Soon:
A: “Penny for your thoughts” B: “Lol, okay Gen Z”
Abolishing the USD cent comes way too late.
Was abolishing the half penny in 1857 a good idea? If so, then abolishing the quarter would be a good idea today. It has about as much buying power as the half penny did in 1857.
Yeah, but honestly getting rid of coins is an admission that inflation is high relative to 40-50 years ago. When pretty much every government wants to keep that fact out of the public consciousness. Especially the current US government who wants to both claim we don’t have inflation at all, and are the ones getting rid of the penny.
I’ve been saying we should drop the penny for almost 2 decades, but I still kind of look at getting rid of the penny as a sign of our current government’s abysmal handling of inflation.
So I don’t know the term for it, maybe it’s just propaganda, but a quarter feels like it has value.
The penny however doesn’t have that feeling. Vending machines often say “No Pennies” and toll booths say “No Pennies”, even though the Penny exists everyone sorta already agreed the Penny wasn’t worth the hassle.
I think you could probably convince people the same is true for the nickel. Although eliminating just the nickel is tricky since you’d keep the dime and quarter and that divides weirdly. So you should also remove the dime but that now really starts to feel like it had value.
But the quarter. That would be a hard sell. You’re basically eliminating all coins at that point. Unless you plan on making the half dollar wayyy more popular.
When we got rid of the half penny it was worth more than what dimes are worth now. Quarters are the only useful coin. We should be rounding all transactions to the nearest quarter.
Logically I completely agree. I just don’t think you could convince the US as a whole that’s the way to go.
Should just have dimes.
$1.1 $1.2 $1.3
There’s no reason to break our currency into thousandths. Hardly a reason to break it into hundredths.
Could keep quarters to keep hundredths
Transactions already need a nickel to do 5 cents. So requiring a quarter to do 5 cents isn’t crazy.
Say you have to pay $1.05
Dollar and 3 dimes, quarter in change.
$1.15
Dollar and a quarter, dime in change.
But I think just dimes are needed
Just dimes would probably work logically, but it would feel too weird. If you’re going just dimes, you probably just want to go all in and say no coins.
i wouldn’t be so sure about this. i still have plenty of pennies and plenty of stamps to put on those pennies.
That final penny struck is going to sell for a shit ton of money.
I’ll buy it for two pennies. That’s 100% profit for the seller.
Now do daylight savings!!
Just get rid of half of it. I love “fall back.” I hate “spring ahead.”
Fall back every year! Yes! No spring forward!
No one can agree on which time to use so time change will never go away. It’s really annoying. I don’t give a shit which we use, just toss of the ducking time change. It’s 1 hour, people gotta chill.
Exactly. Fuck DST.
I am a champion of the idea of keeping daylight saving over standard time but I am more and more starting to think that the time change is the best compromise we are going to get with the people who insist on getting to work at 8am in the light.
Let’s look at NY city.
June 21th longest day, sunrise is at 5:24 am (Set 8:31 pm)
December 21th longest night, sunrise is at 6:42 am (Set 4:32 pm)
If you got rid of daylight savings time then the sun would rise at 4:24 am in June and set at 7:31 pm.
(Most people in NY probably want the extra hour of light at 7:31 pm instead of 4:24 am)
If you kept permanent daylight savings then the sun would rise at 7:42 am in December and set at 5:32 pm)
(Most people in NY probably want some light before 8 because it’s going to be dark after dinner anyways)
So many people are awake before 8 am compared to 5 am
So many people enjoy the light at 7:30 pm in the summer
Switching really is the sweet spot for NY
Location is definitely important too in hating or liking DST
Ontonagon, Mi sun sets at 5:25 pm tonight (7:58 am rise)
Dexter, Me sun sets at 4:10 pm tonight (6:33 am rise)
Same time zone, both northern cities.
If we didn’t get off DST Ontonagon wouldn’t see the sunrise until almost 9 am today
People in Dexter might have preferred to stay on DST getting light between 7:33 am to 5:10 pm today
The farther west you live in a time zone the less you like DST generally. Farther east, the more you like it.
Ontonagon is so west it should really be in Central Time zone.
If that was the case then the sun would set at 4:25 pm tonight (6:58 am rise) (basically Dexter ME times)
At that point they might want to stay on DST and it would make it exactly what it was today, sunset at 5:25 pm tonight (7:58 am rise)
I just think humans don’t work well with such a sudden change even just 1 hr. Maybe there’s a way we could add/remove a minute every day over two months or something lol
Programmers would be on suicide watch if we did that
As I was typing it I was trying to figure out how it would work on electronic devices and my head exploded. Let alone just your everyday clock.
They tried permanent DST in the '70s for a few years. People hated it so much we went back to switching the clocks.
Note that the legal framework for phasing out the coin is entirely absent. This was an illegal act as well because only Congress determines what money exists and will be used according to the Constitution.
It still exists and can still be used. They’re just not making more of them.
More to the point, it isn’t sensible.
A penny lasts decades as a tangible item of currency. I have pennies in my change purse right now that were struck in the 1960’s.
The value isn’t in how much it costs to make it but in how long it lasts as usable token of trade.
How long it lasts as a usable token of trade
So it’s still worthless. Genuinely, what can a penny purchase? A nickel? A dime? None of these coins can buy something individually, and a large chunk of the population doesn’t carry them because the utility they gain for having exact change is less than the coins are worth
To be clear, I understand the coins vs. bills argument, but I’m personally in favor of cutting all coins up to the quarter. Or cutting all coins except dimes and half dollars, but dimes are annoying coins
I prefer redecimalization. Just redesign money with a zero chopped off. Also get rid of the $1 bill and replace it with a coin. This would make the coins represent the current value of 10c, 50c, $1, $2.5, (maybe $5), and $10, with bills for $20, $50, $100, $200, and $1000. Bills would be representing amounts of money that while commonly exchanged, isn’t actively everyday transaction amounts, those would be represented by coinage.
It’s similar to the current situation with yen, where usually you’re rooting in your pocket to pay for something small, not opening your wallet. Though for the life of me I can’t understand why the 1¥ coin remains
I appreciate trying to save resources here, but Americans are way too fucking stupid for that to work, amid a myriad of other issues I see with this
They’d get over it. Just give it a new name and they’ll figure it out eventually.
I’m sure there will be some holdouts, but that’s not exclusive to Americans.
That’s not what decimalization means. We’re already on the decimal system, it’s not possible to decimalize again.
You’re thinking of revaluation
Yeah, but like, is it a valuable token of trade? It’s 1c, yes that’s money, its a whole percent of a dollar, but it’s illegal in most of the country to pay someone less than 12.5 of them per minute of labor, an unlivably low wage. The $15/hr wage is increasingly normal for low skilled labor and is a quarter a minute. A quarter is great as you don’t need to fill your pocket with it to buy something from a vending machine. Ok that’s not the most honest comparison as vending machines haven’t taken pennies in at least a decade. It’s a denomination sufficiently small to cause a lot of people to just not bother with them, they just aren’t worth the time to use them or keep track of them.
It just don’t make no cents.
Yes and it needs to be done legally. Granted though it needs to be at least 5x as long as other currency. Its not that I don’t think the penny should be taken out as much as it should be done appropriately.
Pennies are produced and put into circulation, but people are not saving them and exchanging them for dollars, and they don’t spend them again. They are constantly being produced and lost. Maybe in the 1960s people felt the need to gather their pennies for reuse but not today.
I guess. It all depends on whether or not you can afford to igonore pennies.
If I can not have to break down a dollar bill by fishing 54 cents - two quarters and 4 pennies out of my change purse, I’ll do it.
I’ve found that it’s when people break bigger bills down, that smaller notes tend to disappear faster.
This is what the term “nickel and diming” is about… It’s getting you to give up more money in total by taking smaller amounts more often.
It is a thing that’s real.
The flip-side of that is what happens with getting paid daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. It’s the day labor that ends up constantly skint, because they weren’t dealing with large whole number balances. Even getting paid weekly, I was saving less than when I went to every two weeks. Now that I’m self-employed, I choose when to bill, and I do so monthly. Get BIG checks and sink it all straight into savings. Because I am paid every 4 weeks, I have to change how I spend and spend less and save more. LOTS more.
Pennies count at that point. Critically.
I’ve yet to earn more than 35k in a year - (and that was years ago) - and the biggest thing is havng a balance and seeing that numnber in the savings account rise. I have found that sticking to large lump sums - psychologicaly, you want to hold onto it more and it does change how you aproach savings and money in general.
I can take a couple hundred dollar bills and slip them into a book on the shelf and they’ll sit there for months before I dig them out. I can try the same thing with 5 20 dollar bills and they’re usually gone within a week.
You can also still pay in pennies with a credit card. Everything is so stupid.
Good, while we’re at it we should redecimalize. A coin that can’t pay for a significant portion of something is worthless. People used to buy snacks with coins, and like, thats where they thrive. Coins are more expensive than bills but they can change hands a lot more times. A dime for a soda or a cheap snack, maybe a nickel if it’s a good deal on a bag of chips is about right.
Like, this isn’t even a monetary policy failure, it’s just something that should happen every century or two in an inflationary economy with a 5% target.
The rule should be “if you pay with it at a restaurant it should be a coin” because it represents a daily use rather than weekly or monthly and much higher levels of wear and tear.
If not for credit cards we’d probably need $10 coins.
Zimbabwe has entered the chat
When Trumpflation kicks in they’ll need to stop minting more denominations too.
Fuck pennies. Even back in the 90s, it was annoying to receive.
I’ll believe it when I stop seeing pennies.
Just close your eyes.
They’re still there, rotating in my mind.
Funny thing.
A few days ago I looked through my pockets and found a 1935 penny. Copper pennies were collected and melted down in WW2; the pennies from that era were steel.
It wasn’t worth a lot but it was an interesting find. Back in the day, you could buy a cigarette or a newspaper with that penny. I wondered how far it had traveled, and what they’d used it for.
1943 was the one year they made the zinc plated steel pennies. They’ve been various ratios of copper before and after (from 88% to 97%) until 1982, when they turned to 97.5% zinc with a 2.5% copper plating.
Found the numismatist
Wash it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper
See, you learned something.
I’m gonna shit on a penny and put it in your hand and see what link you send me
Yeah, I remember your mom saying you really liked to shit on things and carry them around.
Weird that you like to talk about me when you fuck her.
Funny that you assume I’d sleep with her.
She likes to talk while she cleans my toilet and I want to make sure she doesn’t try to get drunk drinking the Listerine.
I’m glad that bitch is scrubbing toilets in hell.
Lmfao. This is great
CGP Grey must be doing the crab dance
well, he also asked for the death of nickels and dimes, so maybe not yet
John Green, too.
I knew i was forgetting someone who asked Obama about the penny, couldn’t remember who
Welcome to the 21st century America. Canada ditched its penny over a decade ago.
Japan wants a word with you.
They still have the 1¥, they can speak up when they don’t have a coin for 0.65c. Like they do a lot right with money, I love how large of denominations are coins, going up to the equivalent of 3.25USD, but still the 1¥ coin…
Tbf 1y coin is made out of aluminum, not copper. They float.
We would call them yennies. Its probably time to get rid of them, but I’ll be sad.
The 10000 yen note is obviously a yenjamin.
So NYC sales tax being 8.875. My $1 purchase is no longer $1.08, but $1.10. Good deal
This is why it would’ve been better to do this legally because there’s going to be 10,000 corporations and banks trying to superman 3 everyone’s rounding errors (eg rounding up for customers and down for taxes). This is going to create a lot of really stupid embezzlement scandals and lawsuits. Not to mention you can still pay in pennies with a credit card.
This could end up costing you hundreds of cents!
How will we request thoughts? Will we be left with only prayers? Noooo!
Venmo for your thoughts?
