The US Mint's Biennial Report To The Congress

jbuck,

I was saying "IF" they have to keep the cent so bad, "then" reissue the Two Cent coin, and it may save a little, even though the Mint would still come out behind. If they were going to get rid of the cent, I would say, get rid of the nickel, and quarter, shrink the half and reissue the fifth/20 cent coin, and round to the nearest dime, as well.

I agree. you will have 3 cents worth of coinage that costs 5 cents to make. that is a 2cent loss, you need to make the 2 cent different enough from thew 1 for people to be able to tell.... so many factors that would add confusion since people rarely check... it is much cheaper to jsut keep the penny at its 2.5 cent price without all the confusion and just take the loss.

Like I read in the other thread, but cannot remember which one, not everyone pays with their phone... (how does that even work? I had never heard of it before outside of a friend in Australia where they give the phone number as if it was a credit card and they have the charge added to their phone bill.)....


anyway. lots of people still have to use means outside of electronic device payments. which means the penny is needed (a local train shop owner still uses handwritten paper receipts and a calculator like he has been doing since the first series of Lionel came out), and we can't go paperless.

rounding is good IF everyone has the fanciest and newest POS devices, but not every business does. I still see plenty of cahs registers that look like electric typewriters. Only big box stores local to me (Walnart, Office Despot, etc) have computers for registers and only McDonalds has touch screen registers.

You have to remember that even in the US, there are lots of places close to second world countries tech level, or what is left of many areas of Detroit as 3rd-world level of tech (maybe post-apoc).

The reason I put this in the Mint report thread is because of a key point that makes it central to still needingt the Mint rather than going paperless, and that is that telecomm is needed for all those paperless transactions, and the telecomm industry is trying to remove landlines in less profit areas, and for MANY there is no wireless option. the FCC is having a field day with it now involving AT&T and Sprint, as well as the Comcast Time Warner merger stuff. HECK some palces dont even have access to phone lines anymore because those have been removed in lieu of cell phone sales!

So we are behind as a nation in the tech level required to go paperless for the entire country, and the Mint will be here for a long time as long as that "Corporations count as people" law that was passed allows big companies to donate funds to get elected whoever will do what the business wants over the people, which will keep the technology level at whatever allows telecomm industry to do whatever it wants. Laws will have to be passed to un-deregulate (otherwise known as going back to telecomm regulated) the telecomm industry in order to FORCE them to do what is needed for the country to go paperless as it were or full digital currency.

That isn't happening any time soon. Glen Brit dying didn't solve a problem with a telecomm CEO being ousted, it just let another like him slide into place.

If the tech isn't here and the Mint has to stay, it will keep making pennies because places like...the entire state of Kansas has a negative state capital..they can't even afford to run the state!, let alone upgrade tech levels to go to digital currency. cant use digital if you cant afford electricity.