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I remember Canada phasing out the penny. They just told retailers to still accept them for a couple months and not hand them out in change. Now everything comes to a 5 cent unless you use your card. No hassle whatsoever. lol
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Nov 24, 2015 06:38
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| # ? May 14, 2024 06:43 |
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On the notion that rounding up or down to the nearest 5¢ is too imprecise to be a feasible solution to the penny problem: let's be honest: it's not like transactions always, or even usually, end up in units of 1/100ths of a dollar currently. That's a result of rounding. In my town in Illinois, the non-food sales tax is 7.25%. So if I buy something for $7.49, I actually have to pay $8.033025. But I can't pay that because we don't have a .3025¢ piece, or even .0005¢ or .0001¢ pieces which we could use several of to come up to .3025¢. So we round it off: $8.03. See, $7.49 + 7.25% doesn't really equal $8.03. That's just what we go with because over a hundred years ago, we decided not to bother cutting up the dollar into more than 100 units. This was back when you could do something with a penny, it should be noted. I mean, could send a letter or something. But it was something. So instead of $8.03, it'd be either $8.05 or $8.00. Yes, it's less precise, but it's not going to put anyone in hawk. Slavish devotion to uselessly small amounts of money that result from messy math almost got Superman killed. Do you want to almost kill Superman? Or make a robot chick who isn't sexy? Because that's what'll happen if we keep the penny.
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Nov 24, 2015 07:21
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See, in a theoretical world where we axe the penny we can do other things. Like change taxes to fit. It's really not that complicated.
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Nov 24, 2015 07:31
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webmeister posted:And when John Oliver said "Australia got rid of their 1c coin", it's not a recent thing. We got rid of 1c and 2c coins in 1991. Yeah, we got rid of 1c and 2c coins in 1990, and the 5c in 2006. What's the point if you can't buy anything with them?
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Nov 24, 2015 08:01
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Hell, in Denmark we got rid of the quarter a few years ago, it was completely useless and worthless, the 50 øre coin will probably join it within a decade. Did anyone care? Of course not, only lunatics and idiots care about nonense like that.
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Nov 24, 2015 08:27
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Duzzy Funlop posted:Like, I get that this is SA and we need to argue for the argument's sake, but you do know that he means the penny as the smallest denomination of the currency (or unit) that makes up larger denominations like the quarter and the dollar? A quarter is 25 units of 'penny', a dollar is 100 units of 'penny', like the number 1 is the smallest non-fractional number, of which 1,000,000 units make up a million etc. You're making a stupidly weird argument. The base unit is the dollar. A penny is one cent, i.e. 1/100th of a dollar. The fact that it's a fractional unit is in the name of the unit and the way we write prices... Even if the definition didn't go that direction, it wouldn't matter at all. There's no loving fundamental unit of currency that needs to exist or the system explodes. You could scale it however you want. A cent is no more or less legitimate as a unit than a half cent, a nickel or a dollar. Do you think prices are always integer multiples of pennies now? Most of the time when you have a sales tax or a percentage discount your final price needs to be rounded to the nearest cent because it's the smallest available unit of currency and you can't pay two thirds of a cent. If you don't have a penny, you do the exact same thing but round to the nickel. There is no fundamental change in how anything would work. Oh, and the US half penny was still worth more than a present day dime when it was discontinued. T.C. fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Nov 24, 2015 |
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Nov 24, 2015 08:58
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Duzzy Funlop posted:Like, I get that this is SA and we need to argue for the argument's sake, but you do know that he means the penny as the smallest denomination of the currency (or unit) that makes up larger denominations like the quarter and the dollar? A quarter is 25 units of 'penny', a dollar is 100 units of 'penny', like the number 1 is the smallest non-fractional number, of which 1,000,000 units make up a million etc. They don't need to use Canada as an example. The US military already does it at their overseas bases and has been for at least a decade.
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Nov 24, 2015 12:17
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Duzzy Funlop posted:Like, I get that this is SA and we need to argue for the argument's sake, Apparently what you don't get is that someone may be arguing with you because you're a loving idiot with making half-formed arguments from baseless assumptions, and not out of boredom. If I wanted to be pointless adversarial, I just tell you to go gently caress yourself with a cheese grater.
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Nov 24, 2015 13:27
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I say get rid of the penny just so we can re-use the plots for Superman III and Office Space and allow their scheme to REALLY make them rich.
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Nov 24, 2015 13:45
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tarlibone posted:On the notion that rounding up or down to the nearest 5¢ is too imprecise to be a feasible solution to the penny problem: let's be honest: it's not like transactions always, or even usually, end up in units of 1/100ths of a dollar currently. That's a result of rounding. There's a slight difference between rounding up to the nearest cent and rounding up to the nearest nickel. If you're wal-mart, that's probably a billion dollar difference, for example.
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Nov 24, 2015 13:59
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The Bank of England got rid of the half-penny in 1984 but so far we've held on to the 1p and 2p and there doesn't seem to be a real movement to drop it yet. In 1971 we (well, before I was born) also managed to do an entire switch of the coin system from one based on 240 pence in the pound to a decimal system...
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Nov 24, 2015 14:09
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Cole posted:There's a slight difference between rounding up to the nearest cent and rounding up to the nearest nickel. If you're wal-mart, that's probably a billion dollar difference, for example. Not rounding up. Rounding normally. There's a big (loving monumental) difference. Also remember that rounding could/would be for cash only. But cards. Both of those mean that your objection is not really important.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:18
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Yeah anything ending in 1, 2, 6 and 7 gets rounded down, anything on 3, 4, 8 and 9 gets rounded up. It evens out. The Netherlands and Finland do it as well here in the Eurozone.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:28
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The only problem I see with that is that prices here are almost always X.99 so it would always round up but it's 1 cent so who loving cares and I use plastic anyway.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:29
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Unless you're making thousands of purchases a day it wouldn't have a negative effect on any individual person. Companies would probably start to take advantage of it in some way but that's no different than how things are now.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:33
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IRQ posted:The only problem I see with that is that prices here are almost always X.99 so it would always round up but it's 1 cent so who loving cares and I use plastic anyway. It gets applied to the total price so if you buy three items ending on .99 the total price will be rounded down.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:34
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This thread argues more about the penny than the Syrian refugees in the same episode. I guess that means we all agree it's a horrid practice what Congress is doing.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:42
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Pews posted:This thread argues more about the penny than the Syrian refugees in the same episode. I guess that means we all agree it's a horrid practice what Congress is doing. I still can't believe how many youtube dislikes Oliver's refugee bit got, and that was before the Paris attacks.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:46
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Echo Chamber posted:Somehow this thread manages to be less terrible than the rest of the internet when it comes to refugees. Yea actually now that I think about it, please continue with the penny talk.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:48
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Pews posted:This thread argues more about the penny than the Syrian refugees in the same episode. I guess that means we all agree it's a horrid practice what Congress is doing. Yeah who knew Americans had their priorities mixed up. It's just fractions of a penny, it's not hurting anybody.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:52
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IRQ posted:The only problem I see with that is that prices here are almost always X.99 so it would always round up but it's 1 cent so who loving cares and I use plastic anyway. You know, not everyone uses $X.99. Some places are $X.97, some $X.96, and so on. I'd imagine that they'd switch to $X.95, which still accomplishes what they are truly doing: tricking your brain by making things appear cheaper on the dollar side of the decimal. That is literally the only reason stuff costs $0.99 instead of $1.00. Hell, gas uses $X.999 for this reason. So they'd either abandon that strategy, something Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have done, or they'd keep it but drop the price to $X.95.
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Nov 24, 2015 17:34
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IRQ posted:The only problem I see with that is that prices here are almost always X.99 so it would always round up but it's 1 cent so who loving cares and I use plastic anyway. In states with sales tax (most of them) the final price of a $X.99 item is not necessarily going to end in 9 anyway.
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Nov 24, 2015 17:58
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tarlibone posted:You know, not everyone uses $X.99. Some places are $X.97, some $X.96, and so on. I'd imagine that they'd switch to $X.95, which still accomplishes what they are truly doing: tricking your brain by making things appear cheaper on the dollar side of the decimal. That is literally the only reason stuff costs $0.99 instead of $1.00. Hell, gas uses $X.999 for this reason. So they'd either abandon that strategy, something Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have done, or they'd keep it but drop the price to $X.95. Exactly all the .99 would become .95 they'd lose way more sales if they bumped up the leftmost number.
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Nov 24, 2015 18:53
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Austrian mook posted:I remember Canada phasing out the penny. They just told retailers to still accept them for a couple months and not hand them out in change. Now everything comes to a 5 cent unless you use your card. No hassle whatsoever. lol Yup, and I remember the local SPCA doing a mini-campaign of 'give us all your pennies, they go away soon anyway!'
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Nov 24, 2015 20:33
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American currency operates under a decimal system, so if we're gonna phase out the penny let's just go ahead and phase out the nickel too.
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Nov 24, 2015 22:34
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The 99 cents on the end of the price was originally to make sure that cashiers had to open the register to get a penny of change instead of just pocketing it. Tricking people into thinking that they're paying less is a stupid idea that might have a slight affect, but it's one of those stupid sales techniques that just makes the world a worse place.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:15
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JT Jag posted:American currency operates under a decimal system, so if we're gonna phase out the penny let's just go ahead and phase out the nickel too. Naw, just phase out the penny
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Nov 25, 2015 00:18
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Austrian mook posted:Naw, just phase out the penny
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Nov 25, 2015 00:19
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I didnt know thwre was such a large group of people desperate to hold on to the penny for mathematical purity or whatever but that makes me want to see it removed ten times more than i did
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Nov 25, 2015 00:19
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JT Jag posted:American currency operates under a decimal system, so if we're gonna phase out the penny let's just go ahead and phase out the nickel too. Then we would have to get rid of the quarter too, which would probably bother people a lot more than the penny. Getting rid of the quarter might also require cranking up production on the 50-cent piece to bridge the gap between the dime and the dollar.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:22
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withak posted:Then we would have to get rid of the quarter too, which would probably bother people a lot more than the penny.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:24
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JT Jag posted:American currency operates under a decimal system, so if we're gonna phase out the penny let's just go ahead and phase out the nickel too. Why stop there? I don't see why we need anything smaller than quarters.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:41
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Austrian mook posted:I didnt know thwre was such a large group of people desperate to hold on to the penny for mathematical purity or whatever but that makes me want to see it removed ten times more than i did I'm with this guy, I like what he's saying.
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Nov 25, 2015 02:08
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IRQ posted:Why stop there? I don't see why we need anything smaller than quarters. I'm making this the corner stone of my 2040 presidential campaign! But really, this needs to happen before 2050 at current inflation rates. Preferably well before.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:00
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JT Jag posted:But if we phased out the nickel we'd be able to go all modern and write out prices like "14.9" instead of "14.90" You just know there would be people out there that would read that as meaning "14 dollars and nine cents", aka 14.09, though.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:31
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As was said earlier, we should cut everything but the quarter right now given when we cut the hay penny. By 2040 could cut quarter too. Maybe then we could demote the dollar, the five and the ten coins to make up for the loss of coins & start bills at the 20. Or stop using physical currency and keep track of everything to 50th decimal place, it's all good.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:41
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Mavric posted:
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Nov 25, 2015 04:43
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IRQ posted:Why stop there? I don't see why we need anything smaller than quarters. The Oregon Country Fair(hippie music and art festival) does this and it is loving awesome. It's a three day festival but I used to work there and be there for like a week and that's just enough time to get used to it so going back to the real world of dimes, nickels, and pennies sucks.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:51
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Paper Kaiju posted:Apparently what you don't get is that someone may be arguing with you because you're a loving idiot with making half-formed arguments from baseless assumptions, and not out of boredom. If I wanted to be pointless adversarial, I just tell you to go gently caress yourself with a cheese grater. Like I was the one originally arguing with you with some opinion and not pointing out what I think he was trying to tell you. Solid edge, too. In show-related things, what was the last season's final end, did he recap the season as well in medley form?
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Nov 25, 2015 05:36
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IRQ posted:Why stop there? I don't see why we need anything smaller than quarters. I do. And I have a solution to all of these problems. That solution is: feet are better than meters. gently caress decimals. The base unit will still be the dollar, and you'll have coins for a half dollar, quarter dollar, eighth dollar, and sixteenth dollar. No more $1.99. Now it's $1 15/16. Also, we'd have third dollar coins. They're worth a third of a dollar, because gently caress that first 3 for $1 item being $0.34 every time. That's communism.
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Nov 25, 2015 05:53
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