Should pennies be removed from the currency system?

[Mr.Squishy]

We just did that here in Norway. It's pretty awesome.

 

[scorptatious]

I wouldn't miss them really. Although if Dexter's Lab was any indication, they're good for ruining the lives of ice cream men.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Yes, get rid of them. Norway has already abolished the Øre (which is basically the equivalent of a penny).

 

[kickyourass]

Unless we suffer some kind of economic collapse that would allow people to reasonably use pennies as currency again, I say yes.
Pennies are have so little worth they are useless for buying anything, cost more to produce then they are worth as currency (how the hell has THAT gone on as long as it has?), and without fail they all end up in jars sitting in people closets as great big lumps of economic dead weight.
I say kill the pennies, KILL THEM ALL!!

 

[Grygor]

No, and I'll tell you why. Because then they'd have to redesign the price system to be multiples of five, since we no longer have one cent pieces. On top of that, sales tax in Pennsylvania is 6%. If the penny were removed, they would have to drop it to 5% or raise it to 10%. Now tell me, which direction do you think seems more likely?

What, precisely, makes any of that inevitable? Have you never heard of rounding?

Seriously - retailers already round sales tax to the nearest penny anyway. Hell, in the US tax payments are rounded - down, I might add - to the nearest DOLLAR.

 

[Commissar Sae]

Well Canada just purged the penny from production so we're a pretty nice example. The proposed legislation is to keep the penny for electronic transactions (paying debit or credit)but people paying cash will be forced to round of the number (probably up.)

 

[shintakie10]

No, and I'll tell you why. Because then they'd have to redesign the price system to be multiples of five, since we no longer have one cent pieces. On top of that, sales tax in Pennsylvania is 6%. If the penny were removed, they would have to drop it to 5% or raise it to 10%. Now tell me, which direction do you think seems more likely?

Why exactly would that need to happen? As has been said before money already gets rounded even with the penny. The only difference between this and now is instead of bein charged an extra half penny you get charged an extra two pennies or save two pennies. Even if you do get charged extra, unless you excessively use cash (which in this day and age is most definitely not the norm) you'd be lookin at, at a completely negligible loss and if the opposite is true and they round down it is a completely negligible gain.

 

[thejackyl]

Edit: Also, while you're at it, include your sales tax on the cost labels. Seriously, when I visited America this practice absolutely baffled me.

I've lived in America my whole life and I thought this was stupid since I was 10. Also, I think they should stop minting new pennies, and round prices up by a penny. (Since almost every non-clearance item that gets sold where I work is *.*9 cents)

Impossible. Sales tax on a single 4.99 TV dinner is different from an entire cartful of groceries. Sales tax here is applied to the overall total and not the price of any one item, hence you cannot put it on the label. It's also different in every state, with some states not having one at all, so you can't put it directly onto the product package either.

Wat?

The only things that have different tax rates are cigarettes and gas, both which already have the tax included in the price. Everything else is (usually) under the same tax code. The sales tax will be the same whether you apply it to the individual items or the whole order.

 

[Torrasque]

I thought this was a Canadian thread for a moment, since we're doing that right now. And it makes sense, I don't think anyone actually uses pennies.

I thought it was a Canadian thread too, lol.

For the non-Canadians out there, all that has happened, is that the Canadian mint has stopped making pennies. Pennies are still in circulation, you can still use them to buy stuff, and people still give you them with change, but there will come a day when they are just not around.

That's not what my bosses told me...

I was told that, come September, pennies are invalid. All cash transactions are rounded to five cents, and pennies will be exchanged for nickels/dimes/quarters/etc. at banks for a while afterwards.

I've never heard anything about that.
<url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/05/04/mb-canada-last-penny-mint.html>Here's where I get my info about what is happening with our pennies. What your bosses told you, sounds more like hopeful wishing than what will actually happen.

 

[Inkidu]

Never going to happen. People always want that last whole cent.

 

[Torrasque]

On a different topic I once used pennies to troll in an epic move once. I back when I was 14 went into a Walmart and bought a $60 game in only unrolled pennies. Imagine $60 of unrolled pennies and you s the cashier having to count them all. Glorious that day was.

Very well done sir, my hat is off to you for that.
My greatest penny troll is buying Subway for myself and a friend with pennies. $24.58 in pennies.
Best part: the poor guy's supervisor says as the guy accepts our change, "if you are short at all, it is coming out of your own pocket"

 

[Lugbzurg]

Something costs $0.99. I hand over a dollar.

"Oh, no! What do!?"

 

[geK0]

I'm glad Canada is phasing out the penny; good riddance! People just end up losing half of them anyway.

Although, this ruins my dream off withrdrawing $100,000 in pennies and carrying around a cubic meter of the copper coins in a shopping cart while using them to pay for all my purchases.

$100,000 would actually be approximately a cubic meter! the coins are about 1mm in thickness and 1cm in diameter, so 10 cents in coins stacked would be about 1cm^3 (not including the lack of edges), 1m^3 is 100*100*100 cm, which is 1,000,000 cm^3, 1,000,000 cm^3 * $0.10/cm^3 = $100,000.00..... but alas! I'll have to use nickels instead, which will be a lot more expensive to make a cubic meter out of.

 

[Olas]

But then how will I make these?

or one of these things

If we remove pennies our bullshit coin related art projects will rise in cost dramatically.

 

[krugerrand123]

It makes sense to get rid of the penny, but it will not happen because the lobby for the people who provide zinc for pennies would not let that happen.

 

[Olas]

Something costs $0.99. I hand over a dollar.

"Oh, no! What do!?"

Don't charge $0.99 for something. Stores shouldn't be trying trick us with these stupid price gimmicks to begin with.

 

[Rule Britannia]

I have trouble reading sometimes. I read the title as "Should penises be removed from the currency system?"

OT
They are being removed where I live, Canada, it's a good idea; the pennies cost more money to make in copper than their actual value. Kinda dumb really.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Yeah, but then you'd have to fix whatever crappy VAT laws mean that £99.99 is cheaper than £100. So in all likelihood I don't see it happening, though they are so useless nowadays...

No, not really. You could just round the prices to the nearest hundredth. For example, a product priced at 5.54 would be purchased at 5.50 and a product at 5.56 would be purchased at 5.60. At least, that's what I think they're doing in Canada now that they're phasing out their penny.

OT: Yeah, I do think they should. Its a useless coin that costs more to make then its actually worth. We don't live in the 1950s, I can't buy anything with a penny.