Post At96TMmzkw3gCS3Xou by kmccoy@spacey.space
(DIR) More posts by kmccoy@spacey.space
(DIR) Post #At8yfDCcQSNuJDB9DU by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T09:05:42Z
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Against my better judgement I clicked on the CGP Grey video about "why nickels should be discontinued" they say something like:"It costs the government more than 5 cents to make a nickel and one you and in the cost of minting and labor it's 13 cents..."All this results in a "loss" of 100million. This seems logical enough, but when a government is minting money does it make sense to count "manufacturing costs" as if the government were a business that sells.. uh ... money?
(DIR) Post #At8z2Or3GlZF6k9EFE by GoblinQuester@dice.camp
2025-04-16T09:09:49Z
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@futurebird Haven't thought about that ... and if you look it in a purely transaction way ... shouldn't the value be assesses per transaction, so on the third transaction it actually starts to turn profit?
(DIR) Post #At8z53oFyGN6hr6pIO by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T09:10:22Z
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"The US Government wastes 100 million dollars making nickel!" (places pinky on lip like Dr. Evil)is just the kind of obnoxious factoid that will never go away. Obnoxious because NOT making nickels won't just automatically save 100 million. When it comes to printing money the question is "what do you WANT" to do? You are creating the value. IDK I just don't want to hear about this forever and now we will.
(DIR) Post #At8zYLngA2wetwo0WG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T09:15:40Z
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A mints job is to replace currency that's worn out but also to adjust the currency supply.I'll focus on that first practical task: replace worn out coins so there are still useful coins around. Banks make orders for coins and bills. They must still be ordering nickels for some reason.
(DIR) Post #At9097tWpCMOUL4sBE by albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz
2025-04-16T09:21:53Z
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@futurebird Whoever complains about this may want us all to use electronic payment where we're charged 5% just for the service. That costs billions to us all in the US alone.
(DIR) Post #At90C8gCMXoFn9HMrg by sofia@chaos.social
2025-04-16T09:22:48Z
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@futurebird well, they do sell the money by spending it. but if the government makes profit by printing money, there's a name for that: inflation.and obviously just because the government profits doen't mean its subjects do.the subjects carry all the costs of minting, whether or not the government profits from it. the question is whether they recieve something worthwile in return.
(DIR) Post #At921BYlVvUNRmhts8 by rubinjoni@mastodon.social
2025-04-16T09:43:15Z
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@futurebird Would CGP Grey buy a nickel for 13 cents?
(DIR) Post #At92HZHB6Z6tdSICW0 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T09:46:11Z
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@AT1ST These points are fine. I even could get on the "get rid of small coins" bandwaggon. My issue is with describing things the government does like it's a business, and leaving people with the impression that "if they just stopped making nickels they'd have 100million to do --" when this isn't the right mental model for how a government mint works. Also not putting the number 100million in perspective.Do we want to have nickels to "facilitate commerce?" that's the question that matters.
(DIR) Post #At93M2AxhLlQNY4vSq by mavu@mastodon.social
2025-04-16T09:58:13Z
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@futurebird is funny because the people saying that **are** the government.
(DIR) Post #At93gUpYrzfB2epFmy by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T10:01:57Z
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@AT1ST It's really important to me, and to everyone that when I take out a ten dollar bill I know how much it's worth and I can use it. I don't need to worry about it being fake too much, and I'm not wasting time trying to run my life by bartering.Currency is infrastructure. Are pennies and nickels outdated infrastructure no one wants anymore? Possibly.
(DIR) Post #At95WurzOyjgoUWMT2 by rayhindle@mastodon.social
2025-04-16T10:22:36Z
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@futurebird This reminds me of the old canard “Cost of photocopying.” “But you have to count the wages of the photocopier operator.” Why? Do you not pay them when they're not photocopying? (Remember the days when a photocopier had a dedicated operator?)
(DIR) Post #At96TMmzkw3gCS3Xou by kmccoy@spacey.space
2025-04-16T10:33:09Z
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@futurebird I think it's worth making a distinction between the cost of minting the coin (where I agree with you that it shouldn't matter if the cost of minting the coin is more than the value) vs the scrap value of the coin, where it gets trickier because it tempts people to melt them down if it's greater than the face value.
(DIR) Post #At9AWNmOvhqTxOTK52 by gbargoud@masto.nyc
2025-04-16T11:18:31Z
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@futurebird Step 1 for getting rid of small coins is to require places to list "what you see is what you pay" cash prices (taxes and fees included, credit cards can have a surcharge). None of this "can't afford anything at the dollar store for a dollar" bullshit.Then those prices can be rounded as needed to get rid of pennies and/or nickels and then the number can be reduced.That and more coinstar-like machines but without a fee to make it easier for people to dump out their change jars.
(DIR) Post #At9Jy5ckvNH1LPFNh2 by graydon@canada.masto.host
2025-04-16T13:04:21Z
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@futurebird If your small coins have become "too expensive" by some sort of accounting identity, that's an indicator that you have had enough inflation to skew the perceived value of your currency, and need to remonetize (as our banking system with built in inflation presumes.)Gold is currently somewhere over 3 kUSD per ounce; it was intended to be 20. That's a pretty strong hint you could take two whole zeros off.
(DIR) Post #At9Pbb6mIfd43UwpOq by Jestbill@mastodon.world
2025-04-16T14:07:32Z
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@futurebird Right.And teachers don't make money for the district so are an obvious waste of tax money.
(DIR) Post #At9QdiCYzx8GaXE4mm by ligasser@social.epfl.ch
2025-04-16T14:19:04Z
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@futurebird @AT1ST <Sarcasm>What? Are you telling me that the US government should NOT be run like a business?</Sarcasm>Personally, I do believe that a democratic government should counterbalance capitalism. As such, yes, it should NOT be run like a business. And NOT be run by businessmen, either.
(DIR) Post #At9Yv23REqHkiVjB7Q by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T15:51:55Z
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@futurebird 1/2there are many employers who would love to pay their employees only with a "digital payment card" which can only be used at cooperating retailers, has fees for all transactions, and is "not a bank", leaving the employee's finances entirely at the mercy of the employer. These horrible people have a use for anti-currency arguments like "stop making nickels" : they de-legitimize the most important alternative.
(DIR) Post #At9hR40YJIK7fwA8nI by redpy5@sunbeam.city
2025-04-16T17:27:19Z
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@futurebird I've personally been on the "stop making pennies and nickles" bandwagon for a decade or so now. It's a waste of metal and manufacturing imo. I know Canada got rid of their penny and now you only really find it in circulation here in the US where people use it accidentally or interchangeably with the US penny.While we might not suddenly have $100 million or whatever if we stopped making them, it would free up some labor and manufacturing infrastructure/land to do something more useful for most people. And I think that's what people are kinda saying when they say it costs more to make these coins then the value we give them for spending. Maybe I'm projecting tho and most people think they'll get a rebate or something if we just stop minting them 🤷🏻♀️
(DIR) Post #At9hrQ5gpTKLh38Jeq by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-16T17:32:08Z
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@redpy5 100 million isn’t gonna do much on the federal level at all. And that is almost certainly overestimating the “savings” — I can support getting rid of pennies but this should be a question based around what we need money to do for us— arguments about the “cost” miss the point. Do we like having pennies? Do people find them useful? that’s the metric.
(DIR) Post #At9idUEaj76yRcDVGC by redpy5@sunbeam.city
2025-04-16T17:40:47Z
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@futurebird I can get behind that. It's a silly argument if you think of it as the only argument for getting rid of them. I think the point that it now always costs more to produce them then the coin is worth is an indicator that we don't need it anymore and an easily made argument to most people in addition to other arguments about the small coins (our fiat should be cheap and easy to produce unless we want to show off or whatever). But it being the main framing instead of "how often do most people pass one on the ground when they are busy", or something else indicating it's use value, is very business management brained and annoying. I agree for sure on that.
(DIR) Post #AtA810lyzt4pPNbJia by marick@mstdn.social
2025-04-16T22:25:08Z
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@futurebird @cammerman Funnily enough, I was just typing up notes on why governments should not be run like households. The different relationship to money has much to do with it: "[G]overnments are not like households, and there are a number of reasons why. The first and most obvious one is that the government owns its own bank. Not only does it own its own bank, that bank is actually the creator of all the money in the economy." – Richard Murphy (https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/01/23/the-curse-of-the-household-analogy/)