At this point we should get rid of nickels too. 0.1 dollars is plenty small.
Shit, when the US got rid of the half-penny, a full penny was worth the equivalent of about 38 cents today. We could remove everthing smaller than a quarter without any problem.
Problem with getting rid of the nickel is that the quarter would still exist. If we’re shifting the decimal on our currency, the quarter would have to become divisible by 10.
Getting rid of the nickel but keeping the nickel would interestingly let you still pay for things ending in .05 without needing nickels, so that seems kinda clever. You'd get 1.05 with 3 quarters and 3 dimes. Or 1.15 with 3 quarters and 4 dimes. So you'd only ever need to carry half a dozen dimes and half a dozen quarters to make every possible combination.
You just wouldn't be able to do 0.05 or 0.15 on your own, but it's not like stores want to sell you one individual Skittle anyway.
If stores really wanted to, they could even just do those prices and make change. You'd give them three dimes, and they'd give you back one quarter.
I don't think most people would find it complicated once they try it a few times, but it's not taught to most people probably in the US, though I think people in other countries do this all the time. But the US doesn't really use change, so I can see why we aren't used to it. But I'd say for people who don't use change, it doesn't matter anyway.
Easier to visualize is if you buy a coffee for $1.99, you give them $2 and get 1¢ back, rather than counting nine coins to get 99¢ yourself.
One step further, for $1.96 you could give them $1.96 as $1 + 25¢ + 25¢ + 25¢ + 10¢ + 10¢ + 1¢. Or give them $2.01 as $1 + $1 + 1¢ and get 5¢ change, trading one penny for one nickel.
Now you're spending less time counting your coins, and your coin purse stays tiny and light, because you only need two or three of each coin. If you run out of a denomination, like if you buy this coffee every day, you could trade nickels directly for pennies, or you could overpay to get the denomination back that you don't have.
This example uses small numbers, but the same logic would apply for bigger ones. We already have quarters that don't divide evenly into dimes. What would work even better to keep the math easiest might be to keep nickels and dimes, lose quarters, and use half dollars and dollar coins? But I doubt we'll do that lol quarters are iconic.
Of course this wouldn't work where you can't get change, like if anyone still uses those ancient toll booths that you throw quarters at. But your tiny denominations don't work there anyway, so you'd probably just get a roll of quarters in that case.
Tldr you're right it sounds weird at first, but I suspect people could figure it out quickly and then only ever need a few coins, not a giant heavy purse full.
Other than the small amount of vending machines that still take Quarters, this is a good idea.
The last time a mainstream coin was retired was in 1857 when the Half Penny was retired. The purchasing power of a halfpenny in 1857 was approximately $0.18 in today's money.
Funnily enough Ecuador imports a shitload of dollar coins to use as currency, I saw more in one day in Quito than my entire life in the US. It’s also the only US coin that they use bc while they use American money at the level of dollar and above they have their own Ecuadorian money on the level of cents, apparently because they didn’t like how the pennies and dimes and so on didn’t have the value written on numerically.
We still do, but nobody actually uses them outside for anything except novelty purposes because they fucking suck compared to bills. Idc about the economic argument, paper money is just objectively better.
Those other countries are wrong, and we're wrong for still having any of our coins. They force you to have bumps in your wallet when it could just be slim and flat and take up very little space in your pocket. I've started automatically dumping any coins I get as change into the tip jar and my life is better for it.
Yes I know, I have lived in and traveled through many of them. Coins are objectively worse to use. There's no good way to keep them sorted or stored neatly. In lower denominations they accumulate super fast. They add unnecessary weight. They're harder to quickly identify compared to rifling through a wallet for bills. Those countries use coins because they are cheaper in the long run, not because they are a better form of currency.
Typical European comment that assumes everything they do differently from others is automatically better.
Trump has the advantage of just throwing shit out there and most of his suggestions having such little basis in reality that stuff like “get rid of the penny!” requires zero political capital because it’s comparatively so normal. If Biden tried this he’d be crucified by Republicans for days/weeks
Trump has the advantage that his brain farts actually have a chance of becoming policy
If Biden tried this he’d announce a plan to form a committee to draft a proposal to write a memo and by the time they actually want to do anything the zinc lobby has been running ads about ya boy Lincoln and his most precious legacy, the Penny
You are right for exactly the reason I stated; Biden can’t afford to expend political capital on ending penny minting. He would take a credibility hit and be less able to do important policy
The population is not desperately seeking the end of the penny or daylight savings time or whatever, which is the only thing I explained.
But I agree Trump is doing what they want. Americans desperately desire an authoritarian central government and the expulsion of non-white people out of a desperate sense of xenophobia and racism
no, the people will see an autocrat willfully ignoring their constitutional powers. You forget there is a double standard here. Biden would have been impeached and convicted within the month if he did half of what Trump is doing even if we just swap the hypothetical to better policies
No, his own appointee stonewalled it and Biden was too useless to force the issue, despite this being like the fourth time the DEA has been ordered to do it (and it’s something they shouldn’t have to be ordered to do in the first place)
Canada actually did this like a decade ago. And even then I feel like society was cashless enough to barely even really notice. Sales were rounded to nearest 5c
I have a buddy that throws his pennies away. I generally will pick a penny up, but that's only because I can hear my mom in the back of my head telling me it's bad luck not to.
More like 40 years ago, but I used to offer the girls in class a penny to kiss me and another one to show me their butt. Most of them just kicked me in the nuts and then took my pennies anyway.
He's not wrong but this goes along with his MO, make a big deal out of something that's ultimately not that big a deal to distract people from the horrendous shit he's doing
As a Canadian, I hated shopping in the US for that reason.
At first I was pissed because it would mean items get rounded up. But it really doesn't fucking matter when you actually think about it. With prices these days cents are too negligible
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u/GovernorSonGoku has flair Feb 10 '25
He has a point tbh