Nothing. And a roll of pennies held in a clenched fist can be a formidable weapon. 
What, you shore up uneven furniture legs with dimes? Extravagant bastard.
I am shocked and dismayed that you would propose such a thing, which is the lazy and, to be frank, Welsh way of doing such a thing. If you want to trap your friend in his dorm room, you brick up the door. Full stop.
We are not northerners, sir. Please remember that.
Ah, but the reason it’s at $7.99 right now, rather than $8.00, is purely psychological. $7.99 looks cheaper than $8.00. So if vendors are forced to round to a nickel price, might not it be worth it to go down to the friendly $7.95 rather than up to the terrifying $8.00?
Because there are morons in Europe, too.
And do you know why it’s so terrifying?
[spoiler]because it 8 9 & 10.
HAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHA
hahha
ha
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haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
heh
oh man. I slay me[/spoiler]
I do that, too - then I give it to my husband for good luck for him.
I want my change pennies, too. Look after your pennies, and your dollars will look after themselves, you know.
Dump the penny, create a GOOD dollar coin. Dump the Nickel, add a two dollar coin.
I spend a good amount of time in Canada, and I LIKE the Looney and the Tooney.
I am legally obligated to point out that this is EXTREMELY dangerous, as fires are known to break out just as soon as some fool is “pennied” in their room. This leads to all kinds of death and destruction. Most dangerous. Don’t do it!!
(yes, my RA caught me… I got written up and now have to do these public service postings…)
Rhythmdvl,
1/3 = .33333…
2/3 = .66666…
1/3 + 2/3 = 1 therefore, .3333… + .6666… = .9999… = 1
I’m fine with this idea, as long as we don’t end up with equally stupid names for them.
Two things: (a) if you care that much about a single penny you are a tightwad weirdo who should live in a cave in the woods and (b) lucky for said weirdos, abolishing the penny wouldn’t cost anyone anything, as rounding would go in your favor as often as not.
Why do you think the price is $7.99 in the first place? Because of the psychology of pricing: the first number of the price has a disproportionate impact on people’s perception of the cost. People who sell things don’t care about four cents, they care about selling 10% more products because more people will buy something for $7.95 than they will for $8.
Exactly my point: you use pennies to avoid getting more pennies. You don’t actually buy anything with your pennies. How would your life be worse if we just left the pennies out of the equation: every time you’d have gotten back two pennies in change, you don’t, but every time you have to dig up that $0.37, you now only have to dig up $0.35?
I resemble that remark!
Okay, so we’ve finally found something that gets under Giraffe’s skin. 
(Loonie is not a stupid name - there’s a loon on it! What were we supposed to call it? It could have been worse - there could have been a moose on it, I guess.)
If you live in a state that has a sales tax, your prices are probably already rounded up.
No, they aren’t. Prices are almost always displayed before sales tax, rounded down for psychological effect. To preserve the psychological effect, a product which is $7.99 plus sales tax would have to be $7.95 plus sales tax.
Think there’s a big intersection between “People smart enough to pull off that sort of thing without getting caught” and “People who can’t think of a better way to make an extra $0.04/hour”?
I think this is an excellent point. But I think that I should not therefore have used the markup near the dollar point as an example. So point well taken, by you and Giraffe too.
So what if I live in a cave in the woods and how did you know? I still don’t agree that prices will be rounded down and not up. And yes, I am a penny pincher, and you should see my bank account. I have done okay for a penny wise pound foolish person.
What if the bill comes to $7.68 cents? Now do you think that they’re going to round it down or up? And that’s two whole cents I now have to take a shellacking on!
Oh, but I thought I just spent them to help pay for my sandwich.
The merchant will round it up and rip me off 3 whole cents. Pennies may not seem like much by their lonesome selves.. but they do add up! And I don’t want anyone messing with my pursuit of being frugal.
But the tax is rarely an exact multiple of one cent. The total purchase is going to be rounded, either to the nearest cent (in which case you might lose a whopping 5 mills, although you might luck out and get that whole half cent as a bonus) or just up (in which case you could lose up to a whole cent less a negligible fraction). How often do you hear people bitch and moan that they lost 4 mills because of the sales tax?
I just don’t want them to rounded up worse than they already are. And this seems the logical likelihood more often than not.
So would you be in favor of a one mill coin? What level of worthlessness in a coin is appropriate because of some peoples’ psychological hangups about numbers?