimum wage increase for strippers.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
1. the euro is already climbing to the top of international reserves/ exchange no matter what you do. they are just a new attractive stable large alternative to the dollar. nothing is going to change that
2. north korean forgers are extremely good at what they do and are passionate about hurting the us/ getting cash for the poor country. this undermines confidence in the us dollar as a unit of exchange/ reserve if there are a lot of fakes floating around internationally due to the concerted efforts of the dprk. so to increase confidence in the us dollar, so that it remains on top, you WANT to redesign it radically to thwart north korean counterfeiters
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The biggest economic problem in the U.S. right now is our ballooning trade deficit. A weak dollar combats it by making U.S. exports cheaper on the world market, and bringing the price of U.S.-made goods more in line with the price of imported goods in our stores. That's why you see our government making only very tepid statements about the weak dollar, and doing nothing about it. They could never come out and just say they're managing for a weak dollar; world financial markets would clobber them. But that's what they're doing.
If you look at dollar-on-dollar inflation within the U.S., we're at a comfortably sustainable 2.5%.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...just state that the penny is worth a penny again and poof! problem is gone.
Um, actually, I'm more its a good thing that all things that we should be taxes on actually get taxed. You might not have felt anything morally wrong for avoiding income tax, and most of us do similiar things. Heck, what about kis allowances? In some respects, I think it would teach us better spending habits and that the government is always getting its cut. I'm still mixed on the tracking bit. I don't mind the government or maybe businesses knowing, but I wouldn't want my wife or mom knowing all my purchases.
You point 4 is the most interesting. Currency is a barter system. We use it as numbering how much our time/labor/resources are worth and tradable amongst others. Your point number 1 and 3 that we don't have an easy way of electronically transfering small amounts to around that we don't want the government or others knowing about. Let's be honest. Maybe we need to just change our morals where instead of hiding everything its all out in the open. Why should tipping a stripper or paying for porn have to be hidden from the wife, mom, or others? Oh, yeah because the women would get mad, and others might not like that activity themselves and would judge us that's why we like hiding our currency tranactions.
What the going rate for brass? Zinc + Copper = Brass... The face value of a pound of pennies is about $1.70
If a penny's weight makes it worth five cents, i hope it goes up. It's a loony idea, but i have a sixth sense that they'll finally be worth something on the moon.
Just my two (worth ten) cents.
Have you read my journal today?
2) Money is a reflection of wealth, and limiting the money supply limits wealth creation and distribution. There's a reason why there are more millionaires (and billionaires) in the US today than in the 19th century: there's more money available. With an effectively unlimited wealth base, it's easier for more people to become wealthy, not just the few misers who hoard all the gold.
How much of that "money" does it take to buy the same quantity of gold? I don't really think gold perse would be the best standard, but its a long agreed human standard. Land or natural resources make a bit more sense. Say 30K dollars equals 1 acre of US public land or whatever value we assign it. I'd say we could just as easily assign high speed computers as a backing for our currency, but that changes far too much to back anything. Wealth isn't magically created. Your dollars are losing value each time a new millionaire or billionaire makes money from a system that a few years ago such quantities wouldn't have existed. I blame the stock market and peoples accept to take everything on faith. Our dollar is a faith based currency and only works as long as we and the world have faith in it. I guess the same would apply reguardless of what backing (resources) were behind our dollar.
Instead of trying to figure out what to do with the ruined value of American currency, shouldn't the focus be on stopping and reversing inflation? The steps we need to take to do this are: 1) paying off the national debt (and stopping foreign aid, to help do this) 2) nationalizing the "Federal" Reserve into the U.S. Treasury (the Federal Reserve is a private bank with the sole authority to print money, and they're manipulating interest rates at the expense of Americans to make their shareholders rich) 3) putting low caps on interest rates and money lending to stop usury. Too much money lending and money changing gives greater access to capital, which seems nice in the short run, but the increased spending causes prices of everything to go way up (especially real estate, tuition, and other major expenses) but at the same time, people go deep into debt just to get their basic essentials, no matter how much they work. Furthermore, our banks lend out more than ten times as much money as they actually have, which creates a virtual economy doomed to collapse. 4) putting caps on bank consolidation. With all of the banks merging, their wealth is now globalized instead of being localized to benefit their communities. And furthermore, this gives them the power to manipulate legislation with lobbying, rather than putting effort into providing better services. 5) decrease paper money. Paper money was originally issued as a ticket by which to retrieve one's gold from a bank. Paper money today is meaningless, and hence can rapidly lose value. Coins made of metals will at least bear the value of their metals, even when threatened with inflation, and thus helps to keep American currency from losing all value. 6) stop Bush's plan to make a pan-North American currency with Mexico and Canada. You'll have to Google this one to find out more.
Oh yes... that would be GREAT. Let's say a penny weighs 1 ounce. A dollar would have to weigh 100 ounces, or 6.25 pounds. A hundred would weight 625 pounds. That's all we need...
Um, actually, I'm more its a good thing that all things that we should be taxes on actually get taxed.
In one sense, I agree from an efficiency standpoint, if nothing else. Practically speaking, however, the system has evolved to a stable state without such a comprehensive tax system. Changing one of the underpinnings at this stage would be grossly unfair to all the people suddenly being taxed. The question is the definition of what "should" be taxed. The laws as written include many transactions that, legally, "should" be taxed, but in all other senses should not be. The laws, when written, took into account that difference. Eliminating that difference would be, in my opinion, a Bad Thing. Obviously, laws could be rewritten with comprehensive taxation in mind, but that would be the government giving up income...this is a fairly rare occurence. Instead, this would end up being one more push to a non-governmental currency.
Let's be honest. Maybe we need to just change our morals where instead of hiding everything its all out in the open. Why should tipping a stripper or paying for porn have to be hidden from the wife, mom, or others? Oh, yeah because the women would get mad, and others might not like that activity themselves and would judge us that's why we like hiding our currency tranactions.
Yes, it would be more elegant if we didn't have to conceal such things from others. But actually making that transition happen is, for all practical purposes, impossible. If it happens, it will be by slow mutation of cultural standards; there's no way to enforce that kind of change from above. Witness racism and bigotry: attempts to mandate racial/sexual blindness have fallen far short of hitting the mark in a cultural sense. While, legally, such equality is mandated, that legal equality already exists for the semi-illicit transactions we're talking about.
Ultimately, yes, it would be better if all transactions were on the up-and-up, there was never any desire to do things that you didn't want other people knowing about, and the government was flexible and reasonable about its desires to tax. One benefit of those things being true would be the feasibility of an all-electronic monetary system. But at that point, we're talking about such an unlikely set of changes that we might as well talk about how it would be better if scarcity went away so we wouldn't need money at all.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
If we only used eletronic traceable money, that could end with several types of money-driven crimes, since it would be impossible to transfer money to some anonymous robber, kidnapper, drug dealer, etc.
You seem to believe that money should not cost more than its value. Currency has value in and of itself, but only if it has the trust of the community. This trust is historically undermined by policy, but the biggest extra-governmental threat is counterfeiting.
Even though there are examples of counterfeiting operations run specifically to undermine a given currency, it is a usually run as a business. As such, a very effective tool against counterfeiting is when the money costs more than its face value.
There will always be some cost threshold where it becomes unreasonable to continue issuing a given note or coin, but the loss incurred should be weighed against the cost of an untrusted currency.
This is the primary reason $1 bills have not been undergoing anti-counterfeiting redesign over the past decade. Like these coins, they cost more than their value too.
Conversely, the article discusses the opposite problem - where the value of the materials used is so high as to offer an incentive for non-government entities to dismantle the currency already in circulation. This undermines the currency in a very unusual way but due to the limited scope (only the lowest denominations being affected) I believe the effect would be much less dramatic than the effect of an untrusted currency. Basically, I think it is better to have currency cost more than its value instead of the other way around.
There are other issues that should also be addressed when reflecting on macro-economic aspects of currency, such as the consequences of removing a denomination versus using other materials, but that a note or coin simply costs more than its marked value is not as bad as you state.
As for the GP, I agree with you. Rounding up to the nearest dollar is only reasonable to those who constantly manage transactions in excess of $1000, which is to say very few people.
This is not my sig.
Because they never HAVE coined Pennies. The Penny is NOT NOW, nor has it EVER been, a coin of the United States. The Penny WAS a BRITISH coin; In the US we have 1-cent coins. NOT Pennies. Had half-cent coins at one time, but it's been a while. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourselves - www.usmint.gov
My understanding is that Congress passes laws. Can anybody explain how the Mint (a part of the executive branch) could outlaw anything?
Links explaining this would be welcome.
Fiat currency represents people's willingness to accept it. Your house is a real asset, you own it. You also have it secured by a liability, a mortgage, that is denominated in US dollars. If they inflation rate goes up, your house value INCREASES in dollars. If a 2010 dollar is worth half a 2007 dollar, then your house should be worth roughly twice what it is now in 2010, but your mortgage, denominated in dollars, is now half what it is now...
.5% over the past 150 years, but in most years, it actually lags inflation by a bit. However, like ALL markets, it's not a steady rise, and happens in a few small runs, which looks like bubble, especially because after a large climb, there is normally a correction.
for example:
buy house for 200k, secure with 200k mortgage
in 2010, we're proposing a major inflation halving the currency
house worth 400k, secured with mortgage for 200k
In 2007 dollars, that house would still be worth 200k, but the mortgage is now comparatively small, 100k
Real estate is one of the best hedges against inflation. Real estate bubbles, are somewhat fictional (localized happen when a local area's economy heats up, then falls, like the gold rush and oil booms) because we have had 3 major run-ups in property... post-Civil War, post-WW2, post-Reagan/Clinton bull market (for lack of a better term for the 80s-90s bull market).
Overall, housing prices go up around inflation, usually inflation +
Most massive housing "wealth" is from A) people that bought RIGHT before the run up... Housing prices are roughly where they were 25 years ago after adjusted for inflation, plus a little bit, but it ALL game in the past 7 years... If you bought a house 8 years ago, you made a killing, if you bought it 25 years ago and sold 8, you got creamed.
However, people ignore inflation, because 3% is kinda unnoticeable in 1 year, but over 15-20 it adds up.
Why don't they just stop minting pennies for a short break. That would force people to spend their pennies as a way of getting exact change, because reatailers won't issue them pennies as part of their change. Then, when the retailers go to the back, the pennies are transferred from the retailer to the bank, and then back to the mint, where they can be melted down or stored and reminted when the amount of metals in reserve has made them chepaer to mint?
Pennies are usually givern in amounts up to 4, unless I've run out of them in my til l, the customer doesn't want them (where they usually go into whatever charity box on the register), or I just feel like giving them a nickel instead. So, instead me me having to give exact change because they paid in an amount greater than the total, why not force consumers to pay with exact change and send the pennies in the other direction?
Trust me. Alot of people have these things HOARDED up, either intentionally, or just because they don't want to go through the hassle of taking them to the bank.
I once hade to identify the date, mint, design, any misstrikes of errors, and then compare it with 25 years of "Penny Books" to see if my freind's grandfather had already collected it.
As if that wasn't enough, I had to help count and roll them. In the end, we (mainly me and me ex-g/f) had done this with over $500.00 worth, or 50,000 individual pennies.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The dime is the new penny. Problem SOLVED.
I saw someone buy lunch with pennies, but when was the last time you saw or heard someone pay hard currency for a 747??!?!?
Why disallow melting down the pennies? If inflation is caused by an increase in the amount of money in circulation, think of the reduction in money if all these pennies were melted down!
Fight inflation: throw away (or melt!) a penny today!
Looks like I'm going to the bank today to purchase 1,000 dollars worth of pennies!
All I have to do is wait and then it will be worth 5,000 dollars!
If the price doesn't go up then I still have 1,000 dollars worth of pennies and the only thing I wasted was my time.. and the bank tellers time when I go to return them..
Lots of people seemed to be concerned about how transactions will be rounded. Will something that costs $1.96 be rounded to $1.95 or $2.00? My big question is, what happens to those of us who seldom pay cash for anything? If I have the option at all, I pay with my debit card, so there's no reason I can't pay $1.96 even. Would rounding apply to credit/debit cards, checks, and other method payments that don't involve cash?
Dual use actually. Great for G-strings and cheaper than toilet paper! Reminds me of a story someone once told me: They went some poor ass foreign country and were charged $1 for a small square of toilet paper at the restroom. I asked them why they didn't just use the dollar and let the natives fish it out of the bowl. At least that way, they'd earn that damned dollar.
So much cussing. Not only did your original reply come off arrogantly, to which I replied without namecalling, your second post clearly demonstrates that the only real *jackass*, if i may borrow that term, is you.
Yes, my example was extreme, yet it reflected how closeminded your view was. You were quite incorrect in assuming what i am thinking, why i am thinking that, or what another individual who lived 2000 years ago might have been thinking. I even gave a good example explaining what I meant, when I said listen to the USSR anthem sang by their soldier choir. Execution makes a difference, whether audial or visual -> that was my inferred point.
And for reference? I majored in psychology, what about you? Did you ever go beyond taking introductory psych 101? I might have forgotten some terminology (I work in the field of computer science, as I also majored in math), but I would expect a little more logic and less opinionated bias from you, a self-proclaimed expert.
I did not intend to upset you, which I clearly have, so I apologize for that. I am done with this, don't bother replying, as I will ignore it.
Have a nice day and a fabulous weekend.
Just think how much profit CoinStar could make collecting pennies and melting them down. They have the machines, network and infrastructure to collect a huge percentage of loose coins every day!
you're a jackass
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, I said The discussion parallel to this is interesting, but not in a necessarily good way. It's a look into a mindset. Note that in all this high-minded discussion of structuring society through monetary policy did either of them put one thought through to charity. Strippers , prostitutes and drug pushers/distributors - sure - the less fortunate. Nah.
I live in rather old house that has many nice features you don't find in newer homes. One of the features is copper gutters and downspouts. The downspouts were a nice feature, some idiots stole all of them. New copper downspouts got for more than $10/ft. I guess I better check the price of scrap aluminum before I decide what to replace them with.
> 3. a dollar coin you can't tell apart from quarters easily (still, i am talking about the Sacajawea: same approximate size/ weight)
If you were blind, you could. The quarter has ridges on the edge, the Sacajawea dollar does not. They did at least learn THAT lesson from the Susan B. Anthony dollar, I guess. They're also different sizes, but you might have to see both side by side to notice.
That said, I don't think I've gotten any Sacajawea dollars since I last used a post office stamp vending machine years ago.
you just asploded occam's razor. so da j00s did 9/11 and the cia sold crack in south central LA and nasa never went to the moon too, right?
i'm sorry... i should be too hard on you crackpots, you guys are always entertaining, heck, most of your wackjob hyperventilations wind up as hollywood movie plots anyways, so who am i to judge? without paranoid schizophrenia, the world would be more boring
so keep up with the creative denial of reality! you guys always make you laugh, especially how earnest you guys are. but shit if i had to get stuck next to one of you alternate reality freaks on a long airplane flight i think i'd slit my throat...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think that if more things that should be taxed, actually were, the government would be able to lower the overall tax rates, because more money would be coming in.
Of course the usual round of socialist pigs would insist that the taxes not be lowered, and the excess money be diverted to funding the party.
This merely converts "Mr2cents" to binary, which he should have done originally - this is slashdot. With the change in value of pennies, the login should become "Mr1010cents".
How about Mr0xAcents?
:q! Oh crap, not again...
It's rediculous to think that anybody could turn a profit by melting this stuff. It takes ENERGY to do it, and that energy ain't cheap. Let's look at melting one penny:
Assume it's all Zinc. That's 0.0025 kg of Zn, with Cp = 388 J/(kg*K) and 112 kJ/kg for heat of fusion. melting point is about 400 degC over room temperature, so that's a total of 267 kJ/kg, times the mass is 668 kJ, or 0.185 kWh. Assume you only pay a dime for each kWh, that's still $0.0185 for each melted penny. For a total cost of 2.85 cents, just to get 1.12 cents of zinc. So you end up LOSING 1.73 on each penny you melt. Not to mention the cost of the equipment.
By comparison, it takes about 1.13 kWh to melt a silver half-dollar. That means you'd only pay 61.3 cents total, and net about $4!
(these numbers are from December)
if you look at old pennies (pre-1980s) and new pennies (recent ones) you will notice how much thinner new pennies are. also, there's zinc inside all the coins now, they're basically silver or copper coated. just a thought.
MEF
isn't this a good time to just get rid of the penny? why don't banks start collecting them back up and sending them to the mint or wherever to have them melted down and sold as scrap metal for a profit and just completely do away with the penny?
If the copper in a penny is too expensive, then why not just use a cheaper material like plastic?
Does this mean if I buy something priced at $1.96, I have to pay $2.00 because I won't be able to make exactly $1.96?
If you think about it, a while back a loaf of bread was five cents and the movies cost a dime. Right now a loaf of bread is more like $3, so you can wind up with pricing at $2.96, but back when a loaf of bread was five cents nobody could price it at 4.96 cents, and nobody cared.
So, we should be OK with 4 cent rounding errors today.
Personally I'd like to see prices back down where they were easier to manage. I wonder if we re-valued our currency by a factor of ten what impact it would have on the economy. A soda in a machine would be a dime, a loaf of bread would be thirty cents, and the average salary would be $4400. But a new toyota would cost $2200 again. Seems easier to me.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Are they going to revalue our paper mone and make 20s worth pennies.
After reading the comments of this thread you may want to know what we developing countries think about your local currency (At least Argentina and Brasil).
Well, we both love and hate it.
The American Dollar it's stronger than gold. Back in late 2001 when all went to shit over here and the peso devalued people would buy dollars for their own protection against clouded economy and inflation. Even now when things are much better in both countries house's prices are still in dollars, you can say that most people prefer them than even Euros that are more expensive.
The bad thing is that the dollar bill it's to easy to falsify, damage and counterfeit it. Also the current dollar / peso conversion it's not government regulated, so if after a terrorist attack, crisis or catastrophe enough people buy dollars from banks inflation with boost like shit in less than 48hs.
It should be good news for you though, Tourists rejoice cheap prices and even investing in Patagonia's properties and lands (Donald Trump has a few).
We can't complain, tourism and exports thanks to devaluation really got our country back in orbit.
The problem is that we are using fiat money, where our money has no real relationship to any real commodity. The U.S. government creates arbitrary amounts of money out of thin air.
If you made a U.S. dollar redeemable for the equivalent of 100 pennies worth of copper, and made a nickle, or quarter, and dime to contain an amount of copper proportional to the amount in the penny, then it would all work out fine.
And you wouldn't need to make it copper nessicarily. Gold, Silver, Platinum, Uranium, Petroleum, Watts of Electricity, virtually any scarce and reasonably stable commodity could be used (Although, if you used something like petroleum, or electricity, you would probably have to replace all coins with paper money, as it would be hard to mint those commodities into coins!)
Except that "the poor" or "the economically disadvantage" is neither a suspect class or a pseudo-subject class under US jurisprudence, and thus not subject to the Equal Protection clause (and not going to find much help from the 5th/14th amendments.)
Because when something says 99 cents, it really is 99 cents. None of that offloading the sales tax onto the customer crap, since we don't have sales tax. And those pennies do add up: I fed myself on change pennies saved over time during the Bush depression...
Help us build a better map!
Japan uses Aluminum for their 1 Yen coins, and it works fine. They don't get damaged, but they are really really light (which makes them feel like a toy, not money).
Since lead is low cost as well, maybe we can have a lead core for weight.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The rounding is not done on each item, but on the total. So items are still priced with 5, 7, 9 and such cents in the last place.
For electronic transactions, the exact sum is charged without rounding. And literally everywhere you can do your business with electronic payments, so the need to possibly lose a few cents due to roundup occurs relatively infrequently. About the only thing I regularly use cash for is parking meters, and in some cities even parking meters take electronic transactions.
A key issue in making currency change more acceptable in the US would be to have electronic payment become far more widely used than it is today. (I just moved to NZ from the US, so I am aware of the difference.)
Couldn't the Feds reset the value of a dollar to be EQUAL to 100 copper pennies ?
The real spending power value of money keeps dropping,
a $100,000 home is now $150,000 - same building, same place - dollars are worth less, the building didn't change.
So instead of changing copper pennies to zinc, steel, plastic, etc.
SET $1US = value of the mass of 100 copper pennies, or a bar of copper, or copper beads, etc.
Money used to be set to the Gold Standard, Why Not a Copper Standard ?
There are more day-to-day uses for copper than gold, anyway...
Without any bias toward or against our president? /.?
You appear to have the intention of stating pure facts without making a total ass of yourself by spewing highly uninformed nonsense. Why are you posting on
pennies will become useless. It's getting hard to find a product that is priced to not end in a "9". $1.59 $39.99 etc. It's just a marketing dance. If they drop pennines we'll see all the prices start ending in a "5" I'm sure.
Gas prices are worse still. I defy you to find a gas station selling gas for a price that does not end in 9/10th of a cent. What's up with that? Are they just trying to be collectively stupid or is it really helping their sales? Someone should make it illegal to price a product down to less than 1 cent (or the lowest unit of legal tender) for any product where the average product's sale is over $5. Will it happen? of course not, it makes way too much sense.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What am I missing here? They don't want people hoarding them to melt them down for a marginal increase in rendered value, BUT, it's okay to get as many pennies as you want now, sit on them until they 'become' five cents apiece in face value, and that will stop hoarding, how, exactly? Ha ha, I feel sorry for the poor schmucks that dished out for the kilns, overhead and export costs, to 'double' their money, when they could, possibly, just wait for a natural 400% 'profit.' Something doesn't seem to add up.
As far as what is or isn't legal tender, the $20 bill in my wallet says right on it, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private". So I'm reasonable confident that printed bills are in fact legal tender.
I had a tax bill due once. $300.
Went down to the local IRS office.
They would not take my 3 $100 bills.
Yup, cash was not accepted.
ok if we go forward with $1 coins what are you going to tip a stripper with? Will all those ladys go hungry? Most are rail thin anyway. Please think of the single mothers.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. When you shop in a state with no sales tax you still need lots of pennies and nickels. It's because stores price almost everything like $0.99 or $0.95. Sales tax mearly reverses the exchange of pennies between the cashier and customer.
That's what happens to coins. They get dropped. Bills don't get dropped because they are easy to put in a wallet.
What kind of alternate universe to you live in? Bills get dropped all the time. They slip out pockets when you are fishing for keys. They blow away in a breeze. Haven't you gone to a movie lately where the ticket window acts like a leaf blower for your bills?
No, I'm smart enough to own a wallet. It's like a windscreen for money that you don't want to lose. You should try it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Where the word "Salary" comes from.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
No, I'm smart enough to own a wallet. It's like a windscreen for money that you don't want to lose. You should try it.
I realize it must be very difficult to defend the absurd position that paper money never gets dropped, but can't you do better than that?
This is changing with the new paper bills, that are much, much lighter than the old, as well as the "50 state" quarters aren't as significant as the traditional design, but it's still reasonably well designed.
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