 SnakeoilIgnore Button. The coward's feature.Premium
join:2000-08-05
Mentor, OH
kudos:1
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·magicjack.com
1 edit | Cotton: The cost of printing money. I heard on the radio that the cotton commodities have been doing really well. So well in fact that it's become to expensive for the US Treasury to print 1 dollar bills. The director would like to stop, and in it's place mint a 1 dollar coin.
My problem with a 1 dollar coin is the added weight in my pocket. Also how large will the coin be? I remember some of the dollar coins were just a shade bigger then a quarter, making it easy to slide then into a vending machine in place of a quarter.
But also, I think it's a good idea, as coins are more durable. Now if they'd stop making pennies. But that will take a lot more thinking..
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 OmegaDisplaced OhioanPremium
join:2002-07-30
Cheyenne, WY | Re: Cotton: The coast of printing money. I have no problem with $1 coins. The value of a single dollar has decreased so much that dollar bills are pretty much like carrying around spare change.
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What smells like blue? |
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| reply to Snakeoil
Re: Cotton: The cost of printing money. We've had $1 and $2 coins in Canada for years now. They're a trifle large but made of a lightweight alloy so they don't weigh down your pocket too much.
As for having coins in your pocket? It's actually kind of nice to reach into your pocket and pull out $10 cash without having to open your wallet.
The downside though is that it's hard to tuck a coin in a stripper's g-string.  |
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horsemouthPlease Clarify My CSPPremium
join:2002-03-13
canada | reply to Snakeoil
Yep you guys are ripping us off on cotton...OK we will just use oil paper.
»www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/20···ney.html |
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 jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL
·voip.ms
| reply to Snakeoil
I've wanted to get rid of pennies for years... transactions should be rounded to the nickel.
It's simple as can be -- if it ends in 0, 1, or 2 round down to the zero. If it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 round to the 5. 8 and 9 get rounded up to the 0.
No one wins, no one loses, and no more pain in the ass 1/100ths of a dollar jingling around. |
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| I agree with you on pennies. The Australian government got rid of them about 5 years ago. As for the US govt.and Canadian govt., they've been dragging their feet on this one and debating it to death for over a decade now with no results to speak of. The winning argument in the end however, will be that even though they no longer use pure copper they are simply becoming too expensive to make.
An interesting anecdote I heard a few years back explains that pricing of retail goods always ends up with 99 cents or 97 cents or whatever in order to keep cashiers honest. Apparently retailers are of the mindset that if they rounded prices to the nearest dollar it would make it easier for cashiers to bypass the cash register and pocket the money directly. I guess it makes sense in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way. |
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| said by lugnut :An interesting anecdote I heard a few years back explains that pricing of retail goods always ends up with 99 cents or 97 cents or whatever in order to keep cashiers honest. Apparently retailers are of the mindset that if they rounded prices to the nearest dollar it would make it easier for cashiers to bypass the cash register and pocket the money directly. I guess it makes sense in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way.
It makes no sense in any city, state or province where sales tax is assessed. |
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| Like I said my answer was anecdotal and therefore not hard fact. However if you date back to times before sales tax, when the convention was started, it would have made some sense.
Yahoo answers has multiple answers including the psychological component of apparent bargains (ie. $4.99 vs $5) as well as the "sticky fingers in the till"argument as well as the "accepted answer" which is that Sears simply started doing it in their catalogs 100 years ago for no apparent reason and it simply caught on.
»answers.yahoo.com/question/index···4AA2WJz9 |
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| I just love the fact that virtually ALL gasoline prices are $*.*9 9/10 . The ability/means of giving change for a penny hasn't existed, in the US monetary system, at any time since gasoline entered the market. It takes the 99 cent issue to an absurd lever. |
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| reply to Omega
said by Omega:I have no problem with $1 coins. The value of a single dollar has decreased so much that dollar bills are pretty much like carrying around spare change.
as are $2 bills.... and maybe even $5s in reality i suspect 
your ancestors would have ridiculed the idea of replacing the nickel with a note - but $1 is worth less now than a nickel was when the $bill was introduced
even when cotton was cheap it already cost the BEP 4c to print a US banknote - and a $1 bill has a life in circulation of just 21 months on average before being worn out - so keeping low value notes in circulation is not a smart use of your tax dollars.....
{and that's before one touches on the fact that they provide counterfeiters with cheap raw materials for faking higher value notes, thanks to your stubborn refusal to do the blind a favor and vary note size by value...} |
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| reply to jester121
said by jester121:I've wanted to get rid of pennies for years... transactions should be rounded to the nickel.
hmm - cost of making a penny was almost it's face value even when metal prices were low
when the US last abolished a coin (the half-cent coin in 1857) it had more buying power than a Dime does today - so maybe you should abolish the nickel (and dime?) too.....  |
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 heat84Bit Torrent Apologist
join:2004-03-11
Fort Lauderdale, FL
2 edits | reply to Snakeoil
said by jester121:I've wanted to get rid of pennies for years... transactions should be rounded to the nickel.
It's simple as can be -- if it ends in 0, 1, or 2 round down to the zero. If it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 round to the 5. 8 and 9 get rounded up to the 0.
No one wins, no one loses, and no more pain in the ass 1/100ths of a dollar jingling around.
I saw a story(on 60 Minutes or Dateline or some program like that) recently that said pennies AND nickels are costing the government money to produce. IMO we don't need pennies OR nickels. But that story also said that the prices of everything would go up if pennies and nickels were eliminated. Just because of pure greed and no legitimate economic reason.
I thought things were priced .99, .95, .97, etc for psychological reasons. Because people are more likely to buy something for 9.95 than 10.00. I never fall for that. I don't believe most people do either, but who knows.
BTW: What the hell is so special about $19.95? Why are so many things sold on TV at that price? Its driving me mad not knowing.
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Bit Torrent is my DVR. |
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SnakeoilIgnore Button. The coward's feature.Premium
join:2000-08-05
Mentor, OH
kudos:1 Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·magicjack.com
| In some stores, .95 is the normal price, where as .99 is the close out price. I remember Clark Howard going thru a Sam's Club and pointing to a label that ended with .99He said that was their way of showing the item was discountinued and being cleared from the store. [cheaper price]
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To All Real Dads. For All Real Moms Every Real
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1 edit | reply to jester121
said by jester121:I've wanted to get rid of pennies for years... transactions should be rounded to the nickel.
It's simple as can be -- if it ends in 0, 1, or 2 round down to the zero. If it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 round to the 5. 8 and 9 get rounded up to the 0.
No one wins, no one loses, and no more pain in the ass 1/100ths of a dollar jingling around.
I'd love that system. Write a program to do tons of micro transactions that require change given to me ending in 3 or 8 so I can get 2 cents extra and origination price ending in 2 or 7 so it rounds down 2 cents so I can get 2-4 extra cents per transaction. Letting an automated program run and legally generate cash would rock. The key would be to get 25,000-50,000 micro transactions a day in so it generated $500-2,000 a day. I'd retire tomorrow if they started rounding. Set up a shell corp, drop in say $25,000 then run transactions out of that into a bank account and get the bank to pay me 2-4 cents per transaction. The next day I withdraw the same money and make another 2-4 cents. Keep moving money back and forth forever while increasing the amount moved as possible.
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"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1." -Warren Buffett |
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jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL Reviews:
·voip.ms
| Umm... what are you talking about? The idea isn't bank interest rounding errors, we're talking about the prices of goods and services, in cash money. You'd end up, at best, with $25,000 worth of crap that you paid $24,990 for. The $10 disappears, you don't get to retire on it. |
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2 edits | said by jester121:Umm... what are you talking about? The idea isn't bank interest rounding errors, we're talking about the prices of goods and services, in cash money. You'd end up, at best, with $25,000 worth of crap that you paid $24,990 for. The $10 disappears, you don't get to retire on it.
No one said interest so how that jumped into your post is a mystery to everyone. (Too much Office Space?) Rounding will NEVER happen. Use any logic, story, scenario, etc. you want it can and will be exploited if it happens. I'll be right there doing it as long as it's profitable and legal. Why do these stupid things pop up in threads when we all know it'll never happen anyways? Kill time at work?
Edit: Food for thought. What prevents someone from writing themselves a $.23 check and cashing it for $.25? What prevents someone from writing 10,000 of those a day and cashing them? HUNDREDS of other ways to accomplish the same thing.
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"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1." -Warren Buffett |
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jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL Reviews:
·voip.ms
| Not everyone is lost, just you. The whole "hack into banks and funnel that $0.001 interest rounding error into an account, do that a billion times and you have $10 million" scheme is well known from countless novels and movies.
And if you're so sure rounding will NEVER happen, tell me what happens to the leftover 3/4 of a cent on 7.25% tax on a $9.99 purchase?
Oh, and you didn't bother refuting my statement about $24,990 with of merchandise. Please, share with the class. |
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| said by jester121:Oh, and you didn't bother refuting my statement about $24,990 with of merchandise. Please, share with the class. Cash is merchandise. Next!
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"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1." -Warren Buffett |
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| reply to jester121
said by jester121:Not everyone is lost, just you. The whole "hack into banks and funnel that $0.001 interest rounding error into an account, do that a billion times and you have $10 million" scheme is well known from countless novels and movies. No one implied or said that. Reading is a fine art lost to the current generation. 
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"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1." -Warren Buffett |
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jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | I implied it, you failed to infer it. No matter which generation words have meaning.
Vocabulary is almost as important as reading comprehension.
We're way off topic here, so I wish you a good day and nice weekend. |
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