Change Our Currency's Denominations? - My Latest Coins Rant.

When I worked at Walmart, the computer did ALL the math. I would type how much cash they gave me, and the register would say what to give them. The computer is perfectly capable of rounding. The answer is getting the software in place BEFORE removing the cent, and not phasing it out. Set a date, like a year, and people will have plenty of time to get rid of their pennies. That will be the LAST day and that's that.

They could even make it so stores don't take pennies but banks still would. Then you could still turn them in and the bank can send them off and get reimbursed with non-cent monies.

I really don't feel like it's rocket science. I think the gov is stupid for wasting tens of millions making these things still...

I am going to throw a random thought into this thread:

For those of you who have never hung out in the Classic US coins forum, allow me to give some brief background. Once upon a time, this fine country of ours didn't feel the need to mint new coins every year--in fact, there was just a thread over there about old altered coins where collectors back in Ye Olde Days would tool up their coins so they could complete a set of "every" year (turning, for example, an 1844 into an 1814 for a coin that wasn't minted in 1814, sort of like modern "fantasy coins"). Sometimes half a decade went by and folks got on just fine with what was already in circulation. So just for the sake of argument . . .

What if we stopped minting the penny for just five years?

Here's how it works: if you don't have pennies, you have to round down/round up. Any normal cashier can do this with ease (I know in my area Pizza Hut does it already, automatically), and for those poor incompetents who can't figure out what I with a math learning problem figured out in the third grade*, there are calculators and even, be still my heart, the tool I used today when someone's order rang up the wrong total: a pen and a piece of receipt paper. If, however, you do have pennies . . .

. . . you don't have to pay that extra Two Cents when your order comes to $4.63. You pay the sixty-three cents because you have three pennies.

How many of you would be digging through your change jars, sofa cushions, and other random places you know pennies could be, because what we're currently dissing as "just a few cents" suddenly sounds like a whole lot (the average Joe will get very indignant about having extra money taken from him; just ask anybody, even people who barely pay a dime in taxes thanks to write-offs, about their relationship with Uncle Sam)? I know I would be. I could probably dig a couple of bucks' worth of change out from under the floormats in my car if I ever actually got down and dug around in there.

That would take a whole lot of pennies that are currently holed up, out of circulation, and put them back into circulation. Replacement issue solved, at least for a couple of years--that's the argument I always hear about why we have to mint so many! It would also help acclimate people to the what-if--what if there were no more pennies ever? What if they just all got turned into the bank one day, and we never saw them again except in collections and movies? What if--it wasn't so bad to round to a nickel? It would also accustom people to rounding for themselves so the wiseguy clerk who goes "well, that's $9.51--ohhhh, guess you owe me $9.55, don't you" could get turned on his ear (and the same for wiseguy corporations).

And now the portion of this I'm not entirely sure of: if we weren't minting those coins, wouldn't that cause at least a small amount of deflation, since we wouldn't be making as much money (when there's less around, it's worth more)? In theory, we could also lower the amount of nickels we were minting; they're the least-frequently-used coin, and we've got all those 1964's out there--and that doesn't even begin to touch all the ones minted in years since (or the frequency with which I still find the 1940s and 1950s in my cash drawer). If we minted them for those five years strictly at a replacement rate, that would help, too.

And yes, yes, yes, I know, I know. Slightly deflated currency or not, replacing zinc with steel (or aluminum or whatever) or not, the penny would still cost more to make at the end of those five years than it's worth. But it would give the Fed a breather, it would help solve the replacement problem (are you gonna leave that jar of pennies standing idle when you leave the house? Heck no, you'll toss ten or fifteen in your pocket for use throughout the day, and after the cent returns you'll keep up the habit), and it might--and yes, I know might and if are both words that are a thousand letters long--make people more favourable to the idea of letting the cent go to its rest.



*I'm sorry, I have no patience for idiots. I've seen adults with Down syndrome who can count by twos and even fives, with some effort and a little assistance. If you have average-level intelligence and you're old enough to be running a register, you have no excuse but laziness and that is not an excuse.

Too bad for you. A competing gas station will round down. People will learn this and you will lose a lot of business.

There is a difference between being shorted and rounding. Assuming the lady had a purchase of $xx.x2 or $xx.x7 she would have been charged 2 cents less for a cash purchase, if it were a penny more she would have paid 2 cents extra.

Without a sanctioned rounding system in place such as they have in countries that have eliminated the 1/100'th coin (as they are starting to do in Canada now) then rounding would have to be done in the customers favor or not done at all.

There are a couple convenience stores in my area that do just that. They got rid of the penny dish and just round to the nearest nickle in the customers favor for all cash purchases.

Not just less, but a [EMPHATIC!] of a lot less...

How about instead of doing away with some imaginary nuisance we look at an actual problem called devaluation?

I like the "good metaphor" comment. :-)

Well, they did dump the 2 & 3 cent pieces many, many years ago!