So much for more dollar coins.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Cheesesteak

#4, it’s 3 cents! You can save 3 cents a day for an entire year and have just enough money to take your honey to a fancy meal at Mc Donalds, as long as she doesn’t expect an apple pie for dessert.

Alternatively, you can take your collection of all 50 state quarters ($12.50) and do the same thing. That’s fifty coins – and fifty of the largest denomination at that–to buy a cheap meal for two people, which just goes to show how exceptional our country really is.

pulykamell, I did forget about gumball machines, but it doesn’t matter. In twenty years you’ll probably need a dollar and the machines will have bill acceptors.

[california_jobcase]

U.S. currency is boring. It needs more variety- 15, 75, 250, and 500 dollar bills would be fun. Two dollar bills should be forced into circulation every way possible. Fifty cent pieces should be reintroduced along with one, two, and five dollar coins. Mill coins should, at long last, be minted. All of this should be done by force of law, with a company I’ll create having the sole right to produce and sell the new cash drawers containing the proper compartments.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Bearflag70

Pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar bills are a waste of taxpayer money to create.

Why dimes? BTW I think the dime is a good candidate for the lowest value coin.

[Max_Torque]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Why dimes? BTW I think the dime is a good candidate for the lowest value coin.

Either that or they’ll have to change their name to the “March of Quarters”.

Movie theaters already incorporate the sales tax into the cost of their concessions; no reason it couldn’t be done elsewhere.

[Dewey_Finn]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Alternatively, you can take your collection of all 50 state quarters ($12.50) and do the same thing. That’s fifty coins – and fifty of the largest denomination at that–to buy a cheap meal for two people, which just goes to show how exceptional our country really is.

I read somewhere that the American penny is the least valuable lowest-denomination coin among the largest economies. So perhaps we might use national pride as an incentive to get rid of it. (“Do you want to be the country with the wimpiest small coin?”)

[carnivorousplant]

@OpalCat

And sometimes it will round down and you’ll save.

Says who? If I’m selling something, I’d round up.

[Cheesesteak]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Why dimes? BTW I think the dime is a good candidate for the lowest value coin.

Having dimes and quarters with no nickels is a problem. You can’t round to the nearest dime, since a person can pay with a quarter, and you can’t give them 15 cents change. If you round to a quarter dollar, a person can pay with 3 dimes, and you can’t give 5 cents change.

So, if you ditch the nickel, you have to get rid of either the dime or the quarter along with it.

[Cheesesteak]

@carnivorousplant

Says who? If I’m selling something, I’d round up.

Says the Feds. If they ditch the penny, there WILL be a law stating exactly how you may and may not round your transactions.

[Bearflag70]

If we dump the penny and nickel, dimes may be ok for the lowest coin if we also dump the quarter. However, given the current value of the dime, I don’t think our transactions need to be rounded to that level of specificity. IMHO, the quarter would be better. So by keeping dimes, we aren’t getting our money’s worth and we would be paying to make coins to maintain a level of specificity that’s too low. So, I say our currency should look like this:

COINS
0.25
0.50
1.00

BILLS
2 (as a paper note for now to keep the dollar bill whiners at bay)
5
10
20
50
100

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@carnivorousplant

Says who? If I’m selling something, I’d round up.

Says I. I run the store across the street, I got a better deal on the product than you, and I’m going to undersell you by five cents.

IOW, there is such a thing as price competition.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Dewey_Finn

I read somewhere that the American penny is the least valuable lowest-denomination coin among the largest economies. So perhaps we might use national pride as an incentive to get rid of it. (“Do you want to be the country with the wimpiest small coin?”)

I think that train pulled out of the station thirty years ago, or more. Wimpiest small coin, wimpiest small note, we got your wimpy right here.

[iamthewalrus_3]

@carnivorousplant

Make the argument that something that costs .92 now wouldn’t cost .95 the day after there are no more pennies.
Try not to be snarky, it’s an honest question. If I were selling widgits for .91, with no more pennies I’d charge .95 for them.

I think it’s already been answered, but here’s my answer. It’s a two part answer: Part 1 is that prices will not change on average. Part 2 is that even if they did (which they won’t), they will not do so enough to care about.

Part 1: The only thing that’s going to be rounded are the totals in the transaction. There are plenty of fair rounding algorithms, so on average the price paid will not change. If it somehow happens that the rounding rules are not required by law (I’d bet they will be) and a store always rounds things up, then you can just not go there. The idea that actual prices would change (rather than just the total being rounded) based on the coinage available is just wrong. Prices are set via supply and demand, not the monetary value of various coins.

Part 2: We already round things to the penny. No one cares that they get charged $0.25 when they buy half a pound of something that costs $0.49/lb. We’ve been rounding things to the penny since we discontinued the half-cent in 1857. At the time it was discontinued, the half-cent was worth more than $0.05, adjusted for inflation. The absolute nightmare scenario of losing 4 cents per transaction is simply not worth worrying about. It’s like going to a different gas station because their gas is 1/10 of a penny less.

[Ibanez]

I grumbled about the loonie up here when it was announced a decade ago. But after a year of reflection it costs the governmnet (you and I) less to print money, that’s probably not a bad idea.

It’s also good way to save petty cash at home as well, I have a large jar where I dump my change into. The last time I rolled it up and brought it to the bank I had about a $800 in change. Put that in my savings account please.

It’s also handy if you live in urban areas, a lot of machines exchange services and goods for coins.

I think the next denomination we should get rid of is the penny.

[postcards]

@Dewey_Finn

One reason that the penny hasn’t been eliminated is pressure from the zinc industry.

Cite?

[Dewey_Finn]

@postcards

@Dewey_Finn

One reason that the penny hasn’t been eliminated is pressure from the zinc industry.

Cite?

From the New York Times of December 31, 1991:

Foes of the penny have sought its demise. In 1989, Representative James Hayes, a Louisiana Democrat, sponsored legislation to eliminate penny production by the year 2000. But he got a cool reception.

“We probably weren’t ready for prime time,” said Rhod Shaw, his chief aide. Recalling a deluge of requests from television interviewers, Mr. Shaw said that when they got calls from David Letterman asking why they wanted to get rid of the penny, he worried that the Congressman would be featured on " ‘stupid Congressional pet tricks’ or something."

James C. Benfield, a lobbyist who used to express his personal hatred for the penny, also backed off, choosing instead to concentrate on related goals: zapping the $1 bill in favor of a $1 coin and $2 bill.

Although his Coin Coalition, which gets support from the copper industry, had attacked the penny with zeal, “We buckled under pressure by the zinc industry,” he says.

[Bearflag70]

@Bearflag70

COINS
0.25
0.50
1.00

BILLS
2 (as a paper note for now to keep the dollar bill whiners at bay)
5
10
20
50
100

For the coin haters, under this system, the only time you would need a coin to make a whole dollar figure is $1 and $3.

$4 = $2 x 2
$5 = $5 x 1
$6 = $2 x 3
$7 = $5 x 1 + $2 x 1
$8 = $2 x 4
$9 = $5 x 1 + $2 x 2

To make up for the fact you now need a coin to get $1 and $3, you no longer have to deal with pennies, nickels, and dimes.

$0.84 is now 8 coins. Under the proposed system, this amount would round down to $0.75, which is only 2 coins.

$0.89 is now 8 coins. Under the proposed system, this amount would round up to $1, which is only 1 coin.

[Dewey_Finn]

Another cite, this time from CBS News’ 60 Minutes:

But its fans say a penniless America would leave the penniless truly penniless, because merchants would round prices up to the nearest nickel.

Mark Weller is the voice of “Americans for Common Cents,” a pro-penny group that claims that rounding up will cost Americans $600 million a year. “You’re going to be hurting those that can least afford it. The folks that don’t have checking accounts, that don’t have charge cards, are the ones that are gonna get hit,” Weller argues.

He says without the penny, charities, too, would suffer, on the theory that people are less likely to donate as many nickels. As it is, penny drives around the country collect tens of millions of dollars a year for medical research, for the homeless, for education. “You have school groups all over the country that are raising funds for important causes on Katrina relief or new computers or other issues for their schools,” Weller says.

But as Weller freely admits, he’s got a financial interest in the high cost of penny pinching: Weller is a lobbyist for Jarden Zinc, the Tennessee company that sells those little blank discs for the mint to turn into Lincoln pennies.

“If you don’t have the penny out there, it would be a major kick in the pants to the zinc industry, wouldn’t it?” Safer asks.

“I think if you look at overall uses of zinc in the economy, this is a smaller part of that overall. I think if you look back at the merits of argument which is what happens if you don’t have the penny and you round transactions to the nickel, that’s a loser for charity groups, that’s a loser for the American public,” Weller says.

[Sunspace]

@Ibanez

I grumbled about the loonie up here when it was announced a decade ago.

A decade ago? Try 25 years! I was in the post office today and they had a little display of the 25th-anniversary loonie…

@Ibanez

I think the next denomination we should get rid of is the penny.

Agreed.

[Dewey_Finn]

A third cite, this time from an academic paper, “The Economic Implications of Price Rounding” by Steven Meester:

It is worth noting the special interest lobbies that affect price rounding legislation. If prices were rounded to the nearest nickel, one suspects that penny production will go down and nickel production will go up. Nickel production will go up as the nickel assumes the roles of couch cushion filler and general bother to deal with. Nickels are made largely from copper and pennies are made largely from zinc. The state of Arizona supplies 64% of the nation’s copper. The mineral is considered to be of great importance to Arizona’s economy [Shipley, 2000]. The state of Tennessee supplies 25% of the nation’s zinc. The mineral is considered to be of great importance to Tennessee’s economy [Tennessee’s Mineral Industry]. Jim Kolbe, the Representative who last introduced a bill to make price rounding law happens to represent Arizona. Three of the seven representatives that led the charge against the bill were from Tennessee. The copper and zinc lobbies have a lot at stake. It should not be surprising that the lobbies have influenced representatives to act in line with their own interests. The zinc industry supports a pro penny group called ‘Americans for Common Cents’. Lombra said this group asked for the penny study and paid for his research assistant [Bair, 2000].

[zombywoof]

@Irishman

Sacajawea dollars are no longer being made.

They certainly are - figures here - like the Presidential coins most nobody wants them.

Planet Money had a good podcast this week on the whole dollar coin situation which you can listen to here.