“Among the last”?
I think we’re absolutely the last of the G8 group to be using coins and denominations that were designed 150 and more years ago.
Half dollars are as stupid as pennies, actually. They still produce them; they’re about three times as big as a Euro and worth, at today’s rate, .40 EUR. Thatt’s pathetic. Just pathetic. :rolleyes:
Shall I go on about our ubiquitous quarters…close to the Euro in size, and worth about .20 EUR. I’ll stop now before I get more frustrated.
Make the new dollar worth 10 old dollars…then we have currency that is worth something! The new penny is worth 10 cents, the quarter $2.50. Of course, everybodie’s salary drops 90%, but so do all prices.
Sounds like a plan to me!
You are Steve Rhoades from “Married With Children” and I claim my fifty dollars.
From the s1 episode, NIGHTMARE ON AL’S STREET:
Al: Where is Steve anyway?
Marcy: He’s in Buffalo, at a meeting of “Tellers Against the Penny.” Steve firmly believes that the one-cent piece is a thing of the past.
Al: Likewise, I’m sure.
When Steve comes home to his wife, he reports that it was a tough convention–“The pro-penny people pelted us with nickels.”
Apropos of nothing, this one also contains one of my favorite Steve lines ever: “Don’t toy with me, Marcy, I’m horny and I’ve been to Buffalo!” 
This is a pretty unoriginal observation but I was just in Europe, so I’ll mention it.
Its funny as an American travelling around Europe that every time I make a purchase, I pull out my bills and then pocket the change. I get back to the hotel and dump my change, keys, and wallet on the dresser like I do at home (where it’s usually about 37 cents).
Well, a couple days go by in Europe of always paying with paper (especially as a tourist buying a water here, a ticket to the Eiffel Tower there, a sandwich here, a metro ticket there, etc. etc.) and all of a sudden you realize you have a pile of change next to the lamp.
So, you count your change thinking you might have 3 or 4 dollars worth and all of a sudden, you’re looking at 30 Euros. Dang. Dinner for 2, with drinks. From your change.
They’d never do that. Having an old-dollar for new-dollar exchange would send scary shock waves and make the world think the dollar was completely collapsing. It’d also remind people just how much inflation there’s been over the last couple of generations.
The way Americans are so stubborn about keeping the dollar bill, and the exact format of coins we have now, and link them to our fundamental human rights is patently ridiculous. Whenever it’s suggested that the dollar bill be discontinued so as to force people to use dollar coins, people beat their chests and cry foul, saying that such a dictatorial move by the government would violate their very human rights. Human rights are the freedom to associate, speak, vote, and others, most of which are enshrined in our Constitution. Nowhere does that document guarantee us the right to keep pennies and dollar bills just for reasons of sentiment, or because a dollar used to be a lot of money. A dollar’s not even enough to get on the bus anymore, and we’re still making them out of paper! I might get flamed for this, but I think the public has absolutely no right to insist on the format of a particular denomination of coin or currency. We didn’t vote in the system we have now, and I don’t think we’ve got the right to insist that it continue unchanged. Currency and coin should have the denominations and formats that will best faciliate the small purchases typically made with them.
Virtually every other government in the industrialized world has eliminated the small single-unit paper notes, and --horror of horrors–forced their citizens to use coins instead. This supposedly despotic action was put through in places like Canada, England, and Japan, which are hardly dictatorships.
It’ll never happen, because you can’t stuff a dollar coin in a stripper’s G-string. (Well, you can, but it will just fall out…eventually.)
[QUOTE=misstee]
How are pennies more work than they are worth?
QUOTE]
Simple. According to what everyone seems to say, it costs just under a penny to manufacture one.
Now consider that experiment of mine where I go out in the street and offer 10 people a $100, either in pennies or $20 bills. Barring any bizarre or unusual circumstances, everyone’s going to choose the paper, right?
OK, now suppose I offer each person either $100 in $20 bills, or $101.00 in pennies. They would get more by choosing pennies, but I contend that most people would probably still choose the $100 in bills. What amount would I have to offer in pennies, to entice most people to choose them rather than the five $20 bills? Wouild it be $105.00? $110? $115? If you prefer $100 in bills to $105 in pennies, but prefer $110 in pennies to $100 in bills, you’re effectively saying, “I consider the value $100 in paper to be equal to somewhere between $105.00 and $109.99 in pennies.” You’re also saying that you consider one penny to be worth somewhere between .91 and .95 of a cent. For you, in that particular transaction, that’s what a penny is worth, and that’s likely less than it cost to make it.
In the concurrent discussion on whether to ditch the penny I asserted that pennies can actually be worth less than their face value due to the undesirability of handling them in large amounts. It’s safe to assume that if you offered somebody a choice between a $10 bill and 1000 pennies, they would choose the bill. My theory is that if you offer them either $10 in a bill, or a slightly higher amount, say $10.05 in pennies, most people would still choose the $10 bill.
My question is, how much more would someone have to offer you in pennies, to make you prefer the pennies over the paper money? Would you really rather have 1005 pennies than a $10 bill? If not, how much more money would I need to offer you in pennies, to make you prefer them over a $10 bill?
Right. And if the price of copper, scrap copper, goes up much more, you would be better off trading in your pennies (the old copper ones, pre-1983. 1983 and later pennies are made with bronze, not copper) at the recyclers rather than the bank!
Now, the problem is: what is an easy way to separate bronze pennies from copper? The mint should have changed the design when they changed the content; I can’t imagine looking at each date individually to get $1.05 for 100 pennies…
OK, they do sound different when dropped, but still, that’s labor intensive.
S¬
V
Terrific. That was supposed to be a new thread. I just cited the very thread I was posting in. :rolleyes:
But it was a very authoritative cite!
Wrong metal. They are made of zinc, plated with copper. Closer to brass, but not brass, just copper-plated zinc.
S¬
…V
Same here.
I have a huge glass jar, and into goes whatever spare change that builds up. I fish out some quarters now and then for vending machines but most of my change gets dumped into the jar. It makes my purse much lighter and saves wear and tear on my wallet.
When it starts filling up–and that happens remarkably quickly–I dump it all out into a sturdy canvas book bag and tote it to my local grocery store. They have a machine that sorts it and gives back its value in paper currency. Easy as anything; just dump the coins into the wide slot, wait a minute while it digests, and POOF! Folding money. That gets deposited immediately into my “mad money” savings account.
Works like a charm, and it produces about $750 per year for vacations or whatever.
I like pennies because they add up so nicely.
Veb
It might seem like free money when you cash in all that change, but it’s not. That money already belonged to you. If our system weren’t so geared towards breaking paper bills to buy virtually anything, and accumulating piles of change, that money would have stayed in your bank account because you wouldn’t be breaking so many twenties, and therefore wouldn’t be going to the ATM so often.
I think old copper pennies are already worth more than a cent.
Of course it was already mine. And I’m not a fanatic on this issue either way. It seems like a lot depends on personal habits. FWIW, the smaller the denomination, the faster it flies out of mywallet–until it comes to change. There the process reverses and starts building back up. I simply convert the converted leftover bits back into use.
Your contention is (apologies if I have it wrong), that the fewer leftover bits, the better return on value. I just draw the line differently. Singles already get spent more casually than, say, $20s. Reducing change doesn’t seem to be all that effective as solution; it just moves the bar. I maintain a sufficient balance for my checking account to pay interest, but it’s not that much. Gathering up the leftover loose bits is just convenient for making the most of what I already had. Any interest gained would be miniscule. I really doubt I’d withdraw money faster.
Again, I’m not married to any ultimate decision. Just doesn’t make that much difference to me. Though I’ve loathed the attempts at $1 coins.
Veb
This made me curious as to how much was in my change purse. "What’s in your wallet?" 
Let’s see…
1 x toony ($2)
5 x loony ($1)
11 x quarter ($0.25)
2 x dime ($0.10)
3 x penny ($0.01)
So, that’s $9.88 Canadian from, coincidentally, also 22 coins. I spent a toony and three quarters at the movies last night, and got six cents back. So, yesterday, I had $12.57 from 24 coins. Not bad.
Now, let me check my actual wallet… :eek: Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Oh, here’s my check. Bank closes in less than two hours. Gotta go!
$2.69 Canadian to go to a movie? That’s pretty good! Or do you mean you rented a DVD?
This is probably way off topic, but as I sit here reading this thread I cannot think of the last time that I actually used any form of currency (paper of coin).