Comment by didgetmaster
6 hours ago
Many are reporting this as if failing to mint new pennies each year is going to produce some kind of shortage. There are billions of pennies sitting in drawers or jars in homes across the nation (I certainly have one with about a thousand pennies in it).
I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.
There's a cash-heavy business I work with that's already having a hard time sourcing the pennies they need. I guess they're all in a jar under your desk.
It seems to me that if there was truly a shortage of pennies, banks could offer to pay 2 cents for every penny someone turned in (still far cheaper than minting a new one) and enough people would pull out their penny jars and cash them in.
Now we've unlocked a new lucrative business model where we can cut the customer out entirely! Simply buy pennies from the bank on the dollar and sell them back for 100% profit...
That...actually seems economically sound, but it's also a strong argument for the idea that pennies are effectively worthless.
I have a hard time believing any business relies on access to Pennies when all cash transactions can be rounded to a nickel in some way amenable to both parties. I imagine most customers just don’t give a damn.
I'm pretty sure they're considering doing this, but I don't know what all the pros and cons or complexities are.
> I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.
Based on my experience with the universe, this ability of being able to find something whenever you need it, only happens until you start expecting it and when you really need it, you're not gonna be able to find it anywhere. Maybe "Murphy's law" isn't what I'm looking for but something similar? For when what you really need is no longer there, universe always works against you? Can't recall.
Selective attention or confirmation bias with a hint of cosmic irony?
[dead]
I don't know how accurate this is, but someone posted on Reddit some Burger King is already having a hard time getting pennies from their bank: https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1opdlm2/...
Most of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change.
Personally, I think stores should just start setting prices to avoid the need for pennies, but that would be too easy, I guess.
Setting prices to avoid the need for pennies is probably technically challenging given the combination of requirements to post prices and sales taxes that don't always round the same way.
If the effective tax rate is 7.432%, you can price single items so that the price plus tax ends up in a multiple of $0.05, but if you get a purchase with multiple items, you either need to round somewhere or post prices that are like $9.346263437.
For example, $0.93 * 1.07432 = is $0.9991176 exactly, which rounds to $1.00. But if you buy a dozen such items then $0.93 * 12 * 1.07432 = $11.9894112 exactly, which rounds to $11.99.
Imagine a world where they just posted the price you would pay at the register on the shelf instead of some number that is ~93.082% of the price you would pay.
I know it's hard to imagine the price on the shelf being the price that you pay, but I believe it is possible even in complex tax situations.
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Good point. I forgot about sales tax. That also seems fixable by adjusting tax law, but adjusting law is always more hassle.
sales tax should be charged per item, not for the total transaction, so that it's possible to list prices that include the sales tax.
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If your sales tax rate is 8.875%, what do you price a banana at to avoid change?
This problem is easily solved in countries that use VAT
You price it including sales tax. Sticker price is final price.
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$10
It isn't that simple. There are stacked tax jurisdictions that can change their fraction of the tax independently. Some of those taxes are conditional at point-of-sale so the exact rate varies from customer to customer.
It is a mess but also not easy to unwind or patch over.