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Canada To Stop Making Pennies
New submitter butilikethecookie writes with news that the 2012 federal budget for Canada calls for the Royal Canadian Mint to stop producing pennies. "The budget calls the lowly penny a 'burden to the economy.' 'It costs the government 1.6 cents to produce each new penny,' the budget says, adding the government will save about $11 million a year with its elimination (PDF). Some Canadians, it says, consider the penny more of a nuisance than a useful coin. ... Rounding prices will become the norm as the penny is gradually removed from circulation, the budget says. If consumers find themselves without pennies, cash transactions should be rounded to the nearest five-cent increment 'in a fair and transparent manner,' it says. Noncash payments such as checks and credit cards will continue to be settled by the cent, however."
Are they still copper in the US?
No, they are Zinc. But even the Zinc is worth more than the face value of a penny.
Yep. Though it is also illegal to melt down pennies for their metals anyway.
I think he was implying that daylight saving time was one of the reasons Canada looks silly (just like the US) and eliminating daylight saving time would make them look less silly.
No, all I need to make the US look silly are bunches of 3-letter acronyms: DHS and TSA to name two.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
According to the Canadian Mint, the final run of pennies are primarily a steel-based alloy:
Composition: 94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plating or copper plated zinc
Weight (g): 2.35
Wikipedia to the rescue. They're 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper, and have been that way since 1983.
You linked an article in a newspaper. I'm referencing the actual law. btw, did you bother to READ the rest of the comments on the /. post you referenced? They pretty much nullified the post.
The last line is most relevant. DOUBLE WRONG!
Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States. This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.
I stand corrected. The link does not carry rule of law . . . . . but a bit more searching provided the actual regulation.
http://www.usmint.gov/downloads/consumer/FederalRegisterNotice.pdf
Interesting that it doesn't state that it replaces the prior law, I guess we get to choose which law we follow?
People who pay with exact change make window tellers VERY grateful. Dollar bills and pennies always ran low.
I got to the point I would also make piles of change ready for future cars, assuming they would pay entirely in bills. Such a time saver...
The catch is, if you do NOT have your exact change ready, don't dig for it. Just don't. I can break that $20 faster than you can dig out that quarter.