[Newsbot]

<strong>Filibuster Cartoon</strong>
<strong>Title: </strong> <a href="http://www.filibustercartoons.com/archive.php?id=20080410" target="_blank">Penny-ante problem</a> (click to view)
<strong>Date: </strong> April 10, 2008

There\'s been much talk lately, in both the US and Canada about abolishing the penny, the largely worthless one-cent coin both countries continue to circulate. Among other reasons for the recent intensity is the fact that pennies now, in both countries, cost more to make than they are actually worth due to ever-rising zinc prices. <br> <br>Pat Martin, an NDP Member of Parliament has introduced a bill that would seek to abolish the coin, while a variety of interest groups in the United States have similarly rose up in opposition (one guy was on Colbert last night as I drew this, amusingly). But despite a lot of sympathy for the cause, the penny is almost certainly not going anywhere. It\'s one of those minor problems everyone loves to complain about, but nothing is ever done to seriously address.

[Psudo]

Humor writer Dave Barry wrote an article on this years ago. He called the mint or someone and asked why they kept making pennies and got the response "Because the public likes them." "No we don't," he pointed out. It was very amusing.

I use a debit card for virtually everything, so currency issues don't bother me much. I'd like to see more vending machines take debit cards. But, then, they don't take pennies either.

[Voyager]

Technically speaking, we haven't even gotten rid of mil's yet, just abstracted them.

[Pitchfork]

They should just abolish it. Just takes up space in the pocket.

[Harminder]

The question is if the 1P is abolished the question is what would be the repercussions.
This is the only one i can think of,
you buy an item for $1.99 give $2, either you pay £2.05 so change can be given in 2 cents or you can buy a 1 Cent item or you're gonna lose the change.
It might not be much but why give up change that's rightly yours.

[Psudo]

Harminder: Cash registers already round to the nearest cent, sometimes costing you and sometimes costing the store some fraction of a penny. What harm would it be if they rounded to the nearest nickel instead?

[CanadianJeff]

simple answer x5.

But honestly if the register rounds out just as much for as against the consumer then it all balances out. But being business I'm better a few are set to always round up rather then down.

Which is really no big deal it just means inflation jumps up a little bit...oh wait. Inflation=bad.

Which is why since everything's going debit or electronic nowadays am for keeping the penny for now. Odds are in 10 years Cash is going to be even more rare.

[Vinid]

Hey at least it isn't as stupid as a legislator in my home state of New Hampshire wanting to give the state its own Time Zone. I think it would have put us a couple of hours ahead of the rest of the east coast. He fortunately was soundly defeated in the state government. That would have been a terror to have to deal with.

[Pitchfork]

Vinid wrote:

Hey at least it isn't as stupid as a legislator in my home state of New Hampshire wanting to give the state its own Time Zone. I think it would have put us a couple of hours ahead of the rest of the east coast. He fortunately was soundly defeated in the state government. That would have been a terror to have to deal with.

What the hell? Why should New Hampshire have its own time zone? Was the legislator one of those Free Staters?

[Blue_Nose]

CanadianJeff wrote:

Which is really no big deal it just means inflation jumps up a little bit...oh wait. Inflation=bad.

If they felt like it, what's stopping people from bumping up all their prices a few cents as it is? Absolutely nothing, so it's not like they need some excuse to do so.

[sasquatch2]

It had a real impact to me when somebody said that 30 years ago the penny had the buying power of todays quarter-----then I thought about it.
Dad used to refer to late 30's-40's dollars as a foot square---he was right....

I recall a cement plant built in the 1955-6 and the skill trades were making......OOOOOOw...$1/hr.....oh my heart be still.

The farm dad bought in 1945 for $12,000 (they said he would never pay for it) is worth an estimated $1 million+.

[Vinid]

Don't ask why we should, myself along with at least 99% of the state thought it was a stupid idea and a waste of time. NH is having a lot of financial issues atm due to the citizens wanting all sorts of services from the state government but no one wants to pay the taxes for those services. This idea was just another way to waste our time and money. Incidentaly, NH is one of the only states that gives the citizens the right to revolution, at the rate we are going, it may not be too far off if this keeps up.

[asimperson]

I think money is always rounded up, and never to the "nearest" cent. I could be wrong, and this is a nitpicky point at best, but still.

[Psudo]

There was a movie about some guys that were writing financial software. They wrote it to always round down and to send the extra fraction of a cent to an off-shore account. A fraction of a cent times hundreds of millions of transactions a day and they expected to become horrendously rich from trivial theft no one would care about.

Most of the show was a crappy situation comedy about their plan falling apart, but I thought the heist idea was pretty intelligent. Can't remember the title, though.

This is only vaguely related to anything in the thread, but I thought it was interesting.

Somewhat more related, I still think registers round to the nearest cent. Back in high school, I used to drive to the nearby Carl's Jr. for lunch and buy a 99¢ burger. After 6.25% sales tax, I'd pay $1.05 every day. 99 × 1.0625 = 105.1875 so they were either rounding down or rounding nearest. Or I'm remembering wrong, but I doubt that. But of course I doubt that, it's my memory and I don't really have any choice but to depend on it until it contradicts itself if I'm to function. And more tangential descent into speculative philosophy. Bottom line, I think they round nearest.

[Pitchfork]

Psudo wrote:

There was a movie about some guys that were writing financial software. They wrote it to always round down and to send the extra fraction of a cent to an off-shore account. A fraction of a cent times hundreds of millions of transactions a day and they expected to become horrendously rich from trivial theft no one would care about.

Most of the show was a crappy situation comedy about their plan falling apart, but I thought the heist idea was pretty intelligent. Can't remember the title, though.

Thinking of Office Space?

Getting back to the penny, I never asked a veteran to confirm this but I heard once that pennies haven't been used on Post Exchanges in US military bases in Germany since the 1980s. Some Pentagon bean counter figured it cost more jet fuel to fly the pennies over than they were worth.