61
submitted 1 month ago by m_f@discuss.online to c/AskUSA@discuss.online

Is it about time, or is it still useful? If you think its time has passed, what about the nickel/dime/quarter?

all 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] BmeBenji@lemm.ee 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sure. Fuck it. I wouldn’t waste any brain power on it when the *gestures wildly at everything* is still happening

[-] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

New Zealand abandoned the 1c and 2c coin ~~decades ago~~ in 1990, and then the 5c coin too in 2006. Never been missed. Nothing changed.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_dollar

Prices are all still in 0.01 increments, and are Swedish rounded when paid for with cash (electronic payments are exact and never rounded).

[-] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago

Similar story in Norway, with 10 øre deprecated in early 90s; 50 øre in 2012. Prices are still 1 øre below a round number, even though the average Norwegian has never used coins of that denomination. (And lots of us haven't really used cash for a couple of decades now.)

[-] rbos@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 month ago

Canada got rid of pennjes like ten years ago. We barely noticed after the first few months.

[-] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 month ago

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/07/14/890435359/is-it-time-to-kill-the-penny

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. So were special interests such as zinc miners and the company that supplies the "penny blanks" used to mint 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! They called it the "rounding tax." But Whaples, that penny-researching economist at Wake Forest University, conducted a study of convenience stores and found that the final digit of purchases, which usually involve multiple products and a sales tax, was pretty much random. "And so if you round it to the nearest nickel, the customer wouldn't get gouged," Whaples says. Sometimes you'd round up; other times you'd round down. In the end, it would basically be a wash.

[-] atrielienz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Yeah. But the penny allows salespeople to provide a price that is enticing to the consumer because it's basically taking advantage of the psychology of how we round things. So it's good for businesses, and that's exactly why it still exists.

[-] rbos@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago

I don't follow. We have .99 prices in Canada. Debit and credit pays exact, and the change is just rounded.

The penny just fails as a currency. You can't buy anything with it. When we had them ten years ago, I would just dump them into recycling bins if i wasn't at home near the penny bucket.

[-] atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

With the 99 cent thing, if you sell a billion small items for $9.99 because our brains don't equate $9.99 to $10.00, you've made $10 BN. If you sell 500 items for $799.99 instead of $800 you've made $399,995. So you take a more noticeable hit in sales if you don't sell as many small items because they're now a $1.00 and people don't think they're worth a $1.00, but people are more likely to still buy an item that was $799.99 for $800. So you're less likely to lose sales.

In the US, that extra cent offsets tax which isn't included in shelf price which is part of the problem. But our prices are also rounded I believe. You did used to be able to buy things with pennies and it's still a legal currency. But it's been a long time since I've seen penny candy or similar and I couldn't tell you what they're used for now except exact change in the event that the seller is using psychological tactics to sell you more things by tricking your brain into believing you're paying less than you are.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago

In that case it would actually round down, so $9.99 would become $9.95.

[-] Strykker@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

First, no the shelf price is not altered.

Second the final price at the register is rounded to the closest 5 cent.

Some times you'll go up, sometimes you'll go down. It all breaks even in the end.

[-] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago

The penny lobby: so many puns and dad jokes just waiting to be released, like in this centence

[-] atrielienz@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

Yes. I think that's what the study explains in the last paragraph there. The customer is still likely to buy the item if it's ending in $.95 vs $.99. However, as the price of the item goes up, that four cent difference is less important. In the decision making of the buyer, but also costs the company more per unit. It's less important to the business/seller the more expensive it is. I think that's part of the reason they called it a wash.

[-] Strykker@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

The prices on shelves don't change when you drop the penny.

Final cost is just rounded to the nearest 5 cent at checkout if you pay in cash.

[-] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 month ago

Consider the fact that Japan has a ¥1 coin. It is strangely light, and can actually float on water if you are careful enough with the surface tension.

The purpose of leaving that coin in circulation is pricing. ¥399 looks much better than ¥400.

At the moment, ¥1 is about 0.64¢.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

The 1 yen should've been taken out of circulation even earlier than the penny. Right now it's only worth about .65 of a US penny. Other countries have taken their 1 cent equivalent out of circulation and stores haven't stopped doing the .99 ending in prices-- you just round at the register.

[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 1 month ago

I'd argue it's because of a hatred of anything that looks like price increases, especially among the older crowd. Japan is still very much cash-based, especially in those older generations. Then 1-yen coin being light and cheap probably helps, but I don't know if it actually costs more to make.

That said, I'd be happy getting rid of the 1 and 5 yen coins, especially since machines do not tend to take them.

[-] Strykker@programming.dev 2 points 1 month ago

Several countries got rid of the penny already, we still have pricing listed to the 1 cent. If you pay cash it's rounded to the nearest 5cent if you pay with card it's not rounded at all.

Nothing changes you just don't spend money minting coins that cost more than their value, and don't have to wait behind someone digging through their wallet for those pennies that they "swear are in here somewhere"

[-] NineMileTower@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I say get rid of money completely. Everything should be free for everyone. Except for my neighbor, Ron. He's still gotta pay.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 8 points 1 month ago

Yes. Yes. No. Just penny needs to die.

img

[-] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

I hope she doesn't

[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Yes, and daylight savings time and the electoral college too please.

[-] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Shift the decimal point two over so a penny is worth a dollar.

[-] Anissem@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

What will we do with all these ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ trays?

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

Replace them with "take a twenty, leave a twenty" tray.

[-] 0ops@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago

Lose 'em. Nickels too, gone. Honestly if we ditched dimes too I wouldn't shed a tear. Quarters are cool though, they can stay.

[-] Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Can we just round everything to the nearest dollar? If something is still cheap enough to be 25 cents then it should only be sold in a pack of 4.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 1 month ago

I don't think anyone ever gets excited about finding anything less than a quarter. Hell, even today I don't know if quarters are worthwhile. We should definitely get rid of everything besides quarters. I don't think any machines even take anything other than quarters. Maybe some drink machines do, but that's it. Like, two dimes and a nickel is objectively less useful than a quarter. And not just because of the mild inconvenience of carrying two additional coins lol.

I think there are enough places that use quarters that we shouldn't get rid of them.

[-] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Quarters are useful if only to feed into pinball machines.

[-] dance_ninja@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I think I remember hearing that the cost to make a penny is now more than one cent. Considering you can't really do anything with them, I'd say it's time to discontinue the penny at the very least.

[-] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

We need to move to mobile payments. Cash is dirty.

[-] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

Cashless is class warfare. Some people can't get bank accounts.

[-] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I guess they can't participate in the economy if they aren't participating in society.

[-] Kit 1 points 1 month ago

Many jobs still pay in physical checks or cash.

[-] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

The people I'm talking about are participating in society ya dingus

[-] bradd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Currently you can just get rid of all change, or increase the value of the dollar, by a lot.

this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
61 points (100.0% liked)

AskUSA

363 readers
7 users here now

About

Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the USA. Non-US people are welcome to provide their perspective! Please keep in mind:

  1. !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world - politics in our daily lives is inescapable, but please post overtly political things there rather than here
  2. !flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com - similarly things with the goal of overt agitation have their place, which is there rather than here

Rules

  1. Be nice or gtfo
  2. Discussions of overt political or agitation nature belong elsewhere
  3. Follow the rules of discuss.online

Sister communities

  1. !askuk@feddit.uk
  2. !casualuk@feddit.uk
  3. !casualconversation@lemm.ee
  4. !yurop@lemm.ee
  5. !esp@lemm.ee

Related communities

  1. !asklemmy@lemmy.world
  2. !asklemmy@sh.itjust.works
  3. !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
  4. !showerthoughts@lemmy.world
  5. !usa@ponder.cat

founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS