[HN Gopher] Is It Time to Kill the Penny?
___________________________________________________________________
Is It Time to Kill the Penny?
Author : jpkoning
Score : 208 points
Date : 2020-07-14 10:53 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| spartas wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI
| cgrealy wrote:
| Do it. In NZ, we got rid of everything below $0.10 and pretty
| much no one cares.
|
| That said, a large portion of the country is cashless anyway. I
| almost never have cash on me.
| mkl wrote:
| And we started a long time ago. 1 and 2 cent coins were
| demonetised in 1990, $1 and $2 coins replaced notes in 1991,
| all notes were switched to tough washable polymer in 1999, 5
| cent coins were dropped in 2006 (and most other coins were
| reduced in size at the same time). I also almost never use
| cash.
|
| It's not like we have a low-value currency unit either (e.g.
| Yen). Prices in NZ dollars are usually less than double the US
| dollar price in the US (and our prices include sales tax and
| shipping to NZ).
| pantaloony wrote:
| Yeah, if the US does this the nickel ($.05) should go too while
| we're at it. We've put off getting rid of the penny so long
| that even 5x a penny is worthless. Switch to $.10, $.50, and $1
| coins.
| AceyMan wrote:
| Early on in the current administration I half-joked that it'd all
| be worth if if at the end of it we (a) switched to ISO216, (b)
| bailed on Fahrenheit, and (c) ditched the penny.
|
| Now _that_ would be a legacy any POTUS could be proud about.
| jscipione wrote:
| There are billions more pennies lying in jars in people's houses
| than are in regular circulation. Even if we were to stop minting
| new pennies today we could coax the population to turn their
| pennies in and we wouldn't run out for centuries to come. There
| is no shortage of pennies. I don't care what Canada does, you're
| not going to take my pennies away.
| coding123 wrote:
| A good way - a single day where each turned in penny gives you
| 3 "cents" in exchange. Of course you would be giving out only
| dollar or higher bills in such a program.
| drapery wrote:
| One time I was in Krogers and saw a man buying 6 onions with
| nickels, dimes, pennies. He took a long time but he bought his
| onions.
|
| I personally don't care one way or another but those who miss the
| penny the most, won't likely get a voice.
| parenthesis wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember halfpenny coins here in the UK. I've
| got a few someplace that I kept.
|
| When they were withdrawn in 1984, they were worth more than 1.5p
| in today's money. The country survived, so I dare say we could
| safely discontinue 1p (and 2p) coins.
| vmilner wrote:
| I remember Polo mints going from 4.5p to 5p in ~1975. (I was 7
| and such things were important...). It's curious that the
| minimum possible percentage increase then was 11%, but now,
| when Polo mints are around 60p, the minimum possible increase
| is 1.7%. Getting rid of all coins < 5p would return us to the
| same "granularity". (And possibly be inflationary.)
| all_blue_chucks wrote:
| The only coins we need are dimes. Round cash transactions to the
| nearest $0.1. Make everyone's lives simpler.
| klyrs wrote:
| As an American living in Canada, I gotta say. Pennies and dollar
| bills SUCK. We have $1 and $2 coins and they're actually useful.
| Every time I visit home, I end up with piles of pennies and wads
| of stinky, tattered, overcirculated garbage bills.
|
| If you accumulate a pile $1 and $2 coins, nobody looks askance if
| you plunk down a stack of them. But god, the glares if you want
| to spend $20 in dollar bills.
|
| I say take it further: nickels should go too, and probably dimes.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Yes, nickles should definitely go. But since money is decimal,
| dimes make more sense. (10 cents exactly)
|
| But because of quarters you still probably need nickels.
|
| Or you could just go binary use halves, quarters and eighths.
| bargle0 wrote:
| Yeah, I want pirate money with pieces of eight. And the
| phrase "two bits" will make sense again.
| klyrs wrote:
| > But because of quarters you still probably need nickels.
|
| Only in the presence of dimes. That's why I say, cut them
| too.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Good point. Binary money is ideal.
|
| But you can get arrested (or shot if Black) for trying to
| spend a two dollar bill in America.
|
| Man arrested for using $2 bills at Best Buy - clip from The
| Two Dollar Bill Documentary
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3yjfefUD8
|
| A $2 Bill At Taco Bell
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbp-UyLH2ng
|
| Police Involved After Student Tries To Buy Lunch With $2
| Bill
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/05/04/po
| l...
| axaxs wrote:
| Thanks for sharing these links. I think the second video
| was the most enlightening. Even the security guard had
| the insight to think "why would someone fake a $2 bill?".
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Wait until some jokester comes into your store with an
| uncut sheet and a pair of scissors.
|
| https://catalog.usmint.gov/2-32-note-
| sheet-B9488.html?cgid=u...
| nicoburns wrote:
| We have a similar problem in the UK with Scottish bank
| notes. They're legal tender across the whole of the UK,
| but most shops in England have never seen them before.
| barbegal wrote:
| They are not legal tender according to the Bank of
| England
| https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-
| legal-...
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| It wasn't until I went to the UK in my late 20s that I realized
| how badly America needs coins in the dollar and two dollar
| denomination. Having spare coins with weight and mass rather
| than loose dollar bills helped me get a sense of how many loose
| singles I had, and being able to drop a couple coins on a
| counter to pay for cheap items (a bag of M&Ms, a cup of coffee)
| is somehow, I don't know how, but somehow more ergonomic.
| klyrs wrote:
| The ergonomics are a real selling point for me. Coins are
| certainly tidier than bills. They're low friction and hard,
| which makes them easy to stack, don't vanish in a puff of
| wind, they're easy to count...
| ghaff wrote:
| Conversely I almost never carry change in the US and, on the
| increasingly rare occasions I use cash, I usually just bring
| the change home and dump it in a bucket. I don't want change
| that has any significant value.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The US actually has one dollar coins, and it's common for
| vending machines to spit them out as change. They're the
| exact same size as the Canadian loonie.
| kps wrote:
| So is a 2p coin. But the only machines that can't tell them
| apart are candy dispensers and old mechanical parking
| meters.
| filoeleven wrote:
| > I say take it further: nickels should go too, and probably
| dimes.
|
| A US penny in 1913 has the purchasing power of 26 cents today,
| so I'd agree that dropping everything below the quarter makes
| good sense.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| About a year ago I tried giving a 1L bottle full of pennies to
| a homeless dude. He wouldn't take them. He was like "what am I
| gonna do with that shit?" I just left them on the sidewalk.
| They were still there a few hours later. True story.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It always feels weird to tip using only coins in Canada. No one
| has ever given me the stinkeye for doing it so I'm guessing
| it's fine but it still feels like I'm shorting them even when
| the coins are $1 or $2.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Exactly. When we retired the half-penny, it had a purchasing
| power that would equate to 10-15 cents today. Someone just
| needs to have the political will to do this. We should just
| have quarters and move dollar bills to coin only. So much
| cheaper to make and they last forever.
|
| The reason we don't is that people hate change and politicians
| don't like to rock the boat. A lot of our issues today are not
| that we don't know how to solve problems, but that the
| politicians aren't willing to take them on.
| interestica wrote:
| > people hate change
|
| And they also hate change.
| nine_k wrote:
| This sounds a little bit like the politicians are not "we"
| but are imported from Mars or something.
|
| The majority of people seems to like it this way, or rather
| doesn't care. There's even no vocal enough minority to demand
| the change (pun not intended).
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| The first time I read a proposal like this I thought it was a
| terrible idea, but the penny has lost more than half its value
| since then. I'm much more sympathetic now.
| jpkoning wrote:
| Go for it, America. We got rid of the penny up here in Canada in
| 2012. Doing so removed a degree of hassle from everyone's
| commercial lives.
| [deleted]
| atlgator wrote:
| I'd rather see us move away from physical money altogether.
| fit2rule wrote:
| Why kill it?
|
| Why not just re-value it instead?
|
| For example, make its value $1000.
|
| Would maybe be a neat solution to the 1% problem.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Why not just re-value it instead?
|
| > For example, make its value $1000.
|
| The US used to have $1000 bills (and $10,000 bills, but those
| were only for internal gov't use). I'm pretty sure we're stuck
| with $100 as the top denomination to make organized crime more
| difficult.
|
| Also, it's WAY easier to counterfeit a coin than a bill.
| latch wrote:
| Singapore & Brunei (1) had a $10000 bill until 2014 (worth
| ~7400 USD), and still have a $1000 bill (as does Switzerland
| with its better exchange rate)
|
| (1) I don't know what the word is (linked?) but their
| currency is interchangeable. You can go to a Singapore bank
| with $100 BND and get $100 SGD (no fee) and vice versa.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I don't know what the word is (linked?) but their
| currency is interchangeable. You can go to a Singapore bank
| with $100 BND and get $100 SGD (no fee) and vice versa.
|
| I believe the term is "pegged"[1], although what you
| describe sounds like it is much more involved.
|
| ___
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_exchange_rate_system
| paulie_a wrote:
| In the EU a 500 note basically means you deal drugs. I think
| they were doing away with them entirely.
| walshemj wrote:
| Some countries like to play for things like cars in cash
| def8cefe wrote:
| >Also, it's WAY easier to counterfeit a coin than a bill.
|
| I think that depends. Some countries do integrate security
| features in coins.
|
| The important question isn't whether it's easier, it's
| whether it's more cost effective. It's probably easier to
| counterfeit a USD penny than a USD $20 bill, but it would be
| less economical to do so.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Australia dropped the copper 'penny' (one cent) along with its
| two-cent coin ages ago and nobody complained except for a few
| electronics people like me who used them as heat sinks for diodes
| and other electronic components. (Yuh simply drill a hole and
| solder them onto the wire leads of hot components.)
|
| At exactly one cent each, they were much cheaper than their
| proper catalogue equivalents, we were left all adrift when our
| cheap source of coppers ran out.
|
| So guys begin stocking up now while you've still the chance.
| irrational wrote:
| But then how would we make souvenir flattened pennies for .26 at
| tourist traps?
|
| Seriously, I haven't used cash in so many years that I literally
| can't remember the last time I touched paper money or coins.
| Maybe 15 years ago? As far as I'm concerned, we've already
| transitioned to a 100% digital economy and there is no longer a
| need for analog money.
| undersuit wrote:
| The US Mints could just sell blanks to the tourist traps and
| they in turn could raise the price to $1.
|
| I use cash all the time. I like to round out my errands with a
| beer at a brewery before biking home. Hand the server a $5 bill
| when I get the beer, so fast also a strong tip on the cheapest
| beers. I'm also forced to use cash when I purchase my medical
| marijuana. I drink Americanos when I purchase a coffee, $2 or
| $2.25 is pretty reasonable but I sometimes can get the exact
| change for a place charging $2.15.
|
| I think digital and physical money has it's uses and I will use
| cash in my wallet first because any phone or credit card
| solution is slower.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| > I think digital and physical money has it's uses and I will
| use cash in my wallet first because any phone or credit card
| solution is slower.
|
| Surprised you've had that experience, I've always found
| waiting for the cashier to make change to be a long and
| arduous process, while I can simply tap my watch on the
| reader or insert my card and move along with my day. Not to
| mention that I have no interest in carting around a pocket
| full of coin change.
| cascom wrote:
| I'd rather we do a reverse split of the dollar - say 10:1 - 10
| old dollars = 1 new dollar, essentially take us back to 1950's
| pricing, coins become relevant again! + it has the added benefit
| of undoing all the changes in laws/refs that were not inflation
| adjusted. Not holding my breath...
| war1025 wrote:
| If you think about it this way, it really does make a decent
| argument for switching larger denominations to coins.
|
| Personally, I just use my debit card for everything and only
| use cash when the vendor specifically doesn't allow credit,
| which is increasingly rare with square and other methods of
| taking payment from a smartphone.
| ZacharyPitts wrote:
| And the nickel, and the dime... and maybe the quarter
| umvi wrote:
| So the minimum you can pay for something is $0.50?
|
| That kind of stinks... individual fruits and other produce
| currently cost less than $0.50. I think $0.10 should be the
| minimum because then you can just drop the hundredths digit and
| prices will be, i.e. "$3.2", "$99.9", etc.
| femto113 wrote:
| Do not understand why we still mint them--there are enough
| pennies in existence to last forever, the problem is they are
| just sitting in jars on shelves. Instead of minting new ones the
| treasury (through banks) should just start buying them for 2
| cents each until enough come back into circulation.
| jedberg wrote:
| Lobbyists is the one and only answer. The zinc lobby is strong.
| zeepzeep wrote:
| Yes, we don't need such small amounts of money. Just always round
| up, when paying and when giving the rest back.
|
| > All those $9.99 products? The prices would be jacked up to an
| even $10!
|
| Only logical thing, I know this "wow less than 10$" tricks people
| into buying stuff, but it's just stupid that it's the default to
| give me back 1 penny whatever I buy.
| rozab wrote:
| Interestingly, I've noticed that in certain parts of the Amazon
| website these prices are rounded up for display. Maybe the
| price jumps out more when given in this format, since it breaks
| the pattern? I also notice that multibuy deals in supermarkets
| are invariably multiples of 50p (e.g. 2 for PS3).
|
| Makes you wonder how much of this stuff is calculated decision
| making and how much is just dogma.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Actually, the pricing of individual items doesn't change. (Not
| least because of GST the price you pay at the till is not the
| sticker price.)
|
| Where I live the 1c and 2c coins were killed some time ago. The
| smallest coin now is a 5c.
|
| The way it works is that you go to the checkout, get a final
| total. If you pay cash then the change is "rounded up" to the
| nearest 5c mark. If you pay via card you pay the exact amount.
|
| It's really not complicated, and frankly no-one cares about it.
| tedd-the-tiger wrote:
| > GST.
|
| Found the Australian!
| dafoex wrote:
| At the risk of making a flippant comment, they /are/ called
| Bruce.
| mkl wrote:
| GST exists in a bunch of countries:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST
|
| The coins probably narrow it down though.
| bruce511 wrote:
| In the interest of full disclosure I was talking about
| USA GST (Sales Tax) not the tax where I live. In the US
| the price on the shelf seems to be a "rough indication"
| of how much you may pay when you get to the till...
|
| That I noticed this suggests I live in a VAT country not
| a GST country :)
| baron816 wrote:
| All coins are pretty terrible. When the US was trying to push
| those dollar coins, there was an argument that the government
| would make money by selling the new coins (through seigniorage),
| but that argument was counteracted by the fact that people just
| wouldn't use those coins and it would end up sitting in a jar
| somewhere rather than in a bank earning interest (the velocity of
| money would be reduced).
|
| The government should put less money into designing and
| minting/printing new money and instead focus its resources on
| making the "unbanked" banked. Doing so through the post office
| has been talked about for years.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky
| didn't fall. There was no great debate, no public opinion polls
| and politicians swearing heartily about the demise of our great
| nation. (Ok that's probably not true. For too many politicians
| that's all they do.)
|
| There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour of
| a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People
| bitched about having too much change in there pocket, pockets
| became too heavy, etc. I do however see more coins in tip &
| donation jars now then I ever saw paper money.
|
| This is a key difference between US policy & Canadian policy that
| I have informally noticed while growing up on the border (with
| family ties on both sides).
|
| Canadian government: We think it's a good idea, so we're going to
| do it.
|
| US Government: Lets have more opinion polls, and countless
| politicians swearing against any decent public reform or change
| to the status quo. Watch the media whip the public up into a
| frenzy. I guaranty that this will create a more frantic response
| and airtime then the BLM & Police Reform protests did.
|
| Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change
| your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%,
| 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14%
| in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in
| favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per
| transaction * millions of transactions per day has got to make
| some accountants happy.
|
| [0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-
| all...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The lower the stakes, the harder the fighting, and a penny is
| as low a stake as there is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
|
| >Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip
| Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely
| proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of
| corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so
| bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre
| (1905-1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia
| University.
| throw0101a wrote:
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
|
| * http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed/
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety
| change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5.
| 5%, 10%, 15%, etc."
|
| I don't think you thought that through. Unless you are going to
| require prices be rounded to the nearest dollar, you still need
| pennies or even fractional pennies to accurately pay the tax.
| 15% of 75 cents is 11.25 cents, for instance.
| Naga wrote:
| I live here in Ontario, and you're right the sky did not fall.
| The rounding isn't a big deal really, even on scale. It rounds
| to the nearest nickel, which is or is not in favour of the
| consumer/business. For example, $2.07 rounds to $2.05, while
| $2.08 rounds to $2.10. This should net out to an immaterial
| benefit to either side. It also is only rounded when paying
| cash. Card transactions are not rounded.
|
| FYI Sales tax is 13% in Ontario now
| ping_pong wrote:
| The difference is that the Canadian Federal government is
| extremely powerful and the provinces have very little power.
|
| In the US, the States are very powerful and the Federal
| government is much weaker comparatively. For anything to be
| done collectively across the entire US, it requires cooperation
| from all states, otherwise one of them can screw everything up.
| That inherently means more talking, more coordination, more
| meetings, etc.
|
| It's the fundamental difference in how each country was forme
| and the system that they pursued. In some ways it's better and
| in some ways its worse. That's why you can have very powerful
| states like California dictate a lot of their own destiny, but
| then when it comes time for a national crisis like a pandemic,
| everything is fucked because the US Federal government doesn't
| have the same level of control and power as in Canada. In
| Canada you didn't get the inane policy of each province buying
| its own PPE like in the States, driving up prices because they
| are all fighting each other.
| Proziam wrote:
| Minor nitpick, just so people reading get more complete
| information on your example.
|
| Very few states maintained their supply of medical equipment
| properly. Likewise, the federal government hasn't restocked
| much equipment since the early? Obama administration.
| Unfortunately, it just wasn't made much of a priority. Of
| course this failure was made even more devastating due to
| massive global misinformation leading to late decisions and
| poor communication by entities that _should_ have been more
| trustworthy and better equipped.
|
| ---
|
| With that said, the states rights debate is a tough nut to
| crack. There's been so many instances of (various)
| governments doing evil things that I'm not sure I'd want to
| centralize even more power.
|
| It's an extreme example, but I liken it to letting a Mao or
| Hitler take complete control for the benefit of a better
| healthcare system. The cost is just too great.
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont think thats true.
|
| In canada, health care is the sole responsibility of the
| province. The federal government helps with planning and
| coordination (and maybe funding) You didnt get the insanity
| because the individial provinces are mostly sane. You still
| saw individual differences, especially look at ontario's
| early response.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I don't get it, provinces are very powerful here in Canada.
| It's very hard for the federal government to go against the
| big provinces. Angering Quebec or Ontario is a recipe for
| disaster. Btw provinces definitely bought their own PPE too,
| most provinces have total control over their healthcare
| system and their public health policies. There's no
| expectation from the canadian public to see the Federal
| government intervene in that regard either. If anything, I'd
| argue the canadian Federal system is much more decentralized
| than America's.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour
| of a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People
| bitched about having too much change in there pocket, pockets
| became too heavy, etc. I do however see more coins in tip &
| donation jars now then I ever saw paper money.
|
| Sounds like you know why that is, because people don't want to
| be stuck carrying around big coins.
|
| >Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety
| change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5.
| 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes
| the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of
| rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers.
| $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day
| has got to make some accountants happy.
|
| Over the billions of dollars spent in a state per quarter, you
| are either seriously screwing consumers, or seriously reducing
| state government revenue. I'd really hate my 6% sales tax to be
| raised to 10% so that we could kill a coin I don't even use
| (last paid cash probably a year ago).
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > I'd really hate my 6% sales tax to be raised to 10% so that
| we could kill a coin I don't even use (last paid cash
| probably a year ago).
|
| If you're paying in plastic then there's no rounding.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Well OP did say
|
| >If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your
| sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%,
| 15%, etc.
|
| Which I assumed wouldn't be just for paying with cash. I
| don't know if a 'cash tax' would even be legal.
| tgb wrote:
| In what sense would rounding of sales taxes be in the favor of
| companies? Surely it goes to the government, not the company.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The rounding takes place at the point of sale, after tax is
| calculated. Receipts still list the un-rounded price, and tax
| is also paid on the un-rounded price. So to the government,
| it's as is if no rounding is taking place.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| Another thing to remember about Canada is that we don't use
| cash as much as the US. Cash accounts for less than half (44%),
| by volume, of transactions in Canada. I'm not sure what the
| split between Interac (direct debit from your bank account) and
| credit cards is, but the mechanics of the transaction are
| almost identical - Interac prompts you for an account to pay
| from, both prompt for your PIN.
|
| When you pay for something electronically, the rounding rules
| don't apply. If my bill comes to $10.42, I can save two cents
| by paying cash thanks to the rounding rules. But if it comes to
| $10.98, I save two cents by paying electronically.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Cash accounts for less than half (44%), by volume, of
| transactions in Canada.
|
| That's about where the USA is as well. Cash is used in 31% of
| consumer transactions. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/06/spike-
| the-dollars-obit-cash-...
|
| Anecdotally I haven't carried cash around in years.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > Anecdotally I haven't carried cash around in years.
|
| Generally I keep a $40 in the wallet just in case there is
| a cash-only situation, but that's literally just a backup
| -- 99% of transactions are on some kind of card.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I feel like we missed an opportunity to also drop the nickel
| and round everything to 10 cent intervals and just forget about
| the extra level of precision entirely.
|
| I imagine I will see this in my lifetime.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| What about the 25 cent piece (the quarter)?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Change them to 20 cent, "fifths" :-)
| jdofaz wrote:
| Did you ever noticed that gas is priced down to the mill
| even though those coins haven't circulated in a long time?
| Most people don't even know what they are.
|
| I think it would be a fine to drop the penny and nickel
| from circulation, just let it become an obscure unit.
| intopieces wrote:
| I know that it would be a bridge too far, but having worked
| at a business (movie theater) that had prices only ending in
| 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, or .00, I would love for the whole country
| to just have quarters and be done with it.
|
| Though, since I rarely handle change at all -- if I do use
| cash, I usually find the first place near my hand to donate
| whatever metal comes back to me - I suppose I'm not the
| target audience anyway.
| philistine wrote:
| The rounding only happens on paper transactions. Since most
| transactions are made using plastic, where no rounding happens,
| the impact is terribly small.
|
| You do realize you're being guilty of exactly what you're
| decrying in American politics? You're over analyzing a
| minuscule impact that would result from a change to the status
| quo.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I'd rather they round it on all transactions. Gets really
| weird when the cash register says one thing and you have to
| pay something else.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety
| change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5.
| 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes
| the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of
| rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers.
| $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day
| has got to make some accountants happy.
|
| This 100%. Quebec is the worst - 9.975%! Why oh why. It is so
| much simpler to have reasonable change in alberta.
| 51Cards wrote:
| Quebec went to 9.975 because they used to have "stacked"
| taxes, where you would charge GST first, then charge QST on
| the combined total as a second step. (yes, they QST taxed the
| GST) A few years back they went to a "sane" system of only
| charging GST and QST on the base amount, however they didn't
| want to lose money so they adjusted QST to 9.975 so the final
| tax collected would be the same as before.
|
| Source: I write point of sale systems in Canada
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| >Canadian government: We think it's a good idea, so we're going
| to do it.
|
| I think that is primarily a function of having three rather
| than two major political parties. With three parties, any party
| that can be on the other side of a controversial issue from the
| other two tends to win the argument. Hence, we're a lot more
| biased for action at the government level.
| nayuki wrote:
| > Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in
| Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour
| of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction
|
| This assertion is wrong. If the item you buy is $1.00, then
| after your 14% tax it will be $1.14, which is rounded up to
| $1.15. If the item is $2.00, then after tax it is $2.28, which
| also rounds up to $2.30. But if the item is $3.00, then after
| tax it is $3.42, which rounds down to $3.40. If the item is
| $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which rounds down to $4.55.
|
| Secondly, the rounding to nearest nickel is done per
| transaction, not per item. So if you go to a supermarket and
| pick up 3 items costing exactly $1.00, then the total you owe
| is $3.42 (which becomes $3.40 in cash), and it is that amount
| that is subjected to rounding, not the individual items (which
| are $1.13 and would round to $1.15).
|
| I live in Toronto and have analyzed my retail receipts. (I'm
| aware the HST is currently 13% but that's not relevant to this
| argument.) The rule about rounding to the nearest nickel is
| sensible enough, but I've witnessed various weird behaviors.
| For example, each vendor has a different kind of wording to
| show how they rounded your cash transaction. Some use a
| negative sign to show that the penny rounding deducted money
| from your total owed, while some use a negative sign to show
| that the penny rounding increased your total owed (as if you
| paid negative money). Also, a few vendors always round down to
| the nearest 5 cents (to appear nice to the customer), which
| causes a surprise when I'm trying to prepare the correct amount
| of change. Finally, some vendors don't display cash rounding on
| their receipts, so for them it is an oral culture that isn't
| formally written down.
| Loughla wrote:
| Regardless of what the practice is in Canada, I have zero
| faith in literally any US business to round down on anything,
| at anytime, for any reason at all. It will, I guarantee, be
| round up on everything.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's not merely "practice" in Canada, it's the law. And
| since most transactions are handled by software these days,
| it's pretty easy to implement and verify (jobs: secret
| shoppers). Subtler, businesses can try to game their prices
| to maximize rounding gains; also illegal (jobs: accounting,
| data analysis). For small businesses with antiquated tills,
| one should offer grants for upgrades and training (jobs:
| installation, manufacturing, tech support...).
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Subtler, businesses can try to game their prices to
| maximize rounding gains; also illegal (jobs: accounting,
| data analysis).
|
| It's actually illegal there to set prices such that they
| will generally round in the business's favor? Talk about
| micromanaging...
|
| If they change the tax rates do you have to update your
| prices so that they round evenly again?
|
| A fairer policy might be "round random" (e.g. 1.23 rounds
| to 1.20 40% of the time and to 1.25 60% of the time,
| since .23 is 60% of the way from .20 to .25). That would
| be harder to game by manipulating the prices. However,
| you would need to certify that the rounding was actually
| random; the result wouldn't be obviously correct for any
| particular transaction, only in aggregate.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Businesses already do rounding on sales tax, since
| percentage tax will often be fractional cents. And they do
| round down if it is below half a cent.
|
| I don't see why this would be different. Most likely there
| would be a law that covers it. (I believe there already is
| regarding sales tax)
| [deleted]
| jellicle wrote:
| Everyone uses an electronic POS system and it will round
| however the manufacturer told it to round (which will be
| correctly). The only people you have to worry about
| cheating you out of 3-4 cents in a world without pennies
| (the maximum you can be cheated) would be people without
| electronic systems. Which is to say, no one.
| jwigg wrote:
| > it will round however the manufacturer told it to round
| (which will be correctly)
|
| either you're way too optimistic, or i'm way too
| pessimistic, but lemme tell you, we do not see eye-to-eye
| on that point.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| Do you believe that they are already screwing you out of
| fractional cents? After all there is already rounding
| going on.
|
| Concretely, $1.20 with 7% tax is $1.284, do you believe
| merchants would charge you $1.29?
| Loughla wrote:
| I just disagree with this. We will see Wal-Mart and other
| chain retailers make their own POS software/systems.
|
| 3-4 cents isn't a lot. Unless it's added up by all of the
| people shopping in those places over the course of a
| year. The incentive to cheat the system is there,
| therefore the system will 100% be cheated. That's The
| American Way, in my experience.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Wal-Mart is also a huge corporation and every single
| attorney general, not to mention the FTC, would be
| delighted to learn that they're so clearly and
| unambiguously violating the law...
|
| This kind of fraud would be so easy to detect I just
| can't see it occurring on any large scale. The problem
| would be with small "mom and pop" businesses that could
| do it for some time without being noticed.
| jachee wrote:
| As foretold in _Superman III_ and _The Office_.
| DerekL wrote:
| That movie was titled _Office Space_ , not _The Office_.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| So do you believe they are already screwing you out of
| fractional cents? There is already rounding going on,
| there's no guarantee that applying taxes yields a whole
| number of cents.
| chrisparsons wrote:
| You'll have all the data to fact check whether or not
| they're doing this, too. We all do on a receipt.
| crdrost wrote:
| Note that you can also, while you're at it, abolish
| rounding.
|
| You already have this in some sense on gas pumps: the price
| advertised has taxes included so you are not always playing
| guess-the-final-total with your money. Just pass a law that
| requires fair advertising of the actual amount the
| purchaser will pay, taxes etc. included. If there are
| special circumstances that might make certain people exempt
| from a tax -- SNAP is sales-tax free, for instance -- there
| are several ways to handle that but it's clearer when
| phrased as a discount rather than as an evasion of a tax.
| syshum wrote:
| Absolutely not, I want to see the practice end on Gas
| Pumps.
|
| Every business should be requried to adversite, print,
| and clearly mark the amount of the tansaction is going to
| taxation
|
| Hiding taxation in the purchase price allows government
| to increase those tax rights with out facing the same
| amount of public back lash as they do when the taxation
| is calculated secretly from the transaction or advertised
| rate
|
| This is why when come taxes increase their gas takes the
| hate and vitriol is directed at the "evil gas companies"
| increasing the rates when in reality it was a increase in
| gas taxation that cause the per gallon price to increase
|
| One of the primary reasons I oppose a VAT style tax in
| the US is the vert nature of non-transparent taxation.
| People need to know exactly how much money the government
| is taken from them in any given transaction
| Entalpi wrote:
| In every single transaction? Why if there were some form
| you sent in and recieved every year that contain exactly
| the financial transation for that year between you and
| the state.. hmm.
| Pamar wrote:
| Well, yes, this... I am European and during my brief stay
| in the USA the fact that taxes were added at the cashier
| was awkward. I am sure you had your reasons and if you
| grow up in that sustem you won't notice much, but it
| looks a bit counterintuitive to foreigners.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's insisted upon by anti-tax advocates, so that
| Americans always get reminded about exactly how much the
| government is adding onto the price. Otherwise, the
| theory goes, we would get too happy about taxes.
| donarb wrote:
| That happened in Washington state when Costco sponsored a
| privatization initiative to allow liquor to be sold by
| private stores and abolish the state stores. The private
| stores started advertising the non-tax price with tiny
| print saying that tax would be added at the register
| (when the state sold liquor, the price on the shelf
| included all liquor taxes). People were pissed thinking
| that the state had been ripping them off until they got
| to the register and found that the price was pretty much
| what they paid before. Actually they were paying a bit
| more, most people didn't read the initiative before
| voting on it. Now the stores print the total price in
| their advertisements.
| thekyle wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think there is any law that
| says businesses have to add sales tax on separately.
| Since it's the business who actually pays the tax not the
| consumer they could just take it out of their own
| profits.
|
| However, the reason I think stores do this is: If store A
| is selling candy bars for $1 (+ $0.05 tax at register)
| and store B is selling candy bars for $1.05. Most people
| would buy their candy from store A because their prices
| are lower.
| syshum wrote:
| Business collect and remit taxation on behalf of the
| customer, so no the business is not "paying" the taxes.
| It is the consumer that owes them the business is just
| collecting them for the government. For which the
| business gets a small fee to do this service for the
| government.
|
| If the business did not collect taxes then you the
| customer owe that to the state still and are suppose to
| self report that and pay the owed taxed annually
|
| This is the same as Tax withholding from a paycheck, you
| owe the taxes but your employer is collecting and
| forwarding them to the government on your behalf, the big
| difference here is the purchases are not tracked by
| individual tax payer
| thekyle wrote:
| > If the business did not collect taxes then you the
| customer owe that to the state still and are suppose to
| self report that and pay the owed taxed annually
|
| Interesting. But do people actually do this in practice?
| I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax
| comes from businesses vs individuals.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Sometimes stores will structure sales that way ("we pay
| the sales tax" sales), so I expect you're right.
|
| The situation where it comes up is the idea of an
| American VAT. Because it applies the tax before the store
| even sees the good, the tax ends up baked into the price.
| And people like Grover Norquist have argued against a VAT
| specifically because of that: "The VAT is embedded inside
| the price of a good (as opposed to the U.S., where sales
| tax is transparent and on top of the price). As such,
| people forget they pay it, and European governments have
| found it too easy to raise the tax repeatedly over time."
|
| https://humanevents.com/2010/04/23/dont-give-obama-a-vat/
| Entalpi wrote:
| I love how the argument being played is that VAT is used
| to fed a big government. Like the US is huge, it requires
| a large government..
| bdowling wrote:
| Taxes are computed at the cashier because tax rates vary
| from state to state and city to city. If sales taxes were
| uniform then we would see more advertised prices
| including tax.
|
| One exception is in advertised gasoline prices, which
| usually include all the taxes, including sales tax and
| special gasoline taxes.
| chillwaves wrote:
| I assume menu prices also different from state to state,
| city to city. Not sure I see the issue.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It makes it impossible to do mass marketing with prices.
| Best Buy can send a flyer saying "Xbox One Only 199.99!"
| to everyone in Illinois. But if they had to include tax,
| it would be 219.99 or 214.99 depending on which side of
| my town you live in because they tax rate changes.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| But why is it possible for gasoline, and not for other
| items?
| nwallin wrote:
| Gasoline prices change daily and from one station to the
| next. So gasoline advertisements never include prices.
| gbear605 wrote:
| At a gas station, they have between one and four prices
| (diesel, regular, premium, and premium plus, or whatever
| your station calls it). So it's easy for them to adjust
| those four numbers. At a grocery store selling thousands
| or tens of thousands of items, it's a huge task to set
| the price tag for each item. So instead (or so I've
| heard), prices tags are produced by the grocery store's
| corporate office. This would be much more difficult to do
| if the price had to vary from town to town. Suppose this
| grocery store chain has a hundred stores. Instead of
| making ten thousand tags 100 times, you have to make 10
| million tags entirely uniquely. This is even more
| difficult for things like clothes where the price is on a
| tag physically attached to the garment. Imagine if the
| sales tax went down in that town; every single article of
| clothing would need to be relabeled.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| Also, it's only cash transactions that are rounded. If you
| pay by debit or credit (which I would guess is the majority?)
| then it's still the exact amount and nothing has changed.
| causality0 wrote:
| All transactions are rounded. It's just that paying by card
| is rounded to the nearest cent instead of the nearest 5
| cents.
| californical wrote:
| Weird that people disagree with you -- try taking a 7%
| tax of $1.25. your total will be $1.3375 -> $1.34
| lovegoblin wrote:
| Is it disagreement or just eye-rolling?
| mgbmtl wrote:
| Fun in Quebec: a 14.975% tax rate1. The tax can be
| rounded per line item or on the total.
|
| 1 it was so that the effective tax rate remained the same
| when Quebec stopped taxing the federal tax, which was
| pretty annoying for software.
| russdill wrote:
| How is this different from rounding sales tax to the nearest
| penny? Why should it be different?
| bzb3 wrote:
| >If the item is $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which
| rounds down to $4.55.
|
| Everybody who lived the transition to the Euro knows that
| this is not what will happen. Prices will be always rounded
| up.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Canadians are nicer?
| highmastdon wrote:
| I live in The Netherlands, we round mathematically. So
| nearest 5-cent.
| torgoguys wrote:
| That would probably be illegal in most jurisdictions in the
| US.
|
| I don't understand the big fuss over rounding in the
| discussion of eliminating the penny. Rounding happens. We
| already round sales tax up or down to the nearest penny--
| this would just round up or down to the nearest nickel.
|
| But while we are on the subject, I think we should
| eliminate nickels and quarters at the same time as the
| penny and just round to the nearest dime. (Let's put the 50
| cent piece of of its misery while we are at it too--just
| dollars and dimes). Rounding to the nearest ten cents is
| plenty specific enough given the accumulated
| inflation/devaluation of currency over the years and you
| basically get to simply knock off one decimal digit of
| precision for each transaction which makes things more
| straightforward. Also, US dimes are small and lightweight,
| making them easy to carry relative to other coins.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Let's put the 50 cent piece of of its misery while we
| are at it too--just dollars and dimes
|
| You forgot quarters, which are perhaps the most common
| coin. How about we eliminate pennies, nickles, dimes,
| half-dollars, and dollar bills, and just use quarters and
| dollars?
| pixelbath wrote:
| What ludicrous talk! You may as well suggest something
| equally as insane, like converting to metric units! /s
| berbec wrote:
| Then how do I know when my Mustang hits 88 bald eagle
| wingspan per Budweisercan?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Because I found it entertaining -
|
| If we assume it takes about 15 seconds to chug a bud, and
| that an eagle's wingspan is about 6ft, this leads to
| 528ft/15s, or ~24Mph.
|
| Either you need a faster car, you chug your beer quickly,
| or you grow some oversized eagles.
| [deleted]
| jpindar wrote:
| I was going to say, imagine no more sorting coins since
| we'd only have one kind - but then I realized I never do
| that anyway, the Coinstar machine does it for me.
| dlhavema wrote:
| And if you get a gift card instead of cash it's typically
| free. I did that and walked away with an 80$ Starbucks
| card. The other time, the machine had an issue connecting
| and a normal checkout clerk gave me cash directly, again
| no fee.
| Taniwha wrote:
| The correct way to change your sales-tax structure is simply to
| require stores quote the tax-included prices of things (like
| every other freaking country). It's not hard, and since
| businesses basically pick 'nice' values for prices, they just
| keep doing it.
| moolcool wrote:
| I'm totally with us ditching the penny, but I really wish we
| had a paper (plastic) $1. Any time you break a $5 bill you're
| left with a pocket full of change!
| ShorsHammer wrote:
| I honestly can't understand why any country on Earth is still
| using paper for notes. Is basic materials science some
| bizarre foreign concept?
|
| And for anyone who thinks otherwise, I'm going for a swim
| with $300 in my pocket.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| it will survive just fine
| nix23 wrote:
| Swiss-money is recycled plastic+paper, i even going to dive
| with 300sFr in my pocket, lots of hipster-micro-breweries
| down there...but crackers are not allowed.
| zeepzeep wrote:
| > I'm going for a swim with $300 in my pocket.
|
| Money isn't waterproof where you live?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Paper money isn't waterproof in the US.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes it is. It will get soggy, but once it dries it will
| be perfectly fine. It's mostly cotton, isn't it?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But they rip when wet. They also rip when dry!
|
| British, Canadian, Australian bank notes can't be ripped
| when wet or dry - they're polymer.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Thankfully, you can exchange them even if they're totally
| torn up as long as you have the pieces.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better not to have to do that thanks to
| them being waterproof?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Yes.
| lostapathy wrote:
| It's pretty close, though. It easily survives a trip
| through the washing machine or a swim
| moolcool wrote:
| Canada (and many other countries) has polymer bills
| hinoki wrote:
| In this case paper means polymer. Canada uses the same
| bills as Australia (and that the U.K. is switching to).
|
| Much better than in the USA, where their cloth money always
| feels like dirty laundry.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| How am I supposed to light my cigar with a burning $100
| when it's plastic?
| isk517 wrote:
| I thought the same thing when Canada made the switch, but
| soon found out that while tracking down a hold paper $100
| is a bit frustrating at times the added opulence from
| destroying something that will never be replaced brings
| my cigar experience to the next level.
| smichel17 wrote:
| At least in the US, bills are much different from regular
| printer paper, closer to fabric. As long as you're not
| taking them for a swim regularly, they should be fine.
| (That said, when I've lived in Germany, I very much enjoyed
| the existence of EUR1 and EUR2 coins -- I've written about
| it on here before, if you're willing to scroll very far
| back in my post history).
| ghaff wrote:
| >I very much enjoyed the existence of EUR1 and EUR2 coins
|
| Uggh. When I travel in Europe-- _especially_ Germany with
| its remaining heavy use of cash--I hate coinage that is
| sufficiently valuable that I can 't just basically ignore
| it. The US seriously tried to do a dollar coin (the Susan
| B. Anthony)--which was arguably ill-conceived for at
| least a couple of reasons but I'm very happy with US
| coinage being basically loose change although I'd be
| happy to eliminate basically disposable pennies and maybe
| even nickels.
|
| Though to tell the truth I normally use cash so seldom
| and/or at so few places in the US that it probably
| doesn't matter.
| lostapathy wrote:
| The US still mints several dollar coins - although the
| Susan B Anthony coins haven't been minted in over 20
| years.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_Sta
| tes)#Sa...
| ghaff wrote:
| I forgot about the Sacagawea dollar which did solve the
| fact that the Susan B Anthony coins were too much like
| quarters. Haven't seen one in the wild for years though.
| I didn't even know the other two but they're apparently
| not in general circulation.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Vending machines in post offices were the only place I
| regularly received dollar coins. Since most other vending
| machines accepted them, I never had much trouble using
| them up. The post office has removed most vending
| machines now so pretty much the only way I'd ever end up
| with a dollar coin would be if I bought a roll from my
| bank.
| [deleted]
| stan_rogers wrote:
| "Us" in this case is Canada, and we've had polymer notes
| for years. And it's not at all unusual for people to still
| call it "paper money" because it had been paper for so very
| long. Heck, we still call the stuff we use to wrap and
| protect things "tin foil" even though it's been aluminum
| for my entire life (and new consumer electronics were still
| being made with vacuum tubes/thermionic valves, with tube
| testers in every hardware and drug store, when I was a
| kid).
| paulie_a wrote:
| American currency isn't paper. It's more akin to cloth than
| anything else. And you can go swimming with 300 in bills in
| the USA. They are not going to melt and will be just fine
| even if submerged for hours.
|
| There are absolutely better materials to use, no argument
| there. But US paper currency are not even close to being
| fragile.
| stan_rogers wrote:
| It's paper. It just happens to be a cotton/linen long-
| fibre pulp blend rather than, say, wood pulp. That's how
| most paper was made from the origins of the stuff, in the
| West at least; wood pulp and so forth are relatively new
| in the grand scheme of things.
| def8cefe wrote:
| There's the Toonie though, $5 in coins is just 3 coins.
| stewjacks wrote:
| You're missing the obvious way to exploit this: all consumers
| stand to benefit a maximum of two cents from each purchase they
| make by carrying both cash AND card. Since rounding only
| happens when paying cash, simply pay cash if the purchase could
| be rounded down ($_._1 or $_._2), and pay card if it could
| rounded up ($_._3 and $_._4).
|
| In practice, no one gives a shit because it's a penny and no
| one cares about the penny. QED
| cellular wrote:
| I want to keep the penny, so it's cost keeps inflation down.
| The lowly penny could be worth more than a penny, and this can
| fight inflation.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| > Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety
| change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5.
| 5%, 10%, 15%, etc...
|
| Better to make the advertised price include sales tax so
| there's no surprise at the checkout.
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per
| day has got to make some accountants happy.
|
| You'd think, but actually no. That's because it's per
| transaction, so the accumulated amount is well pennies compared
| to the turnover.
|
| For example, say you always rounded in favor of the company.
| That means an average of 2c gain per transaction. If you do 2
| million transactions a day that's... 40 grand! yay. Except that
| if the average transaction is say $50 (which seems kinda low)
| that means your turnover for the day was $100 million.
|
| So, in short, if you are making a lot from the rounding error,
| well you're making a lot lot from the actual sales.
| a2h wrote:
| This is similar to how HFT firms make a profit. Except it's
| generally less than a penny but it's per share per
| transaction (trade). We can thank the Sub-Penny Pricing Rule
| of Regulation NMS for this feature. An order for 1000 shares
| of XYZ stock that is front-run for half a penny per share is
| $50 dollars profit. Rinse and repeat.
| masklinn wrote:
| Except for HFT firms _that 's_ their margin. Companies
| selling stuff already have a margin.
| gruez wrote:
| >We can thank the Sub-Penny Pricing Rule of Regulation NMS
| for this feature
|
| Are you sure? I did a quick search and came up with this
|
| >One of the rules in Regulation NMS is a new Sub-Penny
| Rule: "which establishes a uniform quoting increment of no
| less than one penny for quotations in NMS stocks equal to
| or greater than $1.00 per share to promote greater price
| transparency and consistency. . . . In particular, Rule 612
| addresses the practice of "stepping ahead" of displayed
| limit orders by trivial amounts. It therefore should
| further encourage the display of limit orders and improve
| the depth and liquidity of trading in NMS stocks."
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/sub-penny-
| pricin...
|
| which suggests the opposite of what you're claiming. Also,
| I'm not sure how you'd even make money this way,
| considering that NBBO requires brokers to execute their
| customer's trades at the best available price.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_best_bid_and_offer
| a2h wrote:
| Your criticism of my attributing the cause of the
| 'feature' to Reg NMS is fair. Although it is worth
| looking at the entirety of Rule 612, especially paragraph
| (c)[0].
|
| You are correct that brokers are required to execute
| customer trades at the best available price aka the NBBO.
| The issue here is that the NBBO is relatively slow as
| compared to data feeds offered by various exchanges and
| many brokers use the NBBO simply to satisfy Reg NMS Rule
| 603(c)[1].
|
| If price data was able to travel instantaneously then the
| NBBO might represent the true best price(s). But the laws
| of physics say it isn't so and orders can be executed at
| a less-than-best price yet still at or better than the
| NBBO.[2]
|
| Fortunately, more are aware of this these days including
| the SEC which released a proposed order calling for
| exchanges to submit revised NMS Plans for consolidated
| data earlier this year.[3]
|
| A great summary of how money is made with all of this I
| highly recommend giving this a read:
| http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/What-Every-Retail-Investor-
| Needs-...
|
| [0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.612 [1]:
| https://www.sec.gov/comments/4-729/4729-4560068-176205.pd
| f [2]: https://iextrading.com/docs/The%20Evolution%20of%2
| 0the%20Cru... [3]:
| https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nms/2020/34-87906.pdf
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| The NBBO ensures you get the best price available _on
| public exchanges_. Public exchanges are not the only
| places where stocks are traded.
|
| If the best price of a stock on exchanges is $25.00, but
| an HFT can buy it at $24.99 on a dark pool, they could
| buy it cheaper and sell it to you, and pocket the
| difference. When they pay your broker for the privilege
| of doing so, it's called _payment for order flow_. As a
| retail trader you have no visibility or access to dark
| pools.
|
| Aside from dark pools, NBBO updates have latency which
| may be exploited:
|
| http://strategicreasoning.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/02/ec3...
|
| Not matter _how_ they do it, the fact that they are
| willing to pay your broker to execute your order is proof
| that they have _some_ way to make money from your orders.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Except that if the average transaction is say $50 (which
| seems kinda low) that means your turnover for the day was
| $100 million.
|
| I don't think that seems low. A grocery store or a bakery
| probably sees a lot of transaction in the 2$ to 5$ range.
|
| But, to be fair, even at 'only' 4 million $ turnover your
| point still stands.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't know what grocery stores you go to, but I've never
| seen someone standing at the checkout line, holding a
| single turnip.
|
| Corner stores have the occasional sub-$5 purchase, as do,
| of course, coffee shops.
| mafaa wrote:
| Single turnip is ridiculous sure but that is hardly the
| average sub 5 $ purchase. I have seen people check out
| with single pieces of fruit or like a gallon of milk
| regularly. Plus, in my state, you could easily get a
| single deli item for lunch or breakfast for ~5$ or under.
| Basket size (which is the term groceries use for the
| average purchase total) is about 50$ although it has gone
| up in covid19 times. That is the mean though- there is a
| ton of ~5$ and sub purchases
| 51Cards wrote:
| Penny rounding was supposed to balance out, with 0.01 and 0.02
| rounding down to 0.00 and 0.03 and 0.04 rounding up to 0.05. In
| theory it balances out. I don't think even adjusting your
| prices to get "in my favour" rounding would make that much of a
| difference as it's on the final total, not per item.
| grecy wrote:
| When Australia dropped their $0.01 coin in 1992 they
| originally went with "nearest rounding" i.e. 0.01 and 0.02 go
| down, 0.03 and 0.04 go up.
|
| That only lasted a few years until they changed it to always
| "round up" - i.e. it always goes up to 0.05.
|
| For what it's worth, dropping the $0.01 coin is great, every
| time I'm in the US I try to avoid them like the plague.
| grawprog wrote:
| >Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The
| sky didn't fall.
|
| True, but part of me still misses it. Not for any real
| functional reasons. The rounding issue is really nothing and
| seems to work out pretty evenly from what I can tell, not that
| I've really bothered to try and figure it out.
|
| I guess it's more sentimental reasons really. It feels odd not
| being able to count cash to an exact cent. You can now only
| hold cash up to the nearest 5C/, again not a big deal, but it
| just makes cash feel more second class. Then there's things
| like those fountains people would toss pennies into, or the
| whole find a penny pass it on for good luck thing, or the
| various phrases involving pennies. 'A penny for your thoughts
| and such'. These are all things that'll kind of vanish from
| public thought.
|
| I dunno, these are just some things i've thought of over the
| years since they got rid of pennies.
| stilley2 wrote:
| > This is a key difference between US policy & Canadian policy
| that I have informally noticed while growing up on the border
| (with family ties on both sides).
|
| My wife's Canadian and I'm American, and we've discussed this
| point too. My theory is that Canada's parliamentary system
| generally puts one party in charge of the executive and
| legislative, so it's easier for that party to get things done.
| Of course there are times when a party in the US controls both
| branches and we still struggle to get things done. I would
| assume that most larger changes happens on this scenarios
| though.
|
| And of course the US seems to suffer from partisanship in
| general more than Canada, but I can't back that up.
| talideon wrote:
| I don't think that's the case myself. While I do think that
| the parliamentary system is better than the congressional
| system, I think it's more that the parliamentary system
| emphasises consensus-building and executive accountability
| more. This is especially apparent in countries where a form
| of proportional representation is used for elections.
| refurb wrote:
| Consensus building? If a party in Canada gets a majority in
| Parliament, they can pass whatever bills they want (the
| senate rarely intervenes unless it's _really_
| controversial). And individual MPs have much less leeway to
| stray from the party line.
|
| The US system is much more adversarial. Even if a single
| party gets the house, senate and presidency, there isn't
| much stopping individual party members from voting against
| the party line.
|
| It's true consensus is need with a coalition/minority
| government, but they don't seem to happen _that_ often.
| Yes, I know there is one right now.
| fatbird wrote:
| What you're leaving out, in Canada's case, is that the norm
| is a strict party-line vote. In rare cases, the PM will
| allow a "conscience vote", where individuals vote as they
| will; in every other case, you vote as your party directs
| or you're kicked out of the party. As party-line voting is
| the norm, sitting as an independent is basically worthless
| in terms of accomplishing anything--no access to party
| resources or assignments.
|
| So in practice, the PM of a majority gov't (i.e., has a
| majority of seats) gets to pass whatever they want to pass;
| the saving grace of this is that, without having to haggle
| and herd cats and trade horses, the legislation is the
| legislation--there's no poison pills, no payoff amendments,
| no loopholes to capture one person's support, and no
| extreme bits to trade away. It's just "this is the law we
| want", which I think leads to higher quality legislation
| over all.
|
| The PM of a minority gov't (i.e., only has a plurality of
| seats) may have to secure another party's vote to pass, but
| that's a negotiation with a second entity, not a hundred
| other voting entities.
|
| Consensus doesn't play a significant part in it, I believe.
| Within the bounds of the law, the PM of a majority is
| nearly a polite dictator.
| streb-lo wrote:
| This all very true but I just wanted to add one more
| thing I think is a strength of parliaments.
|
| In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime
| Minister and win or lose his performance is on the line
| in the next election. There's no (effective) hand-waving
| about opposition or other excuses to deflect
| accountability. Elections are a black/white referendum of
| the incumbent's performance.
|
| In the US it's a lot easier to muddy the waters and a lot
| harder for people to arrive at a clear conclusion and
| often nobody is happy.
|
| "YES I don't like X BUT it wasn't Y's fault it was Z"
| beojan wrote:
| > This is especially apparent in countries where a form of
| proportional representation is used for elections.
|
| Proportional representation is almost a necessary condition
| for the parliamentary system to encourage consensus-
| building. More specifically, it's necessary that no party
| hold an absolute majority.
|
| With first-past-the-post, you usually end up with one party
| having full control for one term, and no one to hold them
| accountable (particularly if you have the principle of
| parliamentary soverignity).
| Veen wrote:
| That assumes members of the legislature always vote with
| their own party, which they don't. Plus, there are
| usually two houses and the upper house can scrutinize and
| hold to account the lower house. In the UK it's an
| appointed (and partially hereditary) upper house, so
| there's less party discipline (although not none).
| walshemj wrote:
| Except when you get fringe parties holding the balance of
| power.
|
| With some of the NI parties screwing over conservative
| governments its why NI doesn't have the same laws as the
| UK
| corpMaverick wrote:
| We seriously have to take a look at how parliamentary systems
| work. I remember our political science teacher told us that
| the only country where the presidential system actually works
| is the US. That was 20 years ago. I think that is no longer
| true.
| refurb wrote:
| As someone who has lived on both sides of the border, my
| theory is that Canadians are just less politically active. I
| can remember major bills coming for vote and sure, you'd see
| a few news articles, but rarely did it become entrenched in
| daily discussion.
|
| I actually liked the US approach when I first arrived - "how
| great! everyone is passionate about politics!". I find it
| somewhat draining now. There is almost no part of life (work,
| friends, random strangers) where politics doesn't come up.
| gregjor wrote:
| I wonder why my immigrant friends get so passionate about
| American politics. I find it mostly boring.
|
| I think you're not describing real political passion or
| engagement, though -- Americans can get quite worked up
| about politics but we're not all that engaged, or
| passionate enough to lobby for real change. Politics serve
| as signs of tribal affiliation and self-identity, and
| sometimes as a way to bludgeon other people. In that sense
| talking about politics is similar to, and as pointless as,
| arguing about sports. We (Americans) actually don't show
| much real engagement if you look at voter turnout.
| refurb wrote:
| I found it interested because so little of it happened in
| Canada. But yes, I mistook it for real political
| involvement, but you're right, it's mostly banter. That
| said, I would say more Americans are at least _aware_ of
| the political issue of the day, where in Canada many
| people just didn 't care.
|
| My other pet theory is that Canadians get _more than
| enough_ politics from Canadian coverage of US politics
| (it 's often 30%+ of news coverage) so they feel little
| urge to do the same with domestic politics.
| bumby wrote:
| So is that a bug or a feature of the US system?
|
| On one hand, beneficial change can be painstakingly slow. On
| the other, malevolent change can be stymied indefinitely
|
| Edit: clarify my statement was in reference to the US
| clord wrote:
| The problem with checks and balances is that partisanship
| is paralyzing. If each side deems their causes good and the
| opponent evil that must be stopped, nothing happens. Some
| mechanism is required to build cooperation. Patriotism used
| to serve that role in the US but it's not functioning since
| it too is becoming political.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Patriotism used to serve that role in the US_
|
| I used to think so, but as I read more about the founding
| fathers I'm beginning to think they had all the same
| personality conflicts we have today. Maybe there's a case
| that with today's media our current reps are more
| accountable to their constituents, but (superficially at
| least) most would interpret that as a good thing
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _On the other, malevolent change can be stymied
| indefinitely_
|
| When the party that made the "malevolent" change is kicked
| out, then whatever they did can be reverted very easily.
|
| Contrast that with: if passing anything is hard, and a
| "malevolent" change does manage to be rammed through
| somehow (e.g., one party controls things for a two-year
| period), then reversing it will also be very difficult.
| bumby wrote:
| I'm not wholly convinced the first statement is the case.
| It's probably true for some types of changes like
| Executive Orders than can be easily repealed. Others,
| like laws and judge selections, take much longer to
| revert. I wonder if this is due to the lobbying culture
| in combination to competing interests.
|
| Somewhat humorous example: In response to the need for
| warm clothing in the Korean War, US lawmakers instituted
| an alpaca subsidy in 1952. This subsidy remained in place
| for over 40 years.[1]
|
| I do think there's evidence that your second statement is
| true. Bad policy takes a lot of political will to
| overturn.
|
| [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=fV_SuDMHpOsC&pg=PA2
| 73&lpg=...
| pletsch wrote:
| Disclaimer: this is just my view as a Canadian, not sure if
| studies back this up.
|
| I think it's a feature. We seem to move a lot faster and it
| doesn't always work, but for the most part, having MPs as
| the executive branch allows people at the top to legislate
| what they need to succeed.
| stewjacks wrote:
| I've always thought of two factors in Canadian federal
| politics that make a huge difference operationally: Many
| political parties (diversity of platforms/views), and the
| vote of no confidence.
|
| Canada generally has at least three official political
| parties (more than 12 seats in the house) at any given time.
| Currently there are four. You need the most seats but not
| necessarily a majority of seats to form a government. If a
| party has fewer than 50%, they form what's called a minority
| government.
|
| Next big piece is the motion of no confidence, which means we
| can have an election literally whenever if a government can't
| pass legislation.
|
| So combine the chance of minority governments and more voices
| and platforms in government the possibility that obstruction
| can actually cause you to, you know, lose your job, and you
| get natural checks against a lot of the problems on display
| in American federal politics right now. If you can't pass a
| budget, you don't get a federal shutdown until you negotiate
| one, you get an election triggered immediately. I understand
| why no confidence would be practically impossible in America
| due to money and insanely long election cycles, but it really
| helps form coalitions and collaboration in Canadian politics.
| streb-lo wrote:
| > Of course there are times when a party in the US controls
| both branches and we still struggle to get things done.
|
| It's the party discipline. In Canada political parties
| control the fundraising apparatus and you can't be bankrolled
| by a handful of wealthy donors. Barring unusual circumstance,
| if you want to be re-elected you are beholden to a party and
| thus the whips generally have a strong ability to bring votes
| to the table.
|
| In the states its a lot easier for a Republican or Democrat
| to tell their party to go fly a kite if they don't see voting
| for a bill as opportune, in part because of less reliance on
| the party.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Transactions on credit/debit cards are not rounded so it's
| rarely an issue these days when even corner stores are not
| handling much cash.
|
| Also, the rounding algorithm is in the article you linked to:
|
| > If the price ends in a one, two, six, or seven it gets
| rounded down to 0 or 5; and rounded up if it ends in three,
| four, eight or nine.
|
| That tends to work out pretty even for consumer/store if you
| are buying groups of randomly priced items.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Re the tax situation:
|
| When Australia ditched the 1 and 2 cent coins, making 5 cents
| the smallest denomination, the rules were that transactions
| ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 were to be rounded down to 0 or 5,
| respectively, and that 3, 4, 8 or 9 were rounded up, and that
| this was to be done at the _transaction_, not the _item_ level.
|
| Several companies and utilities had to be reprimanded or fined
| due to doing it per item.
| dhosek wrote:
| When someone posted an article about the coin shortage on
| Facebook recently, I realized that I haven't used cash for a
| purchase since sometime before the lockdown started. And even
| before that, my primary use of cash was the collections basket at
| church--which the lockdown has ended up transforming into a
| credit card transaction now. Our formerly cash transactions for
| our cleaning lady have converted into Zelle payments. Friends who
| also commented mentioned tipping delivery people although I
| prefer contactless delivery and always include the tip in the
| original payment rather than have to come close enough to a
| delivery person to hand off cash. Cash has long been on a decline
| and I think the pandemic is accelerating this to the point where
| it's going to end up being moot.
| dhosek wrote:
| Coin-only laundry machines are probably the biggest drivers of
| persistent cash usage in most of my acquaintances' lives. I'm
| guessing that apartment buildings big enough to have in-
| building laundry rooms but small enough to not be able to
| justify a cashless payment system may just end up shifting to
| not charging for laundry.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I think that gap is growing smaller.
|
| Sample size of one incoming, but the building I live in only
| has 16 2-room apartments and has a app-driven option for the
| machines (they take coins, but there's no change machines and
| I've never seen anyone actually do so)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Until I made the (in hindsight, fortuitous) move into a house
| with a washing machine, I and many other millions of people
| in the US used cash weekly at the laundromat. Even their
| laundry service only took cash.
| [deleted]
| kerkeslager wrote:
| There are whole subeconomies that operate primarily in cash. If
| you think that cash is going to disappear, you're living in an
| echo chamber.
|
| And more to the point, forcing every American to pay 1-3% rent
| on every transaction is not progress.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Can we get rid of nickels and dimes too?
|
| And standardize on a single sales tax rate across the country?
|
| And then build that into prices instead of being tacked on extra?
|
| Just let everything actually cost increments of $0.25. Let me buy
| something on the McDonald's dollar menu with an actual dollar.
| Not with two dollars and then dealing with _seven_ chunks of
| metal in return.
|
| (I mean, as long as we're dreaming. Because if we haven't managed
| to get rid of the penny over the past 30 years, I don't see why
| we'll ever actually manage to in the future. Sadly.)
| Wohlf wrote:
| >standardize on a single sales tax rate across the country
|
| My modest proposal, do what Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New
| Hampshire, and Oregon have all done and eliminate it. Sales tax
| is annoying and regressive.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I moved from a country that has pennies (Germany, so EUR cents)
| to one that doesn't (Switzerland, CHF) age 18.
|
| The smallest coin is 0.05CHF. It's still worth enough that you
| might use a handful of them to make change for a small amount
| like, say, 0.40CHF.
|
| Grocery prices either have a resolution of 0.05CHF (all major
| retailers) or if not, your bill will be rounded to a resolution
| 0.05CHF to the customers advantage (e.g. at Lidl).
|
| I have never ever once missed the equivalent of the 1- or 2-cent
| EUR coin. They were a pain to have in your wallet, and an insult
| to any tip jar or piggy bank.
|
| I have no rational idea why the concept hasn't caught on more
| widely.
| undersuit wrote:
| I guess the question is... do you feel good about wasting one,
| two, three, and four?
| nix23 wrote:
| But the foifraepller is still more expensive to manufacture the
| it's own worth.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Seems to me it mostly doesn't matter if 95-99% of all
| transactions go digital. So basically it's less work to do
| nothing about the penny because the issue will solve itself.
| ShaneMcGowan wrote:
| No, coin collectors have enough problems as it is
| donatj wrote:
| Honestly, I've wondered from time to time what effect (if any,
| clearly) penny's having an actual metallurgical value goes
| towards stemming inflation and creating not a "gold standard" but
| rather an accidental "copper and nickel standard"?
| bane wrote:
| I've actually found that I virtually never use cash anymore,
| virtually every place has a PoS now that accepts some kind of
| card of digital payment system. Heck, my favorite BBQ place which
| is run on weekends out of a vacant gravel lot uses square.
|
| I also travel overseas a bit, and it's always strange to visit a
| country that's pretty cash heavy _Japan_ _cough_ _cough_. But
| even then we mostly get by with our credit cards.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > By the 1990s, Kolbe says, he was introducing new legislation to
| kill the penny with every new session of Congress. But he kept
| facing resistance -- for example, from the speaker of the House
| at the time, Dennis Hastert, who represented a district in
| Illinois, the home state of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, of course,
| is on the penny, and Kolbe says that proved to be a major
| roadblock.
|
| I hear this a lot, and I think its a weak argument. The original
| coinage act (1792?) authorized a $5 coin. Replace the Lincoln
| penny with the Lincoln $5 coin; you continue to have a Lincoln
| coin, you trade a useless coin for one that will be very useful
| for the next 100 years, and now all US currency with Lincoln on
| it is $5. Win-win-win.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I remember reading years ago that the reluctance to get rid of a
| penny is usual the unease in the central bank of a particular
| country to accept that the currency has inflated.
|
| I imagine retailers would still price things at PS9.95 instead to
| perpetuate the 'psychological trick' that "it's not really
| PS10!".
| Ensorceled wrote:
| They certainly have continued the $xxx9.99 tradition here in
| Canada.
| shmerl wrote:
| I'd like this dumb trend to price things with #.99 to go away.
| It's so annoying. May be dropping pennies will help that.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Pennies are just extra surfaces for coronavirus to ride on.
| manicpolymath wrote:
| April 10, 2025 is when the penny should cease, so we can
| commemorate it on nickel/dime/quarter day 05/10/25. And yes, it
| should be April 10 and not October 05 because this will be an
| American holiday dang it.
| smileysteve wrote:
| May...
| tacocataco wrote:
| All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the
| covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel
| that plastic cash would make more of a difference.
|
| CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite
| YouTuber.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| "Paper" cash is actually linen. You can wash it with hot water
| no problem
| eumenides1 wrote:
| In Canada, cash is all plastic. Not quite the plastic OP was
| thinking about. Love me my plastic colorful money.
| jmcqk6 wrote:
| Everyone knows money laundering is against the law.
| kstenerud wrote:
| "Paper" money is actually a cloth composite, which can be
| washed.
| jpindar wrote:
| It can also be ironed. If you have a bunch of crumpled bills
| and you wish they took up less space and were easier to
| handle, iron them.
| gjs278 wrote:
| if you think you are going to get covid from paper cash, you're
| a paranoid germ freak. it's not even worth living in with
| worldview like that. just touch the paper.
| jlengrand wrote:
| I come from France, where we use pennies and live in the
| Netherlands where we don't.
|
| It's always a great deal of fun seeing the family come over and
| try to hand over / or wait for their pennies after doing the
| groceries; struggling to really understand each other because of
| the language barrier.
|
| There is something very charming about it .
| wartijn_ wrote:
| You should be able to pay with 1 and 2 cent coins in The
| Netherlands. You just won't get them as change and the amount
| charged will be rounded to the nearest 5 cents in most, but not
| all, shops. But I wouldn't be surprised if many cashiers don't
| know they should accept those coins.
| jlengrand wrote:
| Interesting. I've tried in quite a few places and never got
| them accepted.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| Here is the government website that says so and its
| translation (with a really long url, but the translation is
| better than that of Google Translate).
|
| Appearantly every shop should have stickers telling
| customers that they round cash payments. I've never noticed
| that anywhere.
|
| https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-
| en-...
|
| https://www.deepl.com/translator#nl/en/%20Mogen%20winkelier
| s....
| jlengrand wrote:
| Geen vertaling nodig hoor :P. Thanks for the link! I
| can't say I have seen any of those stickers either. I'll
| have a more attentive look in the future
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Go further. I haven't used coins in 10 years. Get coins - put
| them all in the 'penny tray'. Or give them to the cashier. Or
| hand them to somebody nearby. All else fails, toss them in the
| trash as I leave the store.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Trashing money is illegal and sounds very unethical to me.
| robin_reala wrote:
| It's a lot more nuanced than "illegal" and definitely depends
| on your region:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_burning#Legality
| jcims wrote:
| Why unethical? You're giving everyone a small gift of
| deflation.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's more ethical and efficient to burn paper money, if
| that's your goal.
| paulie_a wrote:
| While I don't throw change out info not use coins ever. Any
| coins I get in change goes directly into the tip jar or change
| tray in the car or bucket at home. It's not going to be reused
| until I take a bunch of it to the bank.
|
| I would say get rid of all change but if absolutely necessary
| keep the quarter. With cards being so prevelant who cares, they
| will stil have the exact amount. To be fair I think checks
| should basically be banned or not accepted anywhere. They are
| outdated forms of payment. We don't need to keep them on life
| support when they are not economically viable.
| nix23 wrote:
| >All else fails, toss them in the trash as I leave the store
|
| That Joe is a BIG Asshole move.
| gojomo wrote:
| The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5C/, as
| described by Austan Goolsbee here:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html
|
| This is (very) mildly stimulative/inflationary, and in the time
| leading up to en expected re-basing, accelerates the phase-out of
| the 1C/ penny (as people hoard in expectation of a 5x return).
| But as of the moment of re-basing, it flushes all those penny-
| jars out into spending/circulation.
|
| Congress could do this tomorrow, effective immediately or in a
| week or month. Maybe the Treasury Department/Administration could
| do it on their own authority.
|
| (The only significant opposition is likely to be from suppliers
| of nickel-minting metals. So maybe we just rebase pennies as
| 10C/.)
| ngngngng wrote:
| So I should start collecting pennies then, yes? 500% returns
| you say?
| gojomo wrote:
| I do think enough people believing this could happen, and
| thus hoarding pennies, could increase its likelihood.
|
| It'd grow a popular constituency for the rebasing, and create
| a change shortage that's most-easily addressed by
| incentivizing the release of instantly-more-valuable penny
| hoards.
|
| Fill your jars, then pass the idea on!
|
| (Does anyone know someone high up in this '4chan' memetic-
| prankster cooperative I keep hearing about? Nah, they'd
| probably just trick Congress into doing something useless
| like rebasing the penny to 4C/.)
| [deleted]
| clairity wrote:
| how about rebasing the dollar to $10 so that the penny has the
| worth of 10C/, and then apply a one-time progressive wealth tax
| to pay for saving the economy from collapse while also
| addressing the regressiveness of that action? maybe call it an
| anti-revolution tax.
| ebg13 wrote:
| > _The best plan is to re-base all pennies to be worth 5C/_
|
| But they say "ONE CENT" on them.
| gojomo wrote:
| They also say, 'Liberty', 'In God We Trust', & 'E Pluribus
| Unum'. Lots of writing on government-issued materials is
| false, ceremonial, outdated, or overridden by later acts.
|
| If it really bothers you, you can file that off your pennies
| before spending them at 5C/ value. We won't mind.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I would check 18 U.S. Code SS331 (fraudulently defacing
| currency) before doing that.
| gojomo wrote:
| There would be no fraud in scratching 'ONE CENT' off of
| pennies that were, by law, worth 5C/.
|
| But also, when was the last prosecution for defacing a
| coin in the United States?
|
| What sort of monster would call the police on a fellow
| person for passing a damaged penny?
|
| How would the prosecution's burden of proof be met?
|
| (Be a currency hacker, like Satoshi or Woz -
| https://hackaday.com/2012/08/03/woz-prints-and-spend-his-
| own... - not someone whose actions are limited by obscure
| dead-letter laws.)
| scarface74 wrote:
| _What sort of monster would call the police on a fellow
| person for passing a damaged penny?_
|
| These types:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-
| vid...
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/irl/black-man-police-comcast/
|
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/03/cops-draw-
| gun...
|
| https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/23/ohio-cops-called-black-
| kids-p...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| How is Woz a currency hacker in that link? He literally
| just buys sheets from [0] and glues them together.
|
| [0]https://catalog.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-
| currency/
| gojomo wrote:
| The $2 bills are currency. He recombines them to create
| funny & thought-provoking situations, including
| encounters with local police & Secret Service, that test
| the boundaries of what's allowed & what's trusted.
|
| What other definition of 'hacking' do you use?
| Bjartr wrote:
| Unless you are committing fraud, like falsely trying to
| claim it has a value other than what it actually does,
| defacing currency isn't illegal. So trying to pass off a
| penny as being worth 5 cents today by filing it down
| would violate that law, but if they really were worth 5
| cents, it would be fine.
| SamBam wrote:
| I assume they would be redeemable at banks for nickels.
| gojomo wrote:
| And payable to any establishment that accepted traditional
| nickels as well.
| wnissen wrote:
| This is the only sensible solution. I don't know of a single
| thing that I could buy with a nickel, let alone a penny. I
| think there is some candy that's still sold for a dime, so
| having a penny worth that much would have at least some
| utility. The U.S. half-cent coin was withdrawn in 1857, when it
| was worth about $.15 today!
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| I guess it's easier to kill the penny than to divide all prices
| by a factor of 2.
| pottspotts wrote:
| About 10 years ago my friends and I made a Web site,
| removethepenny.com (no longer active) and starting calling around
| to see who would support us. I recall speaking to someone who was
| very angry that we cared so little for the metal industry.
|
| I think this has been known for a long time but special interests
| have kept it on life support for obvious reasons.
| grecy wrote:
| It's the same reason the US hasn't switched to plastic bills
| when even countries like Guatemala and Angola have years ago.
|
| There are too many people making too much money on the status
| quo, and they'll fight tooth and nail to not let it change.
| lostapathy wrote:
| I'm not sure the reasons are so obvious. Surely very little
| metal is turned into pennies compared to the quantities
| consumed by industrial processes.
| jdhawk wrote:
| last year they made 8.4BN pennies, which would be about 21
| million KG of Zinc, worth about ~$40 million?
| lostapathy wrote:
| That's a lot of money, but not "change public policy"
| levels of cash, either.
|
| On the other side, handling pennies is expensive for
| businesses and banks, I bet it costs at least that much.
| There are special interests on both sides of this.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| If their profit margin is around 8% or so, which I assume
| would be reasonable for mining & industrial firms, that's a
| really small amount and not worth the lobbying cost
| dougmwne wrote:
| Actually based on advertising around Washington, DC and the
| lobby groups that run those ads, there is plenty of money in
| the metal and paper industries to lobby both for and against
| coinage changes, because I have seen it the last time this
| issue came up. DC is so packed with lobbying firms that work
| on portfolios of every issue under the sun that you have to
| have lived and worked inside the beltway for a while to
| believe it.
| gonational wrote:
| The nickel then becomes the new penny.
|
| This propaganda is part of the inflationary process, which is
| intended to increase economic velocity at or faster than the rate
| of savings, at the expense of savings.
|
| Soon, a dollar will be thought of the way we think of a quarter,
| and the quarter will become the new dime. Decent family homes
| will cost north of $2.5MM, and people will say, "back when I was
| a kid...".
| undersuit wrote:
| This comment is at the very bottom of the comments right now
| and I'm glad I looked for it.
|
| I agree by killing the penny we essentially force inflation to
| happen. Bread priced at $.99 can be sold at $.98 far more
| easily than bread priced $1 can be sold at $.95. By removing
| the penny our jumps become more volatile. Something increasing
| in cost by a penny or two might take a product from 99C/ to $1
| or reduce the profit margin a bit now, but when there is no
| penny the $1 product that needs to cost 2C/ more is going to
| cost $1.05.
| awillen wrote:
| So like... San Francisco right now?
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| In the Netherlands
|
| > In 1980, production of the 1-cent coin ceased and was
| demonetized three years later.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_guilder#Coins
|
| > In 1999 replaced by the Euro, and gained 1-cent and 2-cent
| coins.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_euro_cent_coin
|
| The one- and two-cent coins were initially introduced in order to
| ensure that the introduction of the euro was not used as an
| excuse by retailers to heavily round up prices. However, due to
| the cost to business and the mints of maintaining a circulation
| of low value coins, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy and the
| Netherlands round prices to the nearest five cents (Swedish
| rounding) for cash payments, producing only a handful of those
| coins for collectors rather than general circulation.[3] Despite
| this, the coins are still legal tender and produced outside these
| states, so if a customer with a two-cent coin minted elsewhere
| wishes to pay with it, they may.[4]
|
| The Dutch Bank calculated it would save $36 million a year by not
| using the smaller coins. According to a Eurobarometer survey of
| EU citizens, 64% across the Eurozone want their removal with
| prices rounded; with over 70% in Belgium, Ireland, Italy, the
| Netherlands and Slovakia.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The claim that 0.01EUR coins produced elsewhere remain legal
| tender in the rounding countries, does not hold for Finland. No
| supermarket is going to accept 1- or 2-cent coins for payment
| even if you had enough to add up to the nearest 5-cent unit.
| eMSF wrote:
| That doesn't mean they aren't still legal tender in Finland
| (which they are). Somewhat relatedly, some places also don't
| accept all the banknotes - that is, the largest denominations
| - a rule which clearly has nothing to do with the rounding
| rules of cents.
| dafoex wrote:
| I know this is about the US penny, but from a UK perspective I
| think it'd be much more useful to kill the two pence piece. Those
| coins are massive and, in my experience, never used except to put
| in those charity buckets. One pennies, however small their
| monetary value, at least help you make up odd prices, but twos
| are always just too much to make up a PS2.47 bus fare.
| jayflux wrote:
| Most likely both the 1p and 2p would go and prices would be
| rounded to the nearest 5p (so you wouldn't need a penny to make
| up the odd price). But the UK govt already said they're not
| doing this.
| dafoex wrote:
| PS2.46, even. If only the bus driver would fat finger the
| ticket machine, maybe 2p coins would have a use.
| hinkley wrote:
| The Japanese 'penny' is (was?) made of aluminum. It looked less
| like currency and more like a token from a deluxe version of a
| board game. It was just too insubstantial.
|
| As we've moved to zinc with a thinner and thinner copper jacket
| the US penny has drifted in that direction, but the relief is
| much more pronounced and makes it look more 'real'. Probably more
| expensive to make though.
| dutch3000 wrote:
| no. tired of these lame discussions about something as trivial as
| a penny. nobody should waste time on contemplating such a
| question.
| beervirus wrote:
| Think of all the time that everyone would save going forward
| not having to deal with pennies. It's worth spending some time
| up front for a benefit like that.
| dutch3000 wrote:
| i reject a future driven solely by efficiency. therefore, i
| support the penny.
| beervirus wrote:
| That's fine. But "nobody should waste time on contemplating
| such a question" doesn't make much sense.
| dutch3000 wrote:
| besides, there's a coin shortage. we need more. ;)
| corpMaverick wrote:
| Yes, please do it. They are just a hassle.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I really like it that they offer you, instead of a site with a
| lot of junk and JS, a plain text version! That's much nicer news
| than the story itself :-)
|
| ... that said - why _don't_ you guys cancel the penny?
|
| > Penny defenders' strongest argument was that eliminating it
| would hurt consumers. All those $9.99 products? The prices would
| be jacked up to an even $10!
|
| That sounds like an argument made up retroactively to try to
| justify something. Seriously?
|
| 1. The time and effort to handle penny change costs more.
|
| 2. Those bargain prices will become $9.95 , and some other prices
| will rise slightly to compensate; or not.
| talideon wrote:
| Where I'm from, shops started using .95 pricing _long_ before
| the idea of scrapping 1c and 2c coins was raised, purely
| because handling those coins wasn't worth it.
|
| A key difference is that we have VAT, which is built into the
| price, rather than a US-style sales tax, which is not. In the
| US, if you're handling cash you still have to deal with 1c and
| 2c coins because of that. That made it easier for us to scrap
| 1c and 2c coins, but creates resistance for any US attempts to
| do the same.
|
| One other thing we did was introduce symmetrical rounding rules
| on the final price of cash transactions:
| https://www.centralbank.ie/consumer-hub/rounding
|
| Applying rounding was entirely voluntary, and all the
| Government did was gradually take the 1c and 2c coins out of
| circulation. After that, it was a matter of time for the
| problem to go away.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yeah but what will the gas pumps do? Their prices are "$3.29.9"
| per gallon, do they Mae it "$3.29.5" now?
|
| Personally yeah, I don't think we need pence.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They're already denominated in a unit that doesn't exist. Why
| would they change?
| gerikson wrote:
| The US dollar was designed to be subdivided into cents
| (hundreds) and mills (thousands).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)#Usage
| cwhiz wrote:
| Practical reality in 2020 is different than whatever the
| intended design was. There is no possible way to pay with
| a fraction of a penny.
| mark-r wrote:
| "Practical reality" hasn't changed. There never was a way
| to pay anything with a fraction of a penny, even when
| cards made it theoretically possible. The final price
| just gets adjusted to a whole penny amount.
| tedunangst wrote:
| The US has minted half cent coins in the past.
| mark-r wrote:
| I stand corrected then. I'm pretty sure that was well
| before I was born, though.
| [deleted]
| michaelt wrote:
| _> That sounds like an argument made up retroactively to try to
| justify something. Seriously?_
|
| If the latest console game rises from $79.99 to $80.00 it's a
| trivial increase, I agree. A hundredth of a percentage point.
|
| But if a loaf of bread rises from $0.99 to $1.00 it's increased
| by an entire 1% - resulting in a noticeable impact on food
| price inflation. And when your inflation rate is around 0%-2%
| before, even a quarter of a percentage point is pretty
| noticeable to inflation-watchers.
|
| IMHO we should do it anyway, though.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I call straw man.
|
| 1. Loaves of bread don't go for $0.99 ; see an example survey
| here: https://costaide.com/loaf-bread-cost/
|
| 2. You can get bread at different units of weight.
|
| 2. A $0.09 item would rise by a full 10%! Terrible, right?
| ... not when you ask yourself "How many of those do I
| actually buy?"
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Wow that text only version is great, can I have that of every
| website please? (Without an ad-blocker)
| Asooka wrote:
| There is a much simpler solution. Obviously people want their
| "0.01" coin, so we should instead envalue the currency. Cancel
| the dollar, make dollar2.0 which is exactly 10 times as valuable
| and done. You eliminate everything below 10cents effectively, the
| metal industry is happy to supply material for new coins, coin
| collectors are happy to get new coins, banks are delighted to
| make a bit of profit skimming a few dollars off people's accounts
| when converting their currency in their databases, everybody[1]
| wins!
|
| [1] for some fraction of "everybody"
| saalweachter wrote:
| If you envalue by 100:1 you could probably start making silver
| dimes, quarters and dollars again.
| ryandvm wrote:
| The US penny is perhaps the most illustrative example of why I am
| wary that the US government can do ANYTHING efficiently.
|
| The continued existence of the penny is absolutely ludicrous.
| Here we have something that has almost zero economic value to
| everyone involved. It costs more to mint them than they're worth.
| It likely costs more to even transport or count them than they're
| worth. It is almost entirely just economic drag on every
| transaction that involves them. Yet somehow, we can't find the
| political will to _just_ _stop_ _making_ them. Momentum truly is
| the most powerful force in politics.
|
| It's sad, because it doesn't have to be this way. I am in favor
| of socialized health care. I could even be convinced that some
| amount of UBI may be a good idea. I am in favor of a strong
| social safety net. But the fact that this country can't even
| figure out how to stop making a coin that is worthless tells me
| that it is probably asking a little too much to expect that the
| federal government can competently manage anything as complex as
| healthcare or the livelihoods of millions.
| derefr wrote:
| > can't even figure out how to stop making a coin that is
| worthless
|
| One might wonder whether the problem isn't bureaucracy per se,
| but rather that there are actually many _larger_ dead-weight
| losses in the government that are being focused on, such that
| this one is comparatively trivial and doesn 't even register on
| the priorities list.
|
| For everything else you can say about it, the current
| administration has been heavily focused on "ways the government
| can be improved by doing less" (i.e. "red-tape reduction.") And
| yet, it has still not even mentioned considering doing this.
| I'm guessing the elimination of pennies is just not the low-
| hanging fruit it seems to be -- there are fruit even lower.
| lolsal wrote:
| > It costs more to mint them than they're worth.
|
| Isn't this largely irrelevant since the producer of pennies
| makes up for this when they print any other form of currency?
|
| > But the fact that this country can't even figure out how to
| stop making a coin that is worthless tells me that it is
| probably asking a little too much to expect that the federal
| government can competently manage anything as complex as
| healthcare or the livelihoods of millions.
|
| The worth of a unit of currency should not be measured by how
| much it costs to produce. If we're using that metric a $1 note
| has just as much worth as a $5 note, and a $20 note is
| equivalent to a $50 note. A single $50 pays for plenty of
| pennies in terms of cost.
|
| I honestly don't know where I stand on keeping/removing the
| penny, but I do know from personal experience that counting and
| saving pennies was useful for me when I was very poor. I know
| that rounding down saves the consumer money, but putting the
| savings in a jar and treating yourself to something when you
| cash in your jar is _something_ of value that is lost.
|
| I don't count pennies these days, but I used to, and I
| definitely picked up pennies off the street. Should we design
| economic/currency policy to 'help' the poor instead of actually
| helping the poor? Probably not, but I wince when I hear people
| say that pennies are worthless.
| dlivingston wrote:
| If we assume that it takes 2 seconds to pick up a penny, and
| you were to pick up pennies continuously, then you would be
| "earning" only $18 / hour.
| SamBam wrote:
| So? That's higher than minimum wage. Plenty of people on HN
| may find it worth their time to pinch pennies.
| lolsal wrote:
| Ok, but if I pick up pennies between my car and the grocery
| store the opportunity cost is basically nil, and then after
| a few months I'd have a non-trivial amount of cash.
| dlivingston wrote:
| If you picked up 10 pennies a day, you would only have $3
| at the end of the month. Assuming you are not living in
| poverty, these sort of hyper-frugal behaviors are quite
| interesting to me from a psychological perspective.
| mamon wrote:
| > It costs more to mint them than they're worth.
|
| That's irrelevant since pennies are multiple use. In fact they
| probably get used in hundred thousands of transactions in their
| typical lifetime.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There's a list of countries which have removed their smallest
| denomination coins on Wikipedia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| For one political party in the US, the fact that other
| countries have done it is considered proof that it is an anti-
| American idea.
| ipython wrote:
| Even as far back as the 90s I remember the PX on military bases
| rounding to the nearest nickel. Surprised more places don't do
| the same.
|
| Ah apparently it's on overseas bases:
| https://www.aafes.com/exchange-stores/faq/#11
| aahhahahaaa wrote:
| Kill every coin except the quarter.
| MH15 wrote:
| At some point us in the US will have to figure out how to cope
| with the issues our Democracy has with making changes and
| overcoming momentum. It seems our government is uniquely unsuited
| in this capacity in comparison to other modern democracies as
| seen with healthcare, income inequality, and the recent pandemic
| response.
| hagy wrote:
| I think the best approach is for the US to move more concerns
| to the state level. E.g., it would be great if states would
| start implementing their own universal healthcare for their
| residents.
|
| States commonly have more internally aligned political goals
| and therefore can move quicker. It also has the benefit of
| allowing different states to experiment with different
| solutions and all states can learn from the results.
|
| Lastly, inter-state mobility is much higher than inter-country
| and this will allow residents to congregate in a state that
| matches their political desires. E.g., if someone doesn't like
| the tax burden of states that provide more services then they
| can move to a state that provides fewer.
| harryh wrote:
| _it would be great if states would start implementing their
| own universal healthcare for their residents_
|
| This isn't really feasible because residents of one state
| with no universal healthcare + lower taxes could easily move
| to another state with universal healthcare + higher taxes
| when they get a serious illness.
| Cerium wrote:
| Full benefits could phase in over time. You could get
| increasing discounts on public services until you reach
| full state membership. This would be no different than out
| of state school fees.
| harryh wrote:
| The Supreme Court has ruled ideas like this
| unconstitutional.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1999-may-18-mn-38325...
| hagy wrote:
| Durational-residence requirements still exists. E.g.,
| paying in state vs. out of state tuition at a state
| university, which commonly requires a year of residency.
| [0, 1] State-provided healthcare could be provided in a
| similar fashion through state-administrated health
| insurance that has different rates for in state and out
| of state. There could be a durational-residence
| requirements for in state pricing.
|
| [0] https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol104/iss3/5/
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-
| conan/amendment-14/...
| harryh wrote:
| From footnote [1] which you generously provided:
|
| "If the purpose of the requirements was to inhibit
| migration by needy persons into the state or to bar the
| entry of those who came from low-paying states to higher-
| paying ones in order to collect greater benefits, the
| Court said, the purpose was impermissible"
|
| It's obviously hard to know for certain what SCOTUS will
| do, but under that standard it sounds like having health
| care benefits only available to long term residents would
| be on very shaky legal ground.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Just another example of the failures of the Constitution
| in the modern era. The Federal government is the only one
| that can reasonably do Universal Healthcare, or any kind
| of economic stimulus in crisis, but it fails. States are
| powerless to try to fix it on their own.
| VLM wrote:
| The trivial solution is to tie residency to property
| ownership or property lease, and payment of property tax.
| Then use the prop tax to pay for the health care, because
| almost all health care is local anyway. Have the hospital
| or clinic or whatever bill the municipal taxing authority
| wherever you live; for most people the house you live in.
|
| Determining residency is not rocket surgery; could steal
| the entire system from state income tax codes.
| harryh wrote:
| Accounting details like that do not address the
| Constitutional concerns.
| kmclean wrote:
| You can have residency requirements. In Canada you have to
| be present in most provinces for half the year and live
| there for a certain amount of time before you get free
| health care.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Trivial inter-state mobility is a big obstacle for states
| doing grand social programs individually.
|
| If a state provided universal healthcare for residents, it'd
| quickly be overwhelmed with "hard cases" from other states
| where coverage is a problem. Which would drive up costs, and
| taxes, and drive productive/healthy people out.
|
| See the current inter-state shipping of homeless people,
| especially those who suffer mental illness, that is often
| done via bus tickets paid for by local governments looking to
| shed those people.
| Rua4yGUZ4lT1Bbv wrote:
| People also want trivial inter-country mobility.
| eumenides1 wrote:
| Canada it is a "state"/provincial system. All provinces
| manage their own. Canada doesn't get inundated with
| Americans because if they do come, patients will be charged
| like private health care. If the patient's home province
| has universal health care, both province's will just work
| it out.
|
| In general, we don't dump problems on to other provinces.
| It's bad form and federal courts will fix that quick
| especially with so much money on the line. If Florida state
| sends patients to a universal health care NY state for
| care, you can bet, NY State will be suing either residents
| of Florida for medical bills or Florida State directly.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| The system here only works because the Canada Health Act
| requires every province to have a universal health
| insurer for provincial residents and mandates each
| province accept the insurance of the others. If only
| Ontario had a provincial insurer or the provinces didn't
| have to accept each other's programs there would be a ton
| of game theory style manipulation.
|
| Any state trying to implement a single payer system would
| get crushed as tons of individuals and even other states
| tried to milk the system (like putting homeless people on
| a bus with a one way ticket).
|
| States would need a "suicide pact" of sorts to ensure a
| bunch of states made the leap at the same time. There
| actually is such a plan to subvert the electoral college
| to ensure the popular vote winner always wins the
| presidency, but that's a relatively simple pact around
| single law. Health care laws a incredibly complex and
| rather than try some kind of weird multi-state pact
| you're better off fighting for a national law.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Americans going to Canada for care is a totally different
| thing, and not relevant to my prior point.
|
| All of Canada has universal healthcare, which again makes
| Canada a completely different discussion from my earlier
| comment. There isn't the kind of huge discrepancy between
| provinces as we'd have if some US states had universal
| healthcare and some had the status quo.
|
| To your argument about states suing one another - we
| literally already have localities giving mentally ill
| people bus tickets out of state, and that's been unable
| to be stopped via the court system. I'm not dealing in
| hypotheticals here, I'm talking about things that already
| happen.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > In general, we don't dump problems on to other
| provinces. It's bad form and federal courts will fix that
| quick especially with so much money on the line. If
| Florida state sends patients to a universal health care
| NY state for care, you can bet, NY State will be suing
| either residents of Florida for medical bills or Florida
| State directly.
|
| That was kind of the point OP was trying to make - in the
| US there are quite a few states that would do this
| without blushing. Without the Federal government
| instituting a framework and legal mechanism to prevent
| it, there is no way any individual state can do it on
| their own.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| The melt value of a copper penny (1982 or prior) is worth more
| than the face value. However, it's illegal to melt down legal
| tender currency. AND, fun fact, it's illegal to leave the US with
| more than $5 worth of pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with
| a bag of pennies and melt them there.
|
| So some people are now starting to hoard copper pennies, waiting
| for the day when pennies are no longer legal tender, and
| then...they'll make a modest profit, I guess.
| yetanta wrote:
| The thing is melting it costs money too. Also most pennies have
| other metals mixed in for durability. Usually zinc. So to get
| the copper value you have to get those other metals out. That
| also costs money. Most places that recycle metals do not take
| pennies for melt value. They usually just do not want to mess
| with it. I would estimate it would have to be closer to 4-5
| cents per penny before it would be profitable. But that is just
| a guess.
| harryh wrote:
| In case anyone else is curious, apparently a pre-1982 penny
| could be worth about 1.8 cents when melted down:
|
| http://www.coinflation.com/coins/1909-1982-Lincoln-Cent-Penn...
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| > it's illegal to leave the US with more than $5 worth of
| pennies, so you can't drive to Canada with a bag of pennies and
| melt them there.
|
| What law would that violate?
| bazzargh wrote:
| https://twitter.com/crimeaday/status/739973139539632128
|
| "31 USC SS5111(d)(2), 31 CFR SS82.1(b) & 82.2(a)(2) make it a
| federal crime to leave the US with more than $25 worth of
| pennies in your pocket."
|
| Most of that is about penalties but 31 CFR SS82.2(a) has the
| $5 and $25 rules:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/82.2
|
| (I just guessed A Crime A Day had tweeted about this, US law
| seems to be mostly legacy code...)
| uneekone wrote:
| Yes you are right agreed with you
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