The one good executive order to come out of that bag of puss
If only he did it properly. The better way to do it would have been via Congress.
Canada has a law that allows cashiers to round up or down. Without this, the US is only making a penny shortage, and you better believe customers will be screaming at cashiers for “stealing their money” if they don’t get their cent back, or shrieking “it’s legal tender!” if cashiers don’t accept their Pennies.
IIRC, Canada had at least some period of time where while change provided was rounded to the nearest nickel, the penny was still legal tender. (Prices / totals were not rounded; non-cache payments were still denominated / accurate to the penny.)
And, yes, it would be better to get congress and the executive together and have an actual plan for discontinuing the penny and the nickel (and maybe the dime or quarter?). I think on this issue, the executive acting alone is better than doing nothing / maintaining the status quo.
It’s going to be harder to ask people what they’re thinking 🤔
Got a nickel for your thoughts?
I heard a rumour that if everyone just gather around politicians and keep throwing pennies at them, the corruption in the government will be gone.
I mean like… dump an entire box of pennies from a skyscraper onto a politican down below FOR SCIENCE 😏
Just have a $1 coin that can snap into 10 pieces like a chocolate bar. And a $100 note that tears into 10 pieces like a book if stamps.
Guarantee Walmart starts pricing things at $xx.96 and milking $0.04 on every transaction.
If they do it they way we did in Canada, that would round down to 95¢ and you’d get a nickel back
That would be great, but… Murica and all that. If they can fuck us without lube, they will.
Kill the nickel and dime while we’re at it.
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What fallout? Their worth is negative. Other countries and the us have done this when the impact was theoretically higher.
I’ll admit I’m not an economist but this easily passes the smell test without further explanation of the negative.
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The (negative) value is created at minting. They are negative value and then just part of the system in circulation. Many aren’t in circulation either, though. They sit in a jar until they go to the bank and then shoved in a vault at the federal reserve.
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Common cents
So is this one of those things where Americans do the common sense thing and agree?
Or is this the another classic case of a few very loud and emotional Americans screaming with passion and zero logic?
Or is it one of those situations where everything seems to go smoothly. And then you figure out that they didn’t add the correct rounding regulations, so you’ll be paying a little extra on every single transaction the store puts at .96?
Here in Canada we got rid of the penny years ago.
When paying in cash, we round to the nearest 0.05 but with card payments it’s still the exact price.
Also, the amount of money you’d lose by rounding in a cash transaction is pretty minimal.
It’s going to be 2 and 3.
First 3. Then 2 because yokels will complain that “them walmarts is stealin my money!”
I do have a funny story about someone determined to get his .01 cent.
USAF. We were leaving after a month long TDY (not a deployment, but you do go to a different place, stands for Temporary Duty Assignment) to England. The crew and us maintenance guys all stayed at the same hotel off base. We spent this month meeting with them in the morning in front of the fire place, and usually finding out the mission got canceled for the day. We were all ready to go home.
The head maintenance guy was a penny pincher. He had like 8 kids, so he kind of had to. This is a guy that went around base picking fruit off the trees. He left Saudi with a large bag of free MREs. We all joked that that was the only way he could eat at home because no one else wanted to eat them.
Anyway, we’re leaving finally. We’re all on the bus. Air crew and maintenance. Maintenance usually has to show up about 45 mins prior so we can inspect and get everything ready. So this was going to be a quick turn and out. We stopped by the base gas station to pick up snacks for the flight home. Everyone but the head maintenance guy is back on the bus. 5 mins. 10 mins. 15 mins. The pilot finally had enough. “WTF is taking him so long?”
He goes in and comes back out almost right away with the guy in tow. Why was he in there so long? He was arguing with the cashier over his change…1 penny. The pilot went in, found out what the hold up was, and told him, “I’ll give you the damned penny. lets go!” while dragging his ass out.
So this is what it’s like to fully embrace the death of the USD?
Well, getting rid of the penny was always kinda a good idea. It costs more to make one than it’s actually worth.
Here in Canada we killed our penny years ago.
The US used to have a half penny, but it was killed over 100 years ago.
Minting such a small amount of change that sees almost no practical use is pointless.
Honestly, I’d be fine with killing the nickel too. Just start pricing everything in tenths of a dollar instead of hundredths.
This doesn’t have much to do with international use of the dollar.
US slowly working its way to a Japan style monetary system where the fractional unit ceases to be used as the buying power of the main unit dwindles.
Did you know Japan had a coin called ‘sen’ which was 1/100 of a yen? They aren’t made anymore. They’d be near useless if they were because a cup of ramen is ~¥200, or 20000 sen. Although, it would be pretty funny in a show to see some ancient Japanese guy paying for his lunch with his sen collection while some uptight salaryman loses his mind in line behind him.
Anyone would lose their mind in that situation. I had ti leave a store once without buying anything because the guy in front of me was trying to buy his things with coins and I had to go to work.
This is the slow banning of cash.
Step 1: Eliminate penny
Step 2: Some stores stop accepting cash because of rounding
Step 3: Second wave of other stores join
Step 4: Fewer people carry cash as a result
Step 5: Cash Becomes More Difficult to Withdraw From Banks since less cash on hand means they need justification for any withdrawal over 500 in a day
Step 6: Wait 3 Years, but strengthen ID requirements while implementing behind the scenes biometric collection and AI identification for the purposes of “catching illegal immigrants”
During step 6, conservative Christians, normally fearful of the Antichrist and a universal mark for being able to be a part of society, accept this development because MAGA good, immigrants bad
Step 7: Regime change. The lower classes, upon having the little wealth they have and labor stolen even more, with increases in poverty and death, realize they have been screwed and elect pro-regulation big-government Democrats to save them.
The democrats ban privacy coins in a new comprehensive crypto bill. There is little protest.
Step 8: American New Deal. In an effort to “save America,” Democrats pass a bill with a huge amount of spending for the poor, as well as expansive banking regulations to ensure banks are “safe.” The public safety means more than 100 can’t be withdrawn in a day.
Step 9: 3 years pass, almost no one uses cash. The destruction caused by Trump’s actions and the changes caused by AI lead Democrats to enact UBI for all, a card with 800 a month for everyone. Each person gets a card. Additionally, all financial transactions must be linked to the card, and cash is banned. Rural maggats, many reeling from greater poverty, are happy to get UBI.
Step 10: AntiChrist arrives, wowing all before killing nearly everyone. Cashless MAGA Christians are impressed… Before they all are killed.
Yep… It’s just a penny. Nothing to worry about folks!
That’s some crazy ass shit. More proof that reality is simulated!
I don’t believe in religious stuff and Step 10 was mostly a joke, although that link is shocking.
To everyone who downvoted me, screw you!!!
Kooky answer to a real question.
You are now my archenemy on Lemmy, so called “thehiddencatboy.”
I’m all for it. Real talk though: at what point do we consider re-basing the dollar? I get that we’re nowhere near that now, but I’m guessing it’s at the “kill the $1 bill mark”?
I’d answer this with ‘we rebase the dollar when a coin can’t buy a thing.’ It should have happened decades ago. Here’s my worked example.
A penny used to be a lot of money. You could buy actual things with a penny. I’m sure our oldest contributors can point to the day that a penny would get you a piece of candy. In my earliest days, I could get that same piece of candy with a nickel, but by my teens, that piece of candy would be a dime or even quarter. I remember when a bag of M&Ms cost $0.50, That became $1.00 around the 2000s, and is now $2.00.
A penny sitting on the ground was ‘good luck’ back in the day. I think that’s because you could bend down, pick up that penny, head to the store, and plink that penny down and get something in exchange for it. Today, you can’t plink down a single penny for anything. You can’t even plink down 10 of these pennies or a dime and expect to get something today, with the cheapest things requiring 25 of these coins (or a single quarter). Not much luck if you need 25 of them to get a burst of sweetness.
If we did away with the penny, would anyone lose anything? That’s 5 seconds at Federal Minimum Wage, and about 2 seconds at my city’s minimum wage. It takes more time to reach down and pick up the penny than you’d earn working a minimum wage job, so arguments about ‘Oh, prices will go higher if we eliminate the penny’ ring hollow to me. There is functionally no difference between $7.99 and $8.00 pricewise. Even a hike of a $7.9 priced item to $8 isn’t a bunch of money. We’re almost to the point where you can’t buy something with a single dollar bill. The time for the hundredth of that dollar bill passed a LONG time ago.
I recall the gumball machine at my childhood barber being a penny in the mid 1980s. I don’t recall when it went up exactly, but it was around then. I was born in 80 so I was pretty young when it happened. But yeah, even then the convenience store in the middle of town had a candy aisle with lots of 5 cent candy that made picking up pennies worthwhile.
I also remember in the later 80s when I began reading them, comics were $0.75 each. Over the next 15 years they went to $3, until I was in college and my comic habit was just too expensive, so I stopped the monthlies completely.
Inspired by your comment, I decided to look up when the U.S. stopped minting the half penny, as well as what a “half penny” of that time would’ve been worth when accounting for modern inflation.
The U.S. half penny was abandoned in 1857. The inflation calculators I checked don’t allow for division by half-cents, but when $0.01 from 1857 is inflated to today’s value, it comes out to somewhere between 37¢ and 38¢. If I did the math correctly, that means a U.S. half cent was worth a modern equivalent of about 19¢ at the time it was discontinued.
It’s really not a big deal. Canada did this ages ago and the world didn’t explode.
But Canadian money isn’t real money
yeah, we’re all a little loony up here
Proof! Canadian quarter in a vending machine: rejected!
Completely fake money! (/s obv. Border states often interchange Canadian/US currency, vending machines reject currency they don’t know.)
I guess this is a good thing, but I can imagine some companies taking advantage of this
So what happens when someone pays cash at the supermarket? Who rounds up?
I saw an interview with an economist years ago where he said that if we just followed the accepted rules of rounding (1-4 rounds to 0, 5-10 rounds to 10) then it would work out about the same. In reality I’m sure companies would just pocket the extra money
They already do with sales tax. ( If the tax works out to a fraction of a cent, almost every register or POS system will round up…it’s a tiny amount per transaction, but it does happen and adds up over daily, weekly and monthly transactions)
Yes we all saw office space
Yes we all saw office space
The ol Superman III
I write POS software, and have written tax calculations that cover about 30 states, and several CA provinces.
While we do have to round (always up) when calculating sales tax, there’s no way for the business to figure out how much that rounding would be, since it’s just added to the tax collected.
And in all states that I’ve worked with, a business has to pay what they collected (even if they over collect), and can’t just calculate a percentage of total sales (since many states have tax tables, rounding rules, or 3-4 decimal tax rates, and not a flat percentage tax).
So it’s actually the government that gets the benefit of the rounding.
I write POS software
Don’t be so hard on yourself!
I write POS software
I don’t know if you’re in any position to suggest decisions, but your software is often run on subpar hardware. Going to touchscreens doubled our call time, it was because of the half second or so of loading between touches. It couldn’t be used naturally because of the delay.
I’m an owner, so make many decisions (but I also have smart employees who’s opinions I trust very much).
This is a tough one to deal with, especially with smaller Android based handheld devices. In the 5" to 6" range we can get a few different things (wholesale costs):
- $150 - $200 dollar trash that will fail in a short period of time (Chinese imports direct from Alibaba / the manufacturer). << we don’t sell these.
- $300 to $400 devices, with similar hardware specs to the cheaper ones, but better made to last a couple of years (both of these classes are slow, and a bit under-powered)
- $900+ devices that are fast and well made.
You can guess which ones we sell the most of. Especially since they tend to get dropped, or lost quite a bit (we’re in the restaurant POS business).
For the stationary (15" Android) terminals, the situation is similar. But we sell these devices more than the handhelds, and after a few installs with well made but slower hardware, my tech lead ruled out offering the cheaper ones in favor of selling the ones with better specs, so that’s where we are now.
But lots of our competitors give hardware away to get the credit card processing revenue (a total rip off for the customer, but it’s the nature of the game), so they use the cheapest option.
Is that why sales tax is always on its own line on the receipt and it’s own account number on the trial balance?
We follow normal rounding rules in Canada. 1, 2 round down to 0. 3, 4 round up to 5. 6, 7 round down to 5. 8, 9 round up to 10.
Can you game the system? Yes!
As a business, make sure all your prices (plus tax) come to a price ending in 3, 4, 8, or 9. When consumers buy a single item you’ll get the rounding up (edit: if they pay cash) and make sweet, sweet profit. But if they buy more than one item, you’re SOL on controlling the rounding.
As a consumer, you have way more control. First, pay with cash whenever the price will round down and you can probably “profit” 5 or so dollars a year. (Assuming you pay with cash on or two times a day, saving 1 to 2 cents each time.) Pay with credit or debit each time the price will round up.
Second, you can get real fancy. You can learn tax rules in depth so you know what items will or won’t be taxed and at what rate (we have federal and provincial taxes but they don’t apply to everything and they don’t follow the same rules on what is taxed.) But, you can use this info to always know what the final bill will be and always buy combinations of items that end in 2 or 7 (or 1 and 6 if you’re lazy) and always pay cash. You can profit like $20 a year or something doing this.
In reality? No one gives a shit until that one rare time you’re paying with cash and it rounds down. It’s your lucky day and you do the Six Flags Man dance. It’s like finding a penny and picking it up.
Pay with credit or debit each time the price will round up.
I don’t think it matters with credit or debit. The exact amount is paid.
That’s what OP it’s implying.
Yes, that’s why you pay with credit/debit. To avoid the round up.
I changed “will” to “would” to hopefully make it more clear.
There’s still a fuck ton of pennies in circulation and on the ground, unless they consider them no longer legal tender we’ll have plenty.
However, if we end up following how Brazil does it, in my experience, it depends on the person/vendor and the amount. If you buy something that’s like R$3,99 you’ll usually get give them R$4 and that’s it. I’ve also had it where I’ll pay for something that’s say R$4,89, give them R$5 and get 15 or 25 centavos back. Could also depend on what’s in the drawer at that time.
Corporations will 100% pocket the difference at first, but once it becomes a normal thing to do the rounding I’ll wager it’ll fall to the Brazilian method, especially with local businesses or vendors.
In other words, no register will ever come out balanced.
