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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bydevslash0 ( 4203435 ) writes:
Make deceiving marketing prices ending in .99 illegal and the problem will go away.
byPowercntrl ( 458442 ) writes:
Make deceiving marketing prices ending in .99 illegal and the problem will go away.
I don't know if you've just been up late or haven't yet had your morning coffee, but when you're buying several items at a store the total is the sum of your goods and at least in most places in the USA, plus applicable sales tax. So, unless you're planning on passing a law to fundamentally rework basic arithmetic, your idea isn't going to work.
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bydevslash0 ( 4203435 ) writes:
It surely feels like you haven't had your own coffee, yeah...
I was talking about individual item prices.
In other news, if you add two items with a price ending in 0.99 you end up with 0.98. By outlawing prices ending in 0.99 you not only virtually eliminate the penny from circulation - you also reduce the demand for 2p coins via the knock-on effect.
byPowercntrl ( 458442 ) writes:
I'm gonna turn this over to ChatGPT because you're not getting it:
0 and 5 are the only acceptable least significant digits for item prices if you want to ensure that the total price is never subject to rounding when any combination of items is purchased after eliminating the penny.
Explanation:
Rounding Rule: If pennies are eliminated, prices must be rounded to the nearest 5 cents when paying with cash.
Addition of Multiple Items: To avoid rounding, the total of any combination of items must always end in 0 or
bydevslash0 ( 4203435 ) writes:
See, you misinterpreted what I was trying to say in the first place. I didn't say "eliminate the penny". I said "eliminate marketing prices ending in .99". The problem is not the existence of the penny but it's overuse so the message I was trying to send was "Eliminate marketing product prices ending in .99 and you won't need to mint more 1c coins.". But of course your "smart" AI agent wasn't smart enough to deduce that from the context.
byPowercntrl ( 458442 ) writes:
"Eliminate marketing product prices ending in .99 and you won't need to mint more 1c coins."
The need for replacement pennies is because people tend not to circulate them. They're given as change to people paying in cash (usually entirely in paper denominations), then they end up tossed in jars and shoeboxes at home, and ultimately forgotten about. If the same people who received pennies actually brought them back to the stores and used them when their totals ended in least-significant digit other than 0 or 5, there'd be substantially less demand on replacement pennies from the mint.
The penny shortfall isn't caused by $x.99 prices (which again, sales tax renders a moot point in 45 of the 50 states), it's caused by people hoarding pennies for no good reason.
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byMacMann ( 7518492 ) writes:
Those pennies will not be "hoarded" forever. They return to the bank as people take their peanut butter jars full of pennies to the bank, or they put a fistful of pennies in a bucket for charities around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know people that do both, taking pennies they collected to a bank or handing them off to a charity "penny drive".
Pennies circulate just fine, especially in states like Illinois that have some connection to the coin and have rules that require vending machines, parking meters,
bysarren1901 ( 5415506 ) writes:
The smart ones take those coins to all the self checkouts and pay for their orders. You go to the grocery store frequently, so toss a handful of coins into a plastic bag and carry it in your pocket. Ring up your order and then you can use all that change to lower your bill. No fees.
bytburkhol ( 121842 ) writes:
I guess you haven't seen any of the projects where people use pennies to cover tables or even whole floors with pennies. https://www.instructables.com/... [instructables.com]
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
The need for replacement pennies is caused by having pennies.
There have been calls to eliminate them for decades, so it's not like this is some new Trump or DOGE idea. It's low hanging fruit that should have been plucked long ago, but corporatism always wins in our government and the zinc industry has "lobbied" (bribed) it to keep them because it's a huge source of their profits.
This would be a great move if it was to be done a) legally and b) with consideration for its disruption to businesses, neither of which is true here. But there's no justification for keeping pennies because nothing is cheaper than a nickel any more. It's hard to even find a vending machine which takes those, so maybe we should get rid of nickels too, but one step at a time please.
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byjonadab ( 583620 ) writes:
Yes, it's time to get rid of nickels too; they cost more to mint than they're worth, and they're excessivly bulky to carry around relative to their value. If the sizes of the dime and nickel were reversed, it would be much more arguable; but the dime is small because it was originally the smallest coin made of silver, and changing the sizes would annoy a lot of people for no very good reason (which is why it has never happened, even though silver hasn't been used in circulating coins for decades). So it's
byRegistered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) writes:
The penny shortfall isn't caused by $x.99 prices (which again, sales tax renders a moot point in 45 of the 50 states), it's caused by people hoarding pennies for no good reason.
Yea, I'm the guy you're behind in line that's searching for 3 pennies to pay a $4.03 tab...
bye3m4n ( 947977 ) writes:
Just round up to the nearest nickel. I remember back in 89 pulling into Dubai. They had just eliminated fractions of the durham. Everything was paper except the 1 durham coin which was about twice the mass of a quarter. It would take some doing but in theory tax could be something the merchant could include in the price and adjust their prices accordingly. Theres a dive bar down the street that rolls the tax price into the cost. A burger is a flat $11. During happy hour some beers are just $3. They reverse
byjonadab ( 583620 ) writes:
Hoarding is the wrong word. People aren't hoarding pennies, as if they're some kind of treasure. They're just not bothering to carry them, because it's a hassle, because they represent such a tiny amount of money that it's not worth bothering with them. Even *children* mostly don't bother with pennies any more. They fish through their parents' coin jars taking the silver-colored ones that have actual value, leaving the pennies behind. In fact, the first time I saw a kid do that, was in the mid nineties
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bySique ( 173459 ) writes:
And you still don't get it. If your price is $1.00, but sales tax is 6%, your final price is $1.06, and you still need the penny.
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bypsmears ( 629712 ) writes:
And you still don't get it. If your price is $1.00, but sales tax is 6%, your final price is $1.06, and you still need the penny.
Only if you live in a country where the displayed price doesn't include sales tax. In most countries, the price on the item is what you pay, and the shop owner has to do some sums to figure out what base-price-plus-sales-tax adds up to $X.99, if they want to play that game.
bydevslash0 ( 4203435 ) writes:
Which is pretty much only the US. Weird country.
bysarren1901 ( 5415506 ) writes:
Shows how long our businesses have run our country. By extract out the sales tax or buy making it a line item on the receipt, allows the store to say "Not me" and blame government for the bill being so high. Our utility companies LOVE doing this. I have nearly $10 in line items government fees on my bill that's pointed out in lots of color.
It makes WAY to much sense to have sales taxes baked into the price.
byratbag ( 65209 ) writes:
Definitely not disagreeing with your assessment of our southern neighbour, but here in beautiful BC (that's in Canada, the country, not some fever-dream new state donny just dreamt up) we also suffer from this form of fraud-against-the-consumer.
byratbag ( 65209 ) writes:
Argh, replied to wrong message. Meant to go to the "US is pretty much only country that lets shops quote tax-free prices and add the compulsory tax at the checkout" message instead.
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
Yes, in most states our laws actually prohibit putting the price the customer pays on the shelf.
Some of those states allow you to advertise the price with tax included when it's from a vending machine, or for restaurant prices, but only if you make it clear that tax is included — as if the customer would be angry that their bill is lower than they thought it would be.
byBoB235423424 ( 6928344 ) writes:
It's best that people know the actual sales tax rather than it being included in the price. That way when voters are asked about increases to the sales tax, they actually know the impact. Hiding it in the price is a way for politicians to mask the true impact and continue raising it. Beware of governments trying to remove visibility of its actions.
bypsmears ( 629712 ) writes:
I live in a country where the displayed price includes the tax. The tax isn't hidden, though - it's displayed on the receipt (and the rate is well known) - it's just that the ticket price represents what you actually need to have in your wallet (in the case where you're not paying by phone!), which is massively more convenient. But you are free to do things differently in your country :-)
bydstwins ( 167742 ) writes:
All that will happen is stores will round up to the nearest smallest denomination (so its 5 cents, and the bill is normally 1.06, then they would charge 1.10 (with the store keeping the difference in profit).. scale that up and its a sizable amount of change for any business (especially on high volume transactions).. and they aren't going to adjust this based on cash vs. card transactions.. its going to be across the board.. and we've all heard the myth/legend of the guy that stole millions by simply roundi
byjonadab ( 583620 ) writes:
> in volume its a LOT of money
Eh. It does add up, but it's never going to be a substantial percentage of gross revenue.
I work at a public library. We take *much* smaller amounts of money than any business. Our *median* transaction is less than a dollar, and that's just unheard-of in the commercial world, and has been for decades. But we're tax exempt, most of our transactions are nice round numbers (e.g., a regular 1-sided black and white letter sized photocopy, is 25 cents). We sometimes go *weeks*
bydryeo ( 100693 ) writes:
Well, do what we did in Canada, when the law removing the penny is passed, have a section that rounding has to be to the closest nickel.
byWaterFoodEarthCosmos ( 6661530 ) writes:
If you get at least in one state that has 6% sales tax an item that is $0.99 then you still get rounded and pay six cents for a total of $1.05. You just round the grand total. Even a dollar store is $1.25 so the odds of you getting a dollar item, buying one one item, seem to be low for society on average. I have a lengthy piece that even if you don't round and loose .04 cents (which doesn't happen to this extent if you round) on every transaction the worst case scenario with not getting into the order (EO)
byfgouget ( 925644 ) writes:
And you still don't get it. If your price is $1.00, but sales tax is 6%, your final price is $1.06, and you still need the penny.
And of course when a product costs 1€ the total price is 1€ because in sane countries the sales tax is already included! Problem solved!
bymsauve ( 701917 ) writes:
>the message I was trying to send was "Eliminate marketing product prices ending in .99 and you won't need to mint more 1c coins.".
Guessing you live somewhere where tax is all-inclusive in the price. In most of the US, a $1 item would be subject to an additional sales tax. So (6% tax), that $0.99 item would end up at $1.05 (yes, tax is already rounded to the penny), while your $1.00 item would end up at $1.06, which requires a penny to be exact.
byCalydor ( 739835 ) writes:
Hi, I'm from a country where we've done this multiple times over with our equivalent of cents. First we got rid of the 1s and 2. Then the 5. Then the 10. A few years ago the 25 went!
And you know what we do? We still advertise stuff as costing 19.95 and so on. And when we get to the register we round things off. 19.95? Rounds to 20. Oh no, you lost five cents. But the next day your total for something else is 5.70. Oh hey, you gained 20 cents, score! Over time it evens out, and if your monthly budget is so t
byvotsalo ( 5723036 ) writes:
In this case, meticulous shoppers could plan their shopping so the rounding is favorable more often than not. If, for example you tend to buy the same combinations of items often, you can adjust the amounts, so the rounding is down.
The store could always round-up and give you credit for the rounded amount somehow. There could be many interesting ways to do this. I'm not sure if it can be done without tracking you though. Some ideas:
A QR code in the receipt. Next time you shop at the same store (or p
byFly Swatter ( 30498 ) writes:
We have local Sales Taxes over here, your plan is a failure.
Devils's advocate: here specifically tax is 6%, so that 0.99 item becomes 1.05 with normal rounding practices. No penny!
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