Pennies

[ysabetwordsmith]

People are trying again to kill the penny.  Just to add insult to injury, the law would require all prices to be rounded up. 

Comments

Re: agree and disagree

[see_also_friend]

There are all those little penny press souvenir press.

Other uses :

Put in a tin jar, instant noise maker.

In a container, can make an effective doorstop.

Drop on the ground as a 'lucky penny' to cheer someone up.

There's a bunch of other uses for coins in general, like scratching lottery tickets or drilling holes in them to improvise washers, and pennies would be the cheapest option to use.

Re: agree and disagree

[melannen]

Yep, we don't actually have the right in the US to set our prices to the nearest 5 cents because that 6.5% sales tax will mess things up. (Could we factor that into the prices we set? Not with the current systems, where every jurisdiction has a different sales tax but prices are often set centrally. Could we use a VAT system instead of sales tax? Theoretically, but this is the US, so: no.)

The solution of course is that nobody pays cash anymore unless they want a $.04 surcharge on every purchase. Cash is, after, all, difficult to track and difficult to control.

Re: agree and disagree

[see_also_friend]

If they were going to be smart about it, they'd round up or down, depending on which is closer.

Re: agree and disagree

[ysabetwordsmith]

But that's how math actually works. These people are too dumb to remember that if it's under 5, you round down, and if it's 5+ you round up. Which is perhaps an example of how I'm better at math than 2/3 of Americans, despite being lucky to get the same answer three times running with a calculator.

Re: agree and disagree

[see_also_friend]

I remember that about rounding.

It's possible that whoever set the new rule is rich enough they've never had to pinch pennies.