News Brief by Kip Hansen — 11 February 2025 – 550 words
LOST: Maybe as many as 250 billion pennies. That’s a lot of pennies.
♫ Where have all the pennies gone? Long time passing? ♬ [apologies to Pete Seeger]
The most likely locations are: 1) Wishing wells all over the world. 2) Public fountains. 3) In the slots found on penny loafers and, coming in as most likely, 4) The coin jar on your bedroom dresser and millions of other similar coin jars and piggy banks.
I admit — mea culpa — I have a coin jar into which any coin smaller than quarter (25¢) ends up in the coin jar – including all those nearly worthless pennies.
The New York Times, last year, published a long piece in The New York Times Magazine: “America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny”. A very interesting read, by the way.
Yesterday, the Times had this: “Trump Orders Treasury Secretary to Stop Minting Pennies”.
“On Sunday night, Mr. Trump said he had ordered the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to stop producing new pennies, a move that he said would help reduce unnecessary government spending.
“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” he said in a post on Truth Social, adding that pennies “literally cost us more than 2 cents.”
Actually, pennies currently are thought to cost 3.69 cents each, to be minted and distributed.
“Last year, the Mint issued over three billion pennies, according to its annual report, at a loss of about $85.3 million.” [ source ]
And it is about time:
“Countries around the world have eliminated their smallest-denomination coins in recent decades.
“In 2012, Canada stopped producing pennies, describing them as essentially a waste of time and space and arguing that the move would save millions of dollars a year. Since then, cash transactions have been rounded to the nearest nickel, after federal and provincial sales taxes are added.Australia withdrew its one- and two-cent coins from circulation in 1992, citing inflation and production costs. Even earlier, countries like Sweden and New Zealand stopped minting their one-cent coins.
In Australia, the elimination of those coins “hasn’t mattered at all,” said Andrew Stoeckel, an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis.” [ source ]
People who code programs for modern cash registers and all the downstream (upstream?) accounting programs will be busy for a while as the penny falls out of use, as in other countries, and are simply rounded out of existence.
Rounded out of existence….what a way to go.
R.I.P. Penny, I for one won’t miss you.
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Author’s Comment:
I always kept myself supplied with pre-signed hall passes which allowed me to spend many an hour in my ghetto high school pitching pennies with the gang toughs instead of attending class. Alright, I admit, the hall passes were forged but no one would ever have challenged me about them. The only problem was that I was far too good at pitching pennies, so often had to quit before the guys got mad.
Maybe that’s all pennies will be good for in a few years time.
Let’s hear your stories about the penny.
Thanks for reading.
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I blame Richard Nixon going off the gold standard, and not replacing it with some other restraint on money printing. Along with the War on Drugs, War on Cancer, and dragging out Vietnam, another reason to curse his memory.
Actually FDR did that.
FDR partially did that, but Nixon ended any tie to gold.
Yep, Tricky Dick drove the final nail home to be sure. Decoupling America from gold was one of the worst things done in the supposed fight against the Great Depression and was one of the key issues that prolonged the whole mess.
The semi Austrian School economic analysis is that The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Hoover, and FDR tried to support prices and wages, rather than letting wages and prices decline to deal with the bubble. The depression in 1920-21 was short and sharp, and soon over. The assertion is that the interventions made the Great Depression much worse, and longer.
My grandfather explained this to me back in mid-70s. Not an economist or anything like it, a farmer and timber-man/sawyer in south Mississippi who came home from Europe in 1919 and lived through both events. His point was mismanagement by people who should have just let the system find it’s own balance made it far worse. When you are anxious and filled with an urge to “do something”, you shouldn’t. A very hard lesson to teach people.
… the story of my marriages…
Anything the gov’t. interferes with…
Yep, all these countries inflated their currency and now Greshams law takes over. So their response is ban the penny not restore the purchasing power.
The Federal Reserve has had consistent objections to deflation for over an hundred years.
For good reason, for a number of reasons deflation can be worse than inflation.
Can you imagine millions of homeowners, trapped in their current homes, because the building is worth less than what they owe on it.
Can you imagine the screaming if employers tell their employees that next year their wages are going to be 5% less, because, thanks to deflation, the employer can’t afford to pay them what they were being paid before. (Especially if you are one of those homeowners who are trapped in your now low value home. Your mortgage hasn’t gone down any.)
The US had deflation from the 1870’s though 1912. It was a turbulent era, but with great economic growth. It does discourage debt, as real interest rates ran the other way than recently.
Anything (I propose) that “discourages debt” is a very good thing.
Mortgages adjust interest rates now for low inflation. People aren’t stupid. Persistent deflation would result in negative interest rates still above the deflation rate, or something; people will find a way.
House values are largely meaningless, since people have to live somewhere. If their house doubled in value when they sell it, their next house will be just as inflated.
People expect inflation raises because they are used to them. If deflation were persistent, they’d be used to that too and expect lowers (?) without thinking it a disaster.
Can you imagine millions of home owners trapped in their homes with really low interest rate 😉
It is more predictability. If there are consistently rising or falling prices, one can adjust for either.
1913 dollar when the Fed was created
$1 purchasing power
Equivalent purchasing power is
$4.80 in 1971 dollars
Equivalent purchasing power is
about $31.88 in 2025 dollars
So…what could you buy for a dollar in 1913 that costs $31 today? Almost everything that cost a dollar in 1913. So the cost is still the same
What was the purchasing power of a $20 gold piece or a $20 bill (a gold certificate) as late as 1940 compared to a $20 Federal Reserve Note today?
I saw an old (1935 I think) magazine with an add for a brand new Packard for $300 (maybe $600?).
Nixon dragged out Vietnam? You mean the peace talks in Paris that went on for years?
As for “restraint” on money printing: this is libertarian nonsense.
China has printed at least 34x the equivalent of their 1985 GDP. The difference is that China used this printed money to build a world dominating manufacturing capability.
The printing in the US has gone to foreign adventures and green subsidies and what not – and has NOT resulted in remotely the type of economic improvement, either relative or absolute, that China has wrought.
Therefore the issue is not the ability to print money – the issue is the use to which printed money is applied (or misapplied).
As you use the term “libertarian nonsense”, there is no way we will agree on economics.
Don’t believe China has a “national debt” any where close to 31 trillion.
I don’t know that I feel one way or the other about abandoning the penny but at a loss of only 85.3 million dollars I would count the penny as a successful government program. At least we can look at our penny jars and see something for the governments efforts. That is one part of my grandchildren’s inheritance I won’t spend.
Time to go to the bank and pick up a few new penny rolls
If only there were a penny candy store still in existence.
Penny candy these days would be about the size of a Tic Tac.
These days Penny Candy would have 2¢ tax
Next year Penny Candy will have 4¢ tax
In my childhood, 5 pennies supplies me with ??? for a week.
When I was a kid, a Coke machine gave you a 6 oz bottle of Coke for nickel :<)
re: “At least we can look at our penny jars”
Right there is the problem …
a penny saved is a penny urned ?
😉
Old Bob ==> Punny…I’ll have to rename my coin jar to coin urn.
Clever, Bob. Thanks.
When it costs more to produce the item than it is worth long past time to stop producing it.
NO! A penny is not a single-use item.
Pennies last for decades and thousands of uses. That 4 cents production cost is no more exorbitant than the cost of a taxi whose individual fares pay minuscule portions of its purchase price.
I’d just as soon get rid of pennies just for the nuisance value. But the price to manufacture them is meaningless.
No, the price of manufacturing an item is not meaningless, your line of “reasoning” is what is meaningless.
Scarecrow ==> Another way of looking at it would be: “Why pay millions of taxpayers dollars to produce what almost everyone sees as a nuisance?”
Another way of looking at it would be: “Why pay millions of taxpayers dollars to produce what almost everyone sees as a nuisance?”
Sounds like you are describing solar farms.
Pennies can still be used in all those homes that have the old style, glass-encased screw-in fuses! 😜
Readers ==> The above comment is for Entertainment Purposed Only — don’t do that in your own home (unless you need the insurance money….)
Just so! Please don’t do it even if you need an insurance payout.
But you can still get enjoyment from laying pennies on railroad tracks and watching what happens . . . works even better with the zinc-based pennies!
“Pennies last for decades and thousands of uses.” Like the old fuse box trick?
You just posted a perfect reason to end all governmental bureaucracies.
The next in line is probably the nickle–something like 14 cents to produce 5.
When it costs more to produce the item than it is worth long past time to stop producing it.
Sounds like you are describing a wind mill.
When the shoe fits!
Please describe “pitching Pennies” for an ignorant Australian.
I can respond with betting on flies climbing up walls. Geoff S
I believe it’s chucking a penny against the wall. The closest penny to the wall wins.
Now explain two-up to our American cousins…
Or spitting the dummy.
Zzw,
Two-up. You toss two coins. They will fall either odds (one head plus one tail) or evens. After a toss, you bet on what the next result or next several results will be by your forecast. So it is essentially you finding temporary luck in betting for (say, 3 evens in the next 3 throws) when well-known probability math can calculate what is expected. The essential popularity is from drinking alcohol while losing $$$. (But I have never played it). Geoff S
Ashley, you bet on whether two heads or two tails will come up.But it’s a bit more complicated than that.
1) St. Anthony’s is once again heading to North Beach to host the 44th Annual Penny Pitch event at Chief Sullivan’s Irish Bar and Pub. Founded by legendary North Beach restaurateur Ed Moose, Penny Pitch is a legendary and friendly rivalry that goes back decades and includes teams that have been participating for ten years or more.
https://www.stanthonysf.org/event/penny-pitch
2) Spring Carnival Game Idea – Penny Pitch!
https://www.carnivalsavers.com/collections/spring-carnival-game-penny-pitch
3) The History of Penny Pitch:
Since 1948, WOWO has asked people throughout Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan to contribute pennies, nickels, dimes or more to help families within the WOWO listening area.
https://wowo.com/penny-pitch/
Geoff ==> “Pitching pennies is a game played with coins. Players take turns to throw a coin at a wall, from some distance away, and the coin which lands closest to the wall is the winner.”
It can be played for higher stakes: pitching nickles or dimes or, for the high rollers, even pitching quarters!
When I was a kid, the penny had to actually hit the wall and bounce back to be counted.
But I suppose there were variations of the rules.
time to buy more nickels
Nickels are close to being worth melt value. Might be a wise investment.
Understand. We used to have a half-penny with enough copper to back up its face value.
Like the failing Roman Empire who resorted to merely silver washing base metal coins our unsustainable monetary policy is running out of tricks. Tricks like copper washing false zinc pennies.
I think nickles are next. They contain more metal that the pennies do. 5 grams as opposed to 2.5 for the penny. The nickle is made from alloy 75% copper and 25% nickle which is quite a bit more expensive that the penny’s zinc. Old Canadian nickles used to be pure nickle and were magnetic.
Before quarters and dimes went “clad”, a nickel was 20% silver.
Nickels cost over $.13 to produce. Given in the same article about the pennies. Let’s give everyone a raise again, and maybe we can do away with the dollar.
Three observations from a former very serious coin collector.
Apologies. I duplicated your post almost word for word but 8 minutes later.
Some of my finds going through change back when pennies were made out of copper, were 1909 S, (alas not vdb), 14 D, and a WW2 steel penny. Have buckets of wheat pennies. The current zinc pennies are a disgrace.
Got an 1911 S.
U.S. coins of less than 10 Cents were never anything other than tokens. A metallic version of paper money. Until 1964 dimes, quarters, and dollars were made of silver having a value equal to their face. In 1964 they switched to copper nickle alloy and the silver coins disappeared into sock drawers every where. That was when they stopped printing $1 bills in the form of silver certificates.
Walter ==> I agree that the low denomination coins were/are just tokens — never meant to have real value.
Inflation is a very long term thing. A “pound” was originally a gold coin the value of 240 silver pennies weighing one troy pound.
In the UK we lost the farthing (0.25d, 1/960th of £1) in the 1950s. Then the halfpenny and penny (240d=£1) went with decimalisation in 1970 although we did get the 0.5p for a short while which was notionally worth 1.2d, but high inflation made it redundant. We still have 1p, but not for much longer I suspect. Tends to clutter my change purse though because of 99p pricing.
Rud ==> Well, let us know what you are missing and maybe some ignorant idiot out here is holding one of those old Roman coins (not likely, but ‘cha never know!). I have a couple old Roman coins I dug up somewhere in Portugal in the 1970s.
I only save the true copper pennies which were minted before 1982.
I seldom carry or use coins anymore. I pay for most things by using my phone which is linked to my credit cards.
Ha! Luddite! I use my watch… 😅
Walter ==> You might be better off scrap copper wire….
Pennies are pretty good to pair with Farthings. Without the Penny there’d be no place for the pedals
Bryan ==> Must be a Brit thing — don’t understand a word of it….
The Penny Farthing so named because the Farthing was Tiny coin (rear wheel) and the Penny was a large coin (Front Wheel…with the pedals)
https://www.amazon.com/Posterazzi-Ordinary-Bicycle-commonly-Farthing/dp/B07GTYWXNM/ref=asc_df_B07GTYWXNM?mcid=703287a890a1344fac1753531f26b92d&hvocijid=17761900025710276915-B07GTYWXNM-&hvexpln=73&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=730352155585&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17761900025710276915&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9032306&hvtargid=pla-2281435177418&psc=1
Bryan ==> Now I get it! Thanks.
Australia has not had 1 or 2 cent coins since they were phased out 1991/92 and everything is round to nearest 5 cents. It’s not a big thing and yes was done for same reason of cost saving.
I wonder how long we will still make 5c coins !
Pesky little things . 😉
The only real use I have had in recent years for pennies has been paying for medicines at the pharmacy. I don’t require expensive things so insurance pays most of the cost. My co-pays have been 3¢, 46¢, and similar. Why do they bother? A credit card seems superfluous. A couple months ago the clerk used 3¢ from a small pill bottle to pay my share when I forgot to take a bunch of coins with me. A week later I returned with a few pennies, a couple of nickels, and a dime and added to their little slush fund. I’ve known these folks for years and we have commented on the oddities of such tiny co-pays in the past.
Medicare Part B insurance billing is equally stupid. Calling Elon!
John ==> My medical insurance company send me eight-page summaries every month by postal mail—that times millions of customers, who just throw them out (I use mine to start the fire in the wood stove- so I get a few BTUs out of them).
Kip, in 1970 when I got out of the U.S. Army they owed me 93 cents. A few months later they mailed me a check for 93 cents. I refused to cash it in the hopes of screwing with their money-handling and accounting systems. Over 50 years later, with many examples of government mismanagement, we now have the richest man in the world taking a sincere swipe at government waste, fraud and abuse. I’m hopeful he will make at least some progress; all the many Presidential “efforts” in the past were complete failures.
Search up “images” of: artistic use of pennies
For lazy readers: click here.
At the same time stop printing the dollar bill and replace it with a coin. Make the new coin about halfway between the nickel and the quarter in size.
Retailers will have space in their registers since the penny is being phased out.
Canada got rid of the $1 and $2 paper bills and replaced them with coins, but they pulled a bit of a stunt when they did it. Paper money in Canada all says on it “this note is legal tender”. But the coins don’t say that. So as paper money came in and was destroyed, the Bank of Canada counted it as destroyed, out of the money supply. But since the coins are not “legal tender” they didn’t count them IN the money supply as they minted them. So the money supply shrank and the Canadian dollar increased in value a bit.
At current exchange rates they could get to parity with the $US if they cancelled the $5, $10, $20, $50, $100… OK never mind, the $CAD is so low that it no longer matters. Hey wait! If we become the 51st state, do all my $CAD get converted to $US straight across?
“Paper” money in Canada is now thin bills made of plastic. More durable than paper, but more difficult to handle.
I live in a border city and often businesses will run specials and allow Canadian dollars at par. But that has slowed down as people in America would go get some Canadian money and just hold it for a time waiting for a “par” day.
Back in 2006 work sent some of us to Calgary for training on the new upgrade for our SCADA system.
On the way to training, we’d stop for a $5 breakfast at a restaurant. (I think it was called Smitty’s?)
Anyway, it felt strange to pay for a $5 breakfast using only 3 coins. (2 toonies and 1 loony)
(I also found it odd that I had to hunt for grape jelly packets from other tables for my toast.)
Mark ==> Might have been a good idea 20 years ago….but I don’t think anyone today LIKES carrying coins around. Another coin would just be a waste — phones,watches, debit cards are the standard today.
I did, however, actually witness a customer writing a check in the grocery store last month.
Heck, even vending machines mostly accept credit/debit cards these days.
I think we (USA) already have a dollar coin that no body uses.
For Leftist political reasons they slapped an engraving of Suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony on the new, smaller-than Eisenhour dollar coin in 1987. They had to stop production after three years due to a lack of acceptance by the American public. After years of politico/bureaucratic bumbling around they replaced poor old Susan with an even more Leftist icon: Lewis and Clark Expedition guide Indian girl Sacagawea.
And the beat goes on.
The election of President Donald Trump may stop Leftists/Marxists in our government from cramming unpopular Leftist’s screwy social and economic schemes down our collective throats.
It wasn’t liked because it was too big. Almost as big as the old Kennedy half dollar.
The question is how does $x.99 pricing get replaced?
If it’s $x.95, we benefit.
If it’s $(x+1).00 or more we lose.
How often do you leave the store with a total bill of less than $10.00?
For me, it’s closer to $100 most weeks. Rounding up a penny is too small to notice.
Would they need to round up credit or debit purchases?
Personally, I expect them to round 1 and 2 cents down, while rounding 3, 4 cents up. On average, no gain.
I admire your optimism.
Doesn’t Add Up ==> 99 cent pricing has always been scam, meant to trick customer into believing they aren’t paying a dollar for the item. In the US, we now have DOLLAR stores (replacing the old 5 and 10¢ stores). some of them actually have most/many items priced at $1.
No longer.. $1.25 now, at least in WA State stores.
Seriously . . . you have to ask which way it will go?
The obvious (to me) answer is that “$x.99” pricing will be replaced by “$(x+1).03” pricing.
pre 1971 when the U.K. switched to our current currency.
The farthing (1/4d) was stopped in 1956 and demonetised in 1961.
The halfpenny (1/2d)ceased to be legal tender in 1969.
post decimalisation
The 1/2 p coin was demonetised in 1984, despite concerns from the treasury that it would fuel inflation. “The halfpenny coin’s fate was sealed when it became more expensive to make than its face value.”
How long before our hydrocarbon-based banknotes come under scrutiny.
Nickel for your thoughts?
Inflation.
Seriously though, it’s about time. Pennies are a nuisance, both for customers and store clerks. Cash transactions will be sped up. And the $85m the government saves each year can go in their $million jar.
Get rid of pennies. Round prices up/down to the nearest $.05; let’s also add a dollar coin that is easily distinguishable from the quarter and 50 cent pieces. Do away with the $1 bill and replace with $2 bill.
The Susan B. Anthony $1 coin is still legal tender in the US . . . was supposed to be of a design distinguishable from the quarter . . . insert something here about the definition of insanity.
The Sacagawea $1 coin is current legal tender in the US .
The $2 bill/note is current legal tender in the US.
If they completely replace the dollar bill with a coin, put Washington on the face.
Two problems with the previous dollar coins.
First, the penny was still in circulation, so there was no place to put the dollar coin in a standard cash register drawer. The second was that the dollar bill was still in circulation. Most people preferred the dollar coin, and most retailers didn’t like the dollar coin.
That’s why getting rid of the penny gives the opportunity to create a new coin, and you also have to get rid of the dollar bill at the same time.
“Most people preferred the dollar coin,”
Not me. I prefer the $1 bill to the $1 coin. When I get a $1 coin in change, I get rid of it as soon as I can.
From the article: “I admit — mea culpa — I have a coin jar into which any coin smaller than quarter (25¢) ends up in the coin jar – including all those nearly worthless pennies.”
You better check those pennies! Some of them can be worth a million dollars!
There are now apps that can look at your coins and tell you if you have anything of value.
Everybody check your pennies!
Tom ==> I gave up checking pennies for numismatic value in junior high….when I realized I spent hours examining pennies and finding some that were worth Five Times face value (but no one would buy them for a nickle).
I never found anyone willing to buy copper pennies for their melt value.
Looking forward to retailers getting rid of the ridiculous .99 pricing – as well as the even more ridiculous 9/10th cent suffix to fuel prices.
Couldn’t agree more! Why is my fuel purchase (U.S.) 2.349? Where does that $0.009 come from? We do not even have thousandths of a dollar in our monetary system!
Paul Harvey once had a ‘Rest of the story’ on the odd-unit pricing. It’s been well over four decades since I’ve heard it, and the details are sketchy, but I agree with you on that ridiculous “$9.99” price for something. It is going to be over $10 with sales tax (and God-only-knows-what-else), so why not just put up a sign that says, “$10 [plus tax]”. I note that Family Dollar stores often have even-unit pricing on their products.
$9.99 was a sales gimmick so the seller could claim it was under $10.00 and not be sued.
Dan ==> Yes, get rid of “9/10th cent suffix to fuel prices”.
Does anyone reading know why they do that?
Something to do with taxes, I suspect.
Sales gimmick.
I was pretty good at pitching pennies myself. I was also a dealer of contraband bubble gum. Bought a hit of gum for a penny and sold it for three cents, two for a nickel. Huge profits until others invaded my turf.
Mark ==> Enterprise learned early. I did penny candies and later cigarettes, which were strictly forbidden on school grounds, making the price and profits even higher.
I had teacher’s lounge privileges in the drafting department for reasons not to be mentioned, which kept me in coffee and eliminated the necessity of smoking in bathrooms. Both habits long since abandoned.
I would have thought that drinking coffee would have necessitated another use for the bathroom than smoking.
sturmudgeon ==> By high school, I was delivery papers in the morning (LA Times) and working an evening job at the hospital. Had been smoking regularly since I was about 10. I could NOT get through the day without a coffee break and a smoke break.
Boy’s Bathrooms in my high school were dangerous — at least two murders in the Boy’s Rooms per year, and many beatings. Just how it was. Old fashioned “West Side Story”-ish gangs, battling it out at school. Black Gangs, Latin Gangs, White Gangs. An interesting place to attend school.
Went back to visit in the early 2000s, the school has a police cordon around it. I was stopped and questioned for “looking too interested” on the street.
Well, at least the saved energy will also save the earth from global warming.
From the above article:
“Last year, the Mint issued over three billion pennies, according to its annual report, at a loss of about $85.3 million.”
Are you effing kidding me??? In FY2024, the US federal government spent $6.75 trillion . . . that works out to spending $85.3 million every 6.6 minutes! That’s right, a savings of $85.3 million would be equivalent to funding the US Government for less than 7 minutes!
Don’t Elon Musk as co-lead of DOGE and as his biggest fanboi, Donald Trump, have . . . ummmm . . . more important issues to devote their time and energies toward?
Or are we now in the age where virtue signaling succeeds despite there being no logic behind it?
My estimate of cost to the Federal government (including the IRS) to revise all of its computer codes, websites (including website on-line calculators), procedures and paperwork/printed documents to enable rounding of sums to the nearest nickel ($0.05) would be about $100 billion. That alone would be equivalent to about 1000 years of the US Mint losing $100 million per year by continuing to make pennies.
And need I go on to comment about the additional direct cost to state and local governments and to all businesses across the US that eliminating pennies and instituting rounding to the nearest nickel would incur??
Just ridiculous that this issue is receiving the attention it has!
ToldYouSo ==> The waste of money is a small matter. The waste of money to create what is viewed by most as a nuisance and entirely unnecessary is more the point. Pennies add no value to modern life nor to commerce, but cost time and money refilling all the penny slots in cash registers, counting out pennies in change, getting more pennies from the bank to go into the register drawer,, etc.
Once the deed is done and the pennies are gone — the adjustment cost will have been minor.
Other countries came to their senses long ago.
I get your main thrust, but then have to ask what we don’t just go ahead and extend that logic to the nickel, the dime, the quarter, the half-dollar?
After all, it’s hard to find anything today that is individually priced at under $1, and it is such a nuisance for people to carry around coins and for businesses to have to separate ALL THOSE DIFFERENT COINS and that would eniterly unnecessary if we just rounded everything off to the nearest dollar.
As you imply, once that deed is done and the coins are gone — the adjustment cost will have been “minor”.
Let’s take the opportunity right now to jump ahead of all those other countries using coins.
/sarc
All one has to do is adjust the item prices prior to entry. All those others need not be changed.
And if I tax the sale of an item, say a cup of coffee nicely priced at $4.50, at a 9.25%, then I get a total charge of $4.92, not including any additional percentage-based tip.
Does the vendor or the state/city take the “hit” of losing that 2 cents due to rounding downward to $4.90? How and who to manage this accounting?
So many questions, so few answers.
If you round 1 and 2 down and 3 and 4 up, that means half round up and half round down.
As long as you have a large number of transactions, it all evens out.
That is true.
It is easy to calculate in the taxes when defining the sales price.
Base price = $ times % tax = result with no pennies.
If the result is not penny free, change the base price up or down accordingly.
This is not a Y2K type problem, so there is no need to blow it out of proportion.
That aside, I like pennies.
So, would we then ever be seeing, say, a storewide 15%-off sale . . . would that mean the “rounding-off to no pennies” applies to each individual item purchased, or only to the final total price of all items purchases. Sounds confusing and complicated.
Your lack of Common Sense is showing. Do you not understand that “a penny saved is a penny earned”?? ANY & ALL ‘savings’ of MY tax dollars is welcome news, and to be celebrated.
Well, Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense”, but the saying “A penny saved is a penny earned” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin (circa 1737).
However, if we correct for inflation since Franklin’s time, a penny saved today would be worth only 1/79 th the value of one of his pennies
(ref: https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1737?amount=1 )
Let’s celebrate!
To quote somebody or other.
A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.
Getting rid of the penny doesn’t save much, but on the other hand it’s easy to do.
To counter your rant.
A single ant can move a single grain of sand.
How much can a million ants move? A beach worth.
When individuals reconcile their personal budgets they savor all saving large and small.
Saving 10 cents on a grocery item is as much appreciated as saving a dollar. It all adds up.
In your world, not mine.
Ants moving sand? . . . another thing altogether.
I would just note that Trump is correct in what he said: the penny costs more than 2 cents. That’s because while the actual cost to create the penny might be 3.69 cents – the outcome is a 1 cent penny. The actual net cost is 2.69 cents…more than 2 cents.
Just saying.
His statement would be true if it costs 20 cents. More than is greater than in math.
I put any change I might bring home in a coffee can–cashing it in every couple of years when it gets full. But for a good many years I have culled out any penny with a date of 1982 or earlier, Those are 95% copper, and have some value (currently increasing) from their metal content that far exceeds 1 cent. Have maybe 25-30 pounds of copper pennies saved for a rainy day
jvcstone ==> You and many million other people, which is why they keep minting so many pennies! Villain! Penny Hoarder! I’m reporting you directly to Elon Musk! He’ll DOGE you til you give up your hoard.
There is a way to make the penny vanish. Reprice everything to end in 5 or 0, drop the 1/9 cent on gas and alter the sales tax structure to increase in multiples of nickels.