US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year(www.bbc.com)
32 pointsby DarkContinent20 hours ago9 comments
  • euroderfan hour ago
    If the penny bin (bucket?) of cash registers disappears, slide the rest over one slot and start minting 1$ coins like crazy.
  • joshstrange11 hours ago
    In high school, 17 years ago, I wrote a DBQ (document based question essay) for an AP test about why pennies were a huge waste to the economy. Both in cost to some, keep in circulation, and just dealing with for businesses/consumers.

    It’s past time we did away with the penny and honestly the nickel shouldn’t be too far behind. Really anything less than a quarter seems like more trouble than it’s worth at this point. I would never carry change though, I barely carry cash as-is.

    • beAbU10 hours ago
      With Trump trying his very best to devalue the dollar, you think it's wise to do this now?
      • RiverCrochet7 hours ago
        That would mean there would be even less need for pennies or even any coinage, right?
      • joshstrange10 hours ago
        I don’t fully understand the question. How does removing the penny factor in? I honestly don’t get or I am missing the connection.
      • mystified501610 hours ago
        You very much don't understand how this works.
  • perilunar12 hours ago
    > The phasing out of the coins will mean businesses will need to round prices up or down…

    Only when paying cash, and only the total.

  • globular-toast15 hours ago
    Australia stopped one and two cents coins decades ago. It's sad to have to live with a system where the numbers are just two or even five times larger than they should be, but I suppose worse things have happened.
    • perilunar12 hours ago
      I don’t think it’s sad. Just the reality of constant inflation. And the $1 and $2 notes were replaced with coins, which are much better.

      I’m hoping the 5c coins will go soon, and we’ll get an $5 coin.

  • eesmith14 hours ago
    It's about time.

    Andy Rooney complained about pennies back in the 1980s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-zcWgXu4hg . "A penny saved is a waste of time."

    In inflation-adjusted terms, a penny back then was worth almost 3 cents now.

    • rightbyte13 hours ago
      I am such a cheapskate that I can't not bother with pennies. I will save so much time from this.
  • bluenose697 hours ago
    As mentioned in the article, we dropped the 1-cent coin in Canada over a decade ago. Nobody cares. We also dropped the $1 and $2 bills, years back. I'm guessing there will be a $5 coin soon ... but none of this matters much anymore, since people pay for so many things with contactless money transfers.
  • kirykl13 hours ago
    Replace it with a 33 cent coin
    • grues-dinner8 hours ago
      I remembered there was some kind of "more efficient" coin system. I searched for "ternary coins" and "radix coins". Both are some crypto scams. Fun times.

      Apparently I misremembered how it worked and it's actually 1, 5, 18 and 25 (or 29) for a 4 coin system: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/change2.pdf

    • euroderf9 hours ago
      Replace pennies, nickels, and dimes with a 12 1/2 cent coin. Eight to the dollar.
      • rahimnathwani8 hours ago
        When I was a kid, a first-class stamp in the UK was 12.5 pence.
  • chuckadams9 hours ago
    Cool, now work on the dollar next. Think we can get a dollar coin that lasts more than a year or two? Found a Sacagawea dollar in one of my cupholders just the other day, took me a hot minute to recognize what it even was.
    • 9 hours ago
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  • mystified50169 hours ago
    Honestly inflation is such that any denomination less than a full dollar is almost worthless.

    The only application of fractional currency in modern USA is in making every price end in 99 cents for stupid reasons. Everyone has been conditioned to mentally round up any price to the next dollar.

    There's nearly nothing you can buy today for less than a dollar. There's no point in any smaller denominations.

    • jolmg4 hours ago
      > There's nearly nothing you can buy today for less than a dollar.

      Aren't most things in the fruits and veggies section under a dollar? What's a carrot or a lemon cost?

      Looking at the weekly ad at Food4Less, tomatoes are 2lb/$3. I think that's like 50 cents each tomato. Onions are 89 cents/lb.

      • kadoban4 hours ago
        Doesn't it only practically matter if you're only buying ~one of those things? Who goes to a grocery store and buys one tomato? Feel like that could just round up or round random and it wouldn't be the end of the world.
    • bbstats9 hours ago
      Depends on your local cost of living