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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."
Value of one hundred pennies - $1.00
Value of one sock - $1.98
The look on the guy's face when you hit him in the head with a sock full of pennies - priceless
Here in Switzerland this is already implemented. The smallest unit is 5 Rappen (5 cents)
is going to be rounded up to a nickel.
Phase II of our descent into a cashless society: the elimination of physical currency, starting with the lowest denominations and working up from there.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my secret bunker, as I believe I hear the Hyperbole Police coming up the stairs. *dons tinfoil hat* Excelsior!!!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's OK. We'll just continue to use American pennies. Thanks, guys!
www.clarke.ca
Are they still copper in the US? If they are I believe they would be worth more as metal than as money. I believe Canadian $0.01 are an alloy cheaper than copper.
Some enterprising guy figured this out about the Canadian dime in the 1960's - the silver was worth more than $0.10 so he would take armored cars full of dimes to New York and sell them for the silver - iirc he made quite a nice little profit for it too!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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.
Now all they need to do is get rid of daylight saving time and they will REALLY make the US look silly... come on fed, the Canadians are making us look like idiots here.... THEY can get rid of pennies....
When I was deployed to Iraq in '05 the smallest unit of change the PX would give was $0.25, and we all got by with that just fine. When the smallest coin a bubble gum machine will accept is a quarter there's no need for even my children to want any denomination smaller than that. The cost of manufacturing pennies, nickels, and dimes isn't worth the benefit. Add the cost banks and vendors incur in transporting these too-heavy-for-their-worth slabs of metal to the cost of their original manufacture and it's clearly a drain on the economy.
Travel the Galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms...
Yep. Though it is also illegal to melt down pennies for their metals anyway.
Hookers, blow, and maple syrup?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Here in Norway we been doing this for years:
- The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74
- The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84
- The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92
- The 50 øre coin will be withdrawn may 1st this year.
So in a little over a month there will be no coins circulating that is worth less than 1 Norwegian krone... but you know what? The wast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow, and the prices has not changed with the smaller coins going away. If you pay by card, you pay the exact amount. If you pay cash, it is rounded up or down to the nearest coin-value.
For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner will be rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner will be rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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.
Actually, no it does not. The dime is currently the lowest denomination that, so far, costs less than its face value to produce. It costs roughly 7 cents to make a nickel (and only 4 cents to make a dime). For what it's worth, right now, quarters cost ten cents to produce, loonies about 15 cents, and twonies about 30 cents.
But coins are insanely expensive compared to bills. Printed paper bills cost about 10 cents each. The newer plastic bills that Canada has started to use cost about 19 cents to manufacture, but last more almost 3 times as long (the plastic can also be reused to print other bills later, so the cost on the polymer bills will probably drop over time, although it probably will not ever be as cheap as the paper ones are).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I bet the drive-in cashiers love you...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Fun trick:
1. Place a US penny on some pavement (gotta be a somewhat new one, mind you--don't try this with a steel wheat penny or something, obviously)
2. Heat it with a butane lighter--the kind with the little blue flame that shoots straight out, 'cuz you gotta be able to point it down.
2a. Maybe wear a glove on the lighter-holding hand; optional, and I've never seen it matter, but I've only seen it done a couple times so...
3. Watch as the lower-melting-point zinc busts through the still-solid copper in liquid form!
Hasn't been explosive when I've seen it--it just tears the copper and flows out a bit--but if there's an air bubble or something, who knows; be careful!
Hahaha, it remembers me this time I was in Kingston, NY and paid the guy using among other change pieces a Canadian penny, because in Canada we are always using indistinctly US and CDN pennies. The guy did notice it and told me with a frown face throwing my CDN penny on the counter: "Could you give me a regular penny?" Like I was a burglar or trying to make me rich using false money.
Achille Talon
Hop!
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?
The Senators from the states that mine zinc are the only thing preventing the US from getting rid of the penny.
Here in Holland we don't use Eurocents anymore. Before the Euro, when we used Dutch Guilders (0,45 Euro) we already stopped using cents. The smallest coin then was 5 cents.
When we got the Euro in 2001 we shortly used the Eurocent. But soon it was discarded. Every shop now rounds to 5 Eurocent. Only when you use your debitcard you pay in cents.
At first there were some people complaining about losing cents in the rounding, but now most people can accept it. Of course rounding goes both ways anyway.
I already think 5 Eurocents is too much hassle to bother with. But I guess that one will last for some years to come.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
The problem here is that the article claimed that they are eliminating the penny for cash transactions and still using it for non-cash transactions. This means that paying cash in a transaction can legally save up to 2.49 cents over the same non-cash transaction.
Doesn't sound like much, but when you're in a business that handles hundreds of thousands of transactions a day, that kind of difference can add up fast. 500K transactions = ~$12,500 a day, ~$4.5m a year. Some companies will gain that much, and other companies are going to lose it...
If they want to eliminate the penny, they should do it for all transactions, at the same time.
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.
All they would do is get rid of denominations that inflation has caused to cost more to produce than they are worth.
In other words, curing the symptoms, not the actual problem. (Which is inflation.) And in the process, introducing all kinds of second order effects which will inconvenience many.
What else do we expect from the government?
1 ten thousandth of a dollar? You do know the pennies are 1 one hundredth of a dollar, don't you?
The difference between American and Canadian pennies is 1/100 of a cent - or 1/10000 or a dollar wich is 0.0001.
Of course the real cost to an American retailer is the need to sort and exchange the Canadian coins. Sounds like a real pain in the ass so I can see why they would be annoyed. It's not that you're stealing from them, you're just making their job harder.