“Where does that leave citizens? It may be a penny, but that adds up,” said Moss, 29. She paid $8.23 for her orange chicken and cream cheese ragoons with a debit card.
For sure, it does… but this person already had 1 solution already in her wallet! Also, at most you’ll pay $0.02 extra for something. This equates to an extra $7.30 if you purchase this thing every day for a year! This also ignores that some things will be as much as $0.03 cheaper.
America last phased out a coin roughly 170 years ago, when it got rid of the half-cent. “We don’t have a lot of experience with this,” said Steve Kenneally, the association’s senior vice president of payments.
… But Canada does. They did this in 2013. I was actually there when they did it, and it appeared to go pretty smoothly. Almost like they had a plan rather than having to quickly react to the whims of a broken clock one of the times it was actually right.
There’s also a lot about companies training cashiers on “how to round,” which reminds me of the George Carlin quote about the average person’s intelligence. Also, plenty about commercial groups “begging” the federal government to help them with the transition and being met with silence. This is probably the most important part of the article.
The US is finally doing something it should have done decades ago, and it’s choosing to do it in the most chaotic way possible. Rather than looking at what other countries have done and forming a plan, they’re acting like the edict itself, along with no longer minting pennies or accepting deposited ones, is all the government should have to do. Is this the “small government” utopia conservatives dream about!? One that tells states and businesses, “We’ve done the minimum. You figure out the rest amongst yourselves.” Seems like it’s going great so far!
Overall, the article should’ve been more about how terribly this is being enacted, and less about people not being able to do basic math. Especially disappointing since the original source is WSJ (and I know who owns it - it’s still a mostly business-oriented publication).
Edit: spelling
do americans still pay mostly in cash? we haven’t had the penny since like 2012 here in Canada and…it wasn’t a big deal at all because no one paid with pennies anyways. if something is $8.23 as stated then you just pay $8.25 if you’re paying cash. But hell most people just pay debit or credit these days to the point where most CSRs just assume you’re paying debit and if you whip out cash it confuses them and they have to cancel the debit machine.
I can’t even remember the last time I drew out cash or had it on me.
I pay in cash as much as possible because fuck the card companies making money off of every transaction and fuck people tracking my spending habits
I usually pay for drugs with cash.
I tip the nice folks at the weed store with cash
Did your supplier ever take your pennies?
I think that if I had paid with pennies by the roll, they would probably accept it after a suitable amount of shit giving. I think it would be very difficult to pay with a bag of loose coins.
Here’s a 5gal jug of coins, can I have 3 drugs now?
I pay in cash for a handful of things. Pizza from the corner shop. Tips for the bartenders at my local bars. Sometimes food from the smaller groceries.
It wasn’t a big deal, but there was a lot of loud, stupid people making a lot of loud, stupid noises about it when it happened.