[HN Gopher] Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? (2009)
Author : jawns
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-10-06 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (freakonomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (freakonomics.com)
| gus_massa wrote:
| Iportant first comment in the blog:
|
| > _Just to summarize how commenter, Jeffrey Shallit, addresses
| the (1, 3, 11, 37) solution: this is the best way to use the
| Greedy algorithm to select coins. However, (1, 5, 18, 25) and (1,
| 5, 18, 29) are tied for the actual solutions. [...]_
| TZubiri wrote:
| I thought it was going to be about how there was 3700% inflation
| since coins were actually a useful concept.
|
| It's probably just better to go for eliminating the cent and the
| nickel and making a 2.5$ coin.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'd go farther and eliminate all but the quarter.
| im3w1l wrote:
| It's quite surprising to me how the US still has the penny. Like
| its value is less than the cost of carrying it around.
| zahlman wrote:
| Canada gave up on it over a decade ago
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(Canadian_coin)).
| cduzz wrote:
| I've said before, I'll say again:
|
| We should have the $0.1 and $0.5 coins and everything should
| be rounded to that.
|
| There's no reason to have $0.01 or even $0.05 precision. The
| value of the dollar, these days, has inflated to the point
| where there's simply no practical difference between $0.01
| and $0.03 or $0.08 in everyday life, when dealing with cash
| transactions.
|
| You could certainly track $0.01 in digital account tracking,
| but the _coin_ is silly.
|
| And -- with payment processing fees, places dealing with cash
| or card processing would still see less cost in "rounding
| down" than paying for card processing.
| chgs wrote:
| Prices in America are wired. Bought a beer yesterday
| waiting for the train. Claimed it was $7, actual price
| $7.62 (which Amex coincidently converted to exactly PS6.00)
|
| If I'd paid in cash I'd have to pay with at least a 2 cent
| coin (and likely need a 1 or 3 in change), despite the nice
| round number
|
| Until America changes to advertise things at the actual
| price rather than a partial price, I don't see how getting
| rid of 1 cent coins works.
| cduzz wrote:
| It'd cost $7.6 if you pay in cash and $7.62173451123 if
| you pay via a card?
|
| (and, if I were to pass the "small change" bill, I'd, by
| fiat, make it so that it'd still be "$7.6" even if it was
| $7.68 -- and the vendors would _still_ come out ahead
| because the $0.08 lost from rounding down is much less
| than the $0.23 in card processing fees that comes with a
| 3% surcharge from your payment processors.)
| zahlman wrote:
| Does the UK include VAT in all listed prices? I don't
| recall it working that way in continental Europe, and it
| certainly doesn't work that way in Canada with our
| equivalent (nor in the US, as you discovered).
|
| That said, advertised prices are commonly not "round" in
| the first place. In Canada, we simply round the figure on
| the bill when paying cash.
| abanana wrote:
| Yes, prices advertised to consumers must include VAT. UK
| advertising laws mandate that the price must include all
| non-optional taxes, fees, etc. Prices advertised
| exclusively to businesses can exclude VAT.
| Symbiote wrote:
| UK and EU law requires advertised prices to include all
| taxes.
|
| The most common exception is things aimed at business
| buyers, who won't pay tax -- so the Dell consumer website
| shows laptops prices including tax, and the business site
| shows them without, but labelled as such.
|
| It means if I buy for business from a consumer site, and
| I'm logged in with my business account, I see 'ugly'
| prices like 5119.20, as the marketing-friendly number of
| 6,399.00 is chosen including tax.
| analog31 wrote:
| People are superstitious about math, and fearful that rounding
| to the nearest nickel, or dime, will result in them getting
| ripped off. Also, it's an admission that the government has
| given up on inflation.
|
| This is the country that gave up on the metric system because
| it involved too much math.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'd suspect they rejected the metric system because it would
| have cost money to change everything over. The argument would
| presumably have gone something like "we can't have the
| federal government imposing a cost on the citizens /
| corporations".
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly. It had nothing to do with "too much math" -- I
| think everyone appreciates metric uses less math, and we
| all learn it in school anyways for science classes.
|
| It's the cost of _change_. Replacing every speed limit
| sign, spending _decades_ where half the cookbooks you own
| use oven temperatures in degF and half use degC. Years of
| confusion where someone says they were going 60 and you
| have to ask if they mean mph or kph.
|
| Not to mention changing the size of every milk container,
| and so forth...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy that excuse. For packaged goods and so
| on, you don't have to change any sizes of things. Just
| pick a date and change to a different package design. So
| nothing in your factory that produces 1 gallon milk jugs
| has to change except the graphic design needs to start
| saying 3.8L Milk instead of 1gal Milk. At that point, you
| can transition to change the physical size of things
| whenever it is convenient.
|
| For cars, most of them in the US already show mph and
| kph, so the switch should be easy. Leave old signs alone,
| but whenever new signs get built, build them in both
| units for a few years (65mph / 105kph) allowing you to
| gradually transition to metric.
|
| Repeat for everything else. You can gradually make the
| switch. Heck, some products (like soda and bullets) are
| already in liters and millimeters.
|
| I agree with the OOP. We refuse to even take the first
| steps to switch because of good ol stereotypical American
| paranoia: "If we switch to metric, all the companies will
| use it to make everything smaller and rip us off!" as if
| shrinkflation wasn't already a thing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Leave old signs alone, but whenever new signs get
| built, build them in both units for a few years (65mph /
| 105kph) allowing you to gradually transition to metric._
|
| Road signs last around a decade. So you're talking 10
| years to replace with dual-unit signs (which are more
| confusing) and then another 10 years to replace again
| with metric-only signs.
|
| Is it worth it? Is it really that important to change
| driving speeds to metric? What's the benefit?
|
| And how does it help to say "hey can you pick up 3.8L of
| milk?" If packaging sizes don't change then we'll still
| call it a gallon and we won't have "converted" at all.
|
| Conversion is a massive, confusing, expensive effort, and
| it's reasonable to wonder whether it's actually worth it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I was thinking 50+50 years, but ok 10+10 years is even
| better. I mean, if you do it gradually enough, the cost
| approaches zero, so is it worth "almost zero" to have a
| standard measurement system across the globe? Maybe?
|
| Nothing stops us from enacting generous legislation
| mandating the switch to metric by the year 2125 or
| something. You'd have to have intermediate milestones of
| course, or everyone would just do nothing and wait until
| 2124 and then complain endlessly about how the transition
| is so costly and we can't possibly do it in a year, and
| so on.
|
| But this is the USA, where we can't seem to do anything
| that takes longer than a quarter, and our entire
| country's major priorities change every 4 or 8 years.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| So if everyone knows everyone will be whining, you could
| just as well announce the transition tomorrow and get it
| over with in a year.
|
| As if Americans don't find a reason to whine every bloody
| day.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| > And how does it help to say "hey can you pick up 3.8L
| of milk?" If packaging sizes don't change then we'll
| still call it a gallon and we won't have "converted" at
| all.
|
| I'm with you on everything but this. The imperial system
| allows retailers (and/or consumer good manufacturers) to
| take consumers for a giant ride. I have lived in both USA
| & EU, and in the USA I just give up entirely on comparing
| goods in a supermarket. With the metric system there's
| nowhere to hide, and I can compare all products, whether
| you use ml or l, mg or g or kg. In the USA different
| manufacturers will use any odd denominator they can come
| up with and after about two weeks of normalizing
| fractions every time I went shopping, I gave up.
|
| Even the little tags supermarkets add to try and help
| you, aren't enough. Many shops use a different
| denominator, and even a single shop will vary internally.
| Something as simple as comparing the price of bacon
| becomes a middle school math problem.
|
| I hate corporate greed, I am partial to pointless mental
| exercise like math, and I am very stubborn. I don't want
| to speak for other people but something tells me I'm not
| the only one who has given up on this battle. Retail
| customers have more power in the metric system.
|
| For everything else though yes I agree who cares. Except
| degF which is actually better. :)
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The imperial system allows retailers (and /or consumer
| good manufacturers) to take consumers for a giant ride._
|
| That's a really interesting point. However, ultimately I
| actually don't think it has anything to do with imperial
| vs. metric, but just consumer culture.
|
| In Europe, when you order a drink the menu tells you how
| many centiliters it is. In the US, it's just small-
| medium-large-XL, which every location defines however
| they want. And in the US, the difficulty in comparison
| doesn't have anything to do with imperial units -- it's
| that one package of tomatoes is defined by volume while
| another is by weight, and the loose bell peppers are
| priced per pepper while the packaged ones are priced per
| weight, and so forth.
|
| Switching to metric wouldn't change any of that.
|
| That's a problem that can seemingly only be addressed by
| legislation -- e.g. that strawberries and tomatoes must
| be sold by weight not volume, or that selling produce by
| the item must also accurately list the average item
| weight.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your post reminds me of the additional problem of "The
| Serving" which is a unit of measurement entirely conjured
| up by the food manufacturer to serve as the denominator
| when listing required nutritional information.
|
| A normal 50g bowl of your sugary breakfast cereal too
| unhealthy? Just define a "serving" as 20g and cut all
| your bad numbers by 2/5! Problem solved! Is your bag of
| chips full of salt? Just invent a "Serving Size" of three
| chips and you don't have to draw attention to yourself on
| the nutrition label.
|
| Letting companies define their own units of measurement
| seems to be a totally preventable regulatory mistake.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Indeed, it's something the EU prevented. There are
| regulations on what the standard serving size is, and
| other regulations specifying how the item must be priced
| -- so all the milk says "per litre" under the price tag
| in the supermarket, even the fancy one in a tiny bottle.
|
| There were also preferred size regulations, which was
| meant to make it even easier. Breand could only be sold
| in multiples of 400g. I think this was relaxed, but it's
| still present for some things. A standard bottle of wine
| is always 75cL, for example.
| NeoTar wrote:
| There UK still used miles per hour for speed limits, and
| I've debated how we may change with my partner.
|
| I think the battle here is now lost - if you want to use
| km/h a sufficiently advanced modern car will show you the
| current speed limit and convert from imperial to metric
| for you. In the ten-to-twenty years a full change would
| take to complete we'll proabably have cars which are
| close to self driving, so who cares what value they use
| for speed limits?
|
| But for everything else - please do look to the UK as an
| example. We converted in the 1970s and it's still a bit
| messy today, but it's mostly worked.
|
| Beer at a pub/bar is mostly sold in pints, but to sell in
| litres is legal. Bottles of beer are often 330 or 500 ml.
| Wine is sold in millilitres, as are spirits.
|
| Basic milk is in pint sized containers (sizes in litres
| are shown). 'Fancy' milk is often sold directly in
| litres.
|
| You get the occasional container which is a weird size -
| like golden syrup is still sold in a 454g (1 lb)
| container.
|
| Ovens can be dual calibrated, and English language
| recipes often already will give both metric and imperial
| units for readers in the UK, AU, NZ, CA, etc.
|
| When cooking - if I find an American recipe with
| unconverted values I will just use Google ("what's 6oz in
| grams?'), etc. In fact a bigger problem for me is that
| American recipes tend to use volumetric units (e.g. 4
| cups of flour) where I'm used to weight (e.g. 500g of
| sugar).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's the cost of change, and also the fact that the
| people you need to convince to switch _don 't benefit_.
| If you're an adult in the US, you already know the
| conversions you need to do everyday tasks (e.g. 12 inches
| to a foot, etc). You also have calculators absolutely
| everywhere to do the math for you, so it isn't like you
| benefit from being able to do it in your head more
| easily. So, if we switched to metric most of the country
| would have to incur significant costs, and reap no
| benefits. That's never going to fly.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >"we can't have the federal government imposing a cost on
| the citizens / corporations"
|
| same kind of moronic non-argument for why the US gov can't
| invest in healthcare, or housing, or education; none of
| these things are "costs" and all of them are very high ROI
| investments, but Americanoids are incapable of thinking
| more than one fiscal quarter into the future
| ralph84 wrote:
| Government spending on those items is >$3 trillion per
| year in the US.
| Tanoc wrote:
| There is something to being wary of rounding up. For example
| when you get food from a drive-through or buy groceries and
| they ask you to round up to the nearest dollar, with the rest
| of the exchange going towards a charitable cause. They do
| that because at scale it's enough for them to get a tax
| incentive for charitable donations via other people's action.
| I refuse to help an international corporation cheese tax law.
|
| But for something like me handing the shawarma guy a tenner
| for an exchange that comes out to $9.39, it's not anything to
| even care about. It's a rounding error.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| That's not how tax law works in the US. See
| https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-
| thos...
|
| The corp is acting as a collection agent on behalf of the
| charity, they don't get to deduct it as a charitable
| donation. Even if they did, they would have to then count
| the money as income, which would offset any tax deduction
| they would get, giving the corp 0 net tax benefit.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| ...Though they may get some publicity benefit from it,
| which is why I don't go out of my way to donate using
| corps as a proxy. If its a small amount that I may not
| otherwise make, for a good cause, sure. But for my more
| deliberate giving, I would avoid corp proxies. So I don't
| give through my employer (unless they are offering to
| match it with their own funds).
| cgriswald wrote:
| > They do that because at scale it's enough for them to get
| a tax incentive for charitable donations via other people's
| action. I refuse to help an international corporation
| cheese tax law.
|
| This is a myth. They can't claim this on taxes because they
| don't have the associated income. To get that using your
| money, they'd have to claim your donation as income and pay
| taxes on it, making moot any tax savings (and committing
| fraud against you to boot).
|
| What they do use your money for is marketing. All the money
| goes to the charity but they get to say things like "Our
| program raised a gazillion dollars for those in need."
| Which has the effect of positive associations of a giving
| company which hasn't actually given.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In countries with cash rounding (Denmark, Sweden,
| Australia, etc) there are strict rules on how that rounding
| works.
|
| 9.39kr will be rounded here to 9.50kr if I pay cash. 9.24kr
| would be rounded to 9.00kr.
|
| If I pay electronically it's 9.39kr.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Is any of that still true though?
|
| I think it was 30 years ago. I don't think it is anymore
| though.
|
| I think people just mostly stopped caring about getting rid
| of the penny because they use cards and apps for everything
| now.
|
| On the one hand, I absolutely think we should get rid of the
| penny. On the other hand, I couldn't care less because I
| literally haven't used a coin or a bill for a single thing in
| years.
| analog31 wrote:
| It's true that things have changed over the passage of
| time, and I think that people have also stopped caring
| about the metric system.
|
| Industry has converted. CAD software lets you switch
| between US and metric with the flip of a switch. Things
| like the spacing of pins on a microchip are just arbitrary
| decimal numbers anyway. The car industry has standardized
| on metric fasteners. Most US households don't even need non
| metric tools any more.
|
| A few things like building materials are still US, but once
| again, for industry, they're just decimal entries into a
| CAD program, and if they need different sizes, they can
| order custom sizes from the mill.
|
| Some weird units remain, like spark plug threads, but those
| things are so unique that there's no reason to switch. The
| only use for a spark plug wrench is to loosen a spark plug.
|
| As an amusing aside, I still use cash, because of my side
| occupation as a working musician. I often get paid in cash.
| It piles up in my house and I have to remember to use it.
| Also, there's an old tradition of drinking establishments
| letting the musicians have a free drink, so I keep some
| small bills in my instrument case to tip the bartender.
| xethos wrote:
| > On the other hand, I couldn't care less
|
| Sounds like you should be in club "Ditch the penny" -
| because you don't use cash, the only effect it will have is
| lower taxes (or more efficient use of what you pay now),
| because of how much it costs to make pennies.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > This is the country that gave up on the metric system
| because it involved too much math.
|
| You say laziness, I say efficiency. More math than necessary
| is always too much math. It will always be more important to
| divide things by halves and thirds than by halves and fifths.
| I would apologize to the French for that, but I'm not going
| to apologize for always preferring multiples of sixty to
| multiples of fifty, to a people who count by twenties. If you
| don't count in decimal, you don't get to be judgemental.
| excalibur wrote:
| People need to be able to quickly do the math in their heads to
| make change. More efficient use of coins but harder for everyone
| involved is not a functional improvement.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Some of the proposed schemes seem acceptable from that point of
| view, in particular 1, 3, 10, 25.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| We should better introduce $50, $100, $500, $1000 and $5000
| coins. I'd love my entire salary to come in coins and to be able
| to pay for any purchase in coins conveniently.
| edward28 wrote:
| And easier to bankrupt yourself because of a hole in your
| wallet.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago when it would be normal to be paid in
| cash (notes and coins) at the end of the week or the end of
| the month.
|
| Depending on the job sector, this could be the 1970s or 1980s
| in Britain, for example.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| perhaps if we reduce these coins to some units of digital
| currency so we don't have to physically carry them around, like
| bits, but for coins
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| How are you going to prevent fraudulent double spending of
| these digital coins? You'd have to invent some kind of
| Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus method.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Sure, but then you'd need a way for all participants to
| agree on which transactions are valid. Maybe like a chain
| of blocks that hold transaction data, and each block is
| cryptographically linked to the previous one. Sounds pretty
| difficult. I doubt that anyone would be able to create
| anything like that any time soon, if ever.
| zeagle wrote:
| Few more years of AI investment and we can just ask GPT13
| to create and run this model.
| kijin wrote:
| That actually sounds more promising than the way most
| altcoins are operated today. If only Sam Altman doesn't
| elope with all those GPT13 coins...
| chame7707 wrote:
| In the year 2045, the world had transformed into a sprawling
| metropolis of concrete and steel, where the sun rarely
| pierced the thick haze of pollution. The government, in its
| quest for absolute control, had implemented a system known as
| the KYC Protocol--Know Your Customer. It was a measure
| designed to eliminate fraud and ensure security, but it had
| morphed into a bureaucratic nightmare.
|
| Every citizen was required to stand in line for KYC checks
| before making any purchase, no matter how trivial. The most
| mundane items, like a pack of gum, had become luxuries that
| demanded hours of waiting. The lines snaked around the block,
| a serpentine mass of weary faces, each person clutching their
| identification cards, biometric scans, and digital wallets.
|
| Maya stood in line, her stomach grumbling as she watched the
| clock tick away. She had been waiting for nearly two hours,
| the fluorescent lights above flickering intermittently,
| casting a sickly glow on the faces around her. The air was
| thick with impatience and the faint scent of despair. She
| glanced at the digital screen mounted on the wall, which
| displayed the current wait time: 45 minutes remaining.
|
| "Next!" barked a voice from the front, and the line shuffled
| forward. Maya's heart raced. She had only come to buy a pack
| of gum, a small indulgence to brighten her day. But the KYC
| checks had turned this simple act into a test of endurance.
|
| As she inched closer to the front, she overheard snippets of
| conversations. A man lamented about the time he lost waiting
| to buy a loaf of bread, while a woman recounted her
| experience of being denied a purchase because her biometric
| data had been flagged as "inconclusive." The stories were all
| too familiar, a shared trauma that bound them together in
| this dystopian reality.
|
| Finally, it was Maya's turn. She stepped up to the kiosk, a
| cold, metallic structure that loomed over her like a
| sentinel. A screen flickered to life, displaying a series of
| prompts. She placed her hand on the scanner, feeling the
| chill of the glass against her skin. The machine whirred and
| beeped, analyzing her fingerprints, her palm veins, and her
| heartbeat.
|
| "Verification in progress," the screen announced, the words
| flashing ominously. Maya held her breath, the seconds
| stretching into an eternity. She could feel the eyes of the
| people behind her, their impatience palpable.
|
| "Error," the machine suddenly blared, and Maya's heart sank.
| "Biometric data does not match records. Please step aside for
| further verification."
|
| Panic surged through her as she was ushered to a separate
| area, a sterile room filled with flickering screens and
| stern-faced officials. The line she had waited in for so long
| now felt like a cruel joke. She glanced back at the kiosk,
| where the next person was already being processed, oblivious
| to her plight.
|
| Hours passed as she sat in the cold room, her mind racing
| with thoughts of what could happen next. Would she be denied
| the gum forever? Would she be flagged as a potential threat?
| The KYC Protocol had become a tool of oppression, a way to
| control the masses under the guise of safety.
|
| Finally, a woman in a crisp uniform approached her, a tablet
| in hand. "We need to conduct a manual review of your data,"
| she said, her voice devoid of empathy. "Please provide your
| identification and answer a series of questions."
|
| Maya nodded, her heart heavy. She had come for a simple
| pleasure, but now she was trapped in a web of bureaucracy. As
| she answered the questions, she realized that the world had
| become a place where even the smallest joys were overshadowed
| by the weight of surveillance and control.
|
| After what felt like an eternity, she was finally cleared.
| The official handed her a slip of paper, a token of her
| victory. "You may now proceed to purchase your item," she
| said, her tone flat.
|
| Maya stepped back into the bustling world outside, the slip
| clutched tightly in her hand. She made her way to the nearest
| store, where the shelves were stocked with brightly colored
| packages of gum. As she reached for a pack, she couldn't
| shake the feeling of unease that lingered in her chest.
|
| In a world where freedom had been traded for security, the
| simple act of buying gum had become a reminder of the chains
| that bound them all. And as she walked out of the store, the
| taste of mint and sugar on her tongue, she vowed to remember
| the struggle it took to reclaim that small piece of joy in a
| world gone mad.
| Two4 wrote:
| Wot
| dijit wrote:
| You say that, but it used to be a common criticism Americans
| had of British currency, that large denominations (up to PS2)
| were exclusively coins.
|
| They cited that coins are in compatible with nearly all
| wallets, being weighed down, and somehow never actually having
| exact change.
| wlll wrote:
| Background: I'm British and live in the UK but have spent a
| fair amount of time in the US over the years.
|
| I love the dollar bill. I'd really love to have a PS1 and/or
| PS2 note in the UK. The moment you need any reasonable number
| of coins to buy anything they become unwieldy in your pocket
| and you can carry enough dollar bills to be useful without
| there being a chunk of metal digging into your leg.
|
| I've hears arguments against relating to durability but those
| are all predate the new plastic notes we have.
|
| For some reason I get a load of pushback when suggesting that
| a PS1 or PS2 note would be nice to have.
| aniviacat wrote:
| On the other hand, coins are pretty neat.
| fmajid wrote:
| They are also far more durable than bills, specially
| lower-denomination bills like the $1 note that wears out
| quickly because it is used more than higher-denomination
| bills.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I am curious what the cost difference is to manufacture a
| coin vs a banknote. Certainly the penny is probably going
| to not be worth much more than a penny in melt value, but
| for stuff like quarters if I can make 5 bills that each
| last 5 years that may be more preferential than a single
| coin that lasts 25 years because it gives better control
| over the money supply.
| asplake wrote:
| In our household we call them "parking tokens". We use
| cash for little else.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I use them almost exclusively as collectors items for
| whatever country I visit. And nothing else. America is
| mostly cashless nowadays anyway. My thought is that at
| least in America, we will not be rid of coins for another
| few decades at least . Because gauging by the current
| climate it looks like the only way we start to phase some
| of these denominations out is when inflation makes them
| impractical and useless.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I think with polymer notes, they might last until withdrawn
| by UK standards, but that's a unique factor of how fast
| they cycle their banknotes out. I think even 5 year old
| English notes (the paper GBP50 with Watt on it) are at the
| phase where you have to take them to a bank and replace
| them with polymer ones.
|
| America has always tried to avoid calling back old notes,
| likely to avoid creating an upset in places where they're a
| store of value overseas. This means the old ones can
| circulate basically forever. I can recall my brother
| getting a $10 note of the 1934 type in a normal transaction
| in about 2015, and 1977-series $100s seemed strangely
| common into the 1990s and 2000s. So the survival rates at
| 10 and 20 years are relevant for American paper in a way
| that maybe don't apply in the UK.
| 47282847 wrote:
| Isn't it because the US supports large scale money
| laundering and tax evasion whereas more civilized
| societies try to get rid of it?
| electronbeam wrote:
| I think its meant as not spooking the people in countries
| with unreliable currencies that hoard USD like one might
| gold bars
| orra wrote:
| The Bank of England don't manufacture PS1 notes, but the
| Royal Bank of Scotland still make them.
|
| Perhaps you can help popularise them, so they make even
| more!
| netbioserror wrote:
| And maybe, instead of common metals and assigning them
| arbitrary value, we could make them out of rare metals (with a
| little bit of alloying for hardness) and people can trade them
| for their relative abundance or rarity!
| mistercow wrote:
| I can only get behind this if there's a fixed exchange rate
| between two coinable metals that doesn't change with their
| relative scarcity.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Let'em Lithium coins roll!
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Let's adopt CR2032 batteries as a currency
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The values of nickel, zinc, and copper are far from
| arbitrary, and oftentimes the metal value of a coin is higher
| than its face value. The US penny is >2C/ of zinc and copper.
|
| Besides, metals like lithium corrode too easily, and other
| rare metals like zirconium/niobium/tantalum/REEs are
| intrinsically scarce so minting coins from them would be
| wasteful. Arguably using zinc, nickel, and copper for coins
| is wasteful, and all coins should be some sort of stainless
| steel or aluminum. (Like the aluminum Japan 1 yen piece.)
| zeagle wrote:
| As long as they have prepunched holes in the middle so I can
| hang them on a chain around my neck like a maester.
| gamerDude wrote:
| I'd love to find your $5000 coin on the sidewalk!
|
| Sounds terrible to me, coins are so much harder to keep track
| of!
| kibwen wrote:
| I understand the romanticism of coins and the nostalgia of coin
| collectors, but the experience of actually using them is just
| so much worse than bills. When I go to Canada I immediately
| relinquish my loonies and toonies to my Canadian friends
| because they're such a pain to deal with.
| Symbiote wrote:
| A well-designed set of coins is nice to use, but this is
| unfortunately rare.
|
| Canada and the USA certainly don't have it. The Euro doesn't,
| which is odd as the currency is so new -- why are the 10, 20
| and 50 cent coins so similar?
|
| The Pound Sterling is generally well-designed, with sets of
| coins in copper-silver-gold materials, and easily
| distinguishable sequences of shapes and different sizes. The
| Danish and Swedish coins also work, in the Danish case with a
| hole to distinguish some denominations.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I found Danish and Swedish coins to be just as annoying as
| American coins. They are difficult to tell apart
| immediately. The Pound and its denominations, I agree, are
| the best I've encountered so far in real world use.
|
| I wish America would get off its butt about getting rid of
| the penny. It's such a waste of resources. We don't need
| it. In fact, Ecuador uses USD as well and they, a country
| with much lower GDP and prices, don't use our penny. They
| round up.
| Iulioh wrote:
| >why are the 10, 20 and 50 cent coins so similar?
|
| ...have you ever used the coins?
|
| All different sizes and the border of 10 and 50 are similar
| but the 50 is x2 the size and the 20 is totally different
|
| I don't think anyone would say they are similar
| bastawhiz wrote:
| A bill could never replicate the gratifying "plunk" of
| putting a dinner plate sized 10kg coin worth $5000 into the
| Carvana vending machine
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| the coin purse market in such a world would be a sight to
| behold
| Jianghong94 wrote:
| > Probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform
| from [0,99].
|
| in reality, most of the transactions that use coins end up
| conforming to common existing coin combinations e.g. laundromats
| in US mostly price as multiples of quarters ($0.25)
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| The $X.99 price thing should be forbidden and I'm deeply
| disappointed in humanity/customerity that we don't shun them
| and refuse to deal with them
| kijin wrote:
| It's even uglier in jurisdictions where sales tax is not
| included in the $X.99 price tag. The total amount you need to
| pay becomes something like $X+1.07 and you end up with a lot
| of of unexpected change.
|
| Edit: In the example, I meant X+1 dollars and 7 cents.
| Apologies for the ambiguous formula, it felt awkward to use
| parentheses inside of an amount.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| $X * 1.07, or $X + 7% (of $X)
| _hl_ wrote:
| This certainly contributed to people preferring card over
| cash, making merchants loose ~3% per transaction.
|
| That ship has long sailed, but it does male you wonder: if
| everything was priced at increments of, say, quarters,
| would enough people still use cash to offset the lost sales
| from the allegedly less appealing pricing?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I don't know, but I find I use cash much more readily
| when the price includes tax, because I can confirm ahead
| of time that the cash in my wallet is enough without
| breaking a 20 for a pile of coins.
| NeoTar wrote:
| > making merchants lose ~3% per transaction
|
| Cash also has costs - mistakes in making change,
| forgeries, time to count/cash up, time to visit banks for
| cash deposit and/or getting change, theft - it's been
| estimated that these can easily exceed any costs of
| handling credit/debit cards.
| Two4 wrote:
| Cash indeed has a high handling cost. In my country and
| many others, withdrawing cash at the supermarket teller
| with your card is free (as in no ATM fees) because it
| reduces the amount of cash handled and transported by
| branches. They'd rather eat the cost of a card
| transaction than pay cash handling costs.
| ta1243 wrote:
| It's been estimated by card companies that these are
| higher.
| TrueSlacker0 wrote:
| I run a business with lots of daily transactions. The
| cost of balancing cash drawers, getting change, making
| deposits and balancing those activities in accounting,
| all totalled, is still cheaper than to pay the credit
| card fees. Also it's kind of a fixed set of time
| regardless of how much cash it is. So more cash is more
| savings but there is definitely a point where if the cash
| amount gets to low it would be cheaper to go all card.
|
| I think that cheaper propaganda is probably from theft in
| mostly places that hire minimum wage workers and treat
| them like slaves.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I mean, the x.99 prices make more sense in places like the
| U.S. where state and local sales tax cause the final prices
| to be somewhat unpredictable anyway. It would be weird to
| advertise $9.99 when you know that that's going to be the
| final price.
| NeoTar wrote:
| It happens in Europe where we have inclusive pricing in
| almost all, if not every nation.
|
| (apart from very rare circumstances like bottle deposit
| costs (which are refundable) not being included)
| sigio wrote:
| At least the bottle deposits (EUR0.15 or EUR0.25) are
| listed with tax included and can be payed with 2 coins
| (10+5 or 20+5)
| janalsncm wrote:
| That would be a reasonable argument if sales tax
| fluctuated more often than the prices of goods. In
| reality, it's the other way around.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| I'd rather we outlaw the ridiculous "and 9/10 cents" that is
| appended to every single gasoline price in the US, and that
| everyone ignores when reading.
| hgomersall wrote:
| This makes the rest of analysis irrelevant. Kind of like most
| mainstream economics, where they start from some convenient but
| wrong assumptions, then build an edifice on top of those and
| make strong statements inferred from said edifice.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Why not just re-index the dollar so that coins are useful amounts
| of currency?
| herf wrote:
| I was curious what the theoretical distribution of digits might
| be, did not know that there is an extension of Benford's law for
| later digits which suggests the uniform assumption is quite
| nearly right:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Generalization...
|
| Of course in real life, 50 cents and 99 cents are way more
| common.
| alexshendi wrote:
| I think we need a 1337 cent coin!
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| The coins proposed are all prime, which makes sense to me
| intuitively. You'll always need a 1 coin. I'm curious if it's
| generally true that optimal coins for any given range starting at
| 0 will be primes?
| kijin wrote:
| I take issue with the assumption that you always need a 1 coin.
|
| If we're going to go to such great lengths to minimize the
| number of coins, even at the cost of making real-life
| transactions more complicated, we could totally forgo the 1
| coin and just have 2 and 5. If an amount ends in 1, you pay 5
| and get two 2s back. Now you can have a coin system that is
| entirely primes!
| TheMechanist wrote:
| Two obvious problems: the fractional part of the price is not
| uniform over [00..99] and the system has 5 coins, since in 2021
| minting for the half-dollar coin was restarted.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Why is a 11-cent coin ridiculous? With nine of them you could pay
| for these X.99 products and not get a penny in return.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Yes, we should totally revamp our coins to suit the needs of
| retail marketing.
| umvi wrote:
| Because X.99 products are pre tax, so you really have to pay
| X.99 + X.99 * 0.0Y
| bitdivision wrote:
| This made me wonder about the origins of the 0.99 price. I
| had always thought it was largely to avoid theft, by ensuring
| the worker had to open the till for change on every
| transaction. Which makes sense if there's no sales tax, but
| if there is sales tax then you might as well round everything
| to the dollar.
|
| Possibly sales tax wasn't a thing when this became a common
| practice.
|
| Makes the argument for the psychological effect of 0.99 vs
| 1.00 much stronger these days though I suppose.
| zertrin wrote:
| In the US, sure, but most of the world display prices
| inclusive of tax. (at least from my experience in EU and
| Asia)
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Most efficient would be to start rounding purchases to the
| nearest five cents (if is isn't electronic) and get rid of the
| penny which costs more to produce than the penny is worth.
| NeoTar wrote:
| But an average one cent coin is involved in more than a single
| transaction - if you amortise the cost of the coin over every
| transaction it is involved in, then it's much less than one
| cent.
|
| If the cost of metals in a coin is more than its value, you do
| have a point.
| sigio wrote:
| In the Netherlands we've been rounding to 5ct intervals for
| 20+ years now, and 1ct coins were abolished long ago. With
| the introduction of the euro, the 1ct and 2ct coins returned,
| but all shops still round to 5ct for cash transactions.
|
| Every time I return from Germany I have a handful of 1 and
| 2ct coins though, since they haven't done this, and most
| prices are X.99.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694075 - Sept 2010 (137
| comments)
|
| _Freakonomics: Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=864838 - Oct 2009 (50
| comments)
| abetusk wrote:
| There's a question on SE cstheory site that addresses the more
| general problem [0]. I wonder if this problem is still open.
|
| [0]
| https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/5861/asymptotic...
| jmclnx wrote:
| not anymore :)
|
| Personally, in the US, pennies, nickles and dimes should be
| eliminated.
|
| I think we are at the point were paper money $1, $2 and $5 should
| be replaced by coins. But that would cause a huge uproar in this
| country.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I personally prefer bills (paper or plastic) because they are
| lighter weight than coins. I would very much like to see 25C/
| bills.
|
| Some countries use plastic rather than paper for bills of small
| denomination. They feel more pleasant and probably last longer.
| I also prefer these.
| conductr wrote:
| At some point, that we are possibly near to, doesn't the value of
| a dollar become so small that the fractions of a dollar that
| coins represent aren't even worth dealing with?
|
| If so, and transactions just rounds to nearest dollar the we are
| basically expecting that over our lifetime it will nearly balance
| out without the need to think about it too much.
| efitz wrote:
| Touching coins is icky.
| sigio wrote:
| Way less then banknotes... bacteria etc don't like metals
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I love thinking about problems like that. Yes it is impractical
| and unlikely to result in any change but it also helps illuminate
| relationships (like # of coins in your change) that you might not
| otherwise see.
|
| Of course, as an economist Patrick (the person asking the
| question in the article not the author) ignores what is most
| important about choosing coins "Can the teller give you change
| quickly and accurately?" That is the important question because
| GDP depends on transaction flow, and anything that hinders
| transaction flow is a net negative on GDP[1].
|
| Using the Suica card in Japan I was reminded again of how useful
| it would be if the government would just bless a pure stored
| value cash card. Yes, I understand the arguments against it
| (mostly based on surveillance IMHO) but still it would be a
| useful thing in terms of getting us to 0 coins per transaction.
| :-)
|
| [1] Yes, I subscribe to the theory that GDP is inherently a time
| based numbers "value per unit time"
| Const-me wrote:
| In ideal world, I would prefer coins to be powers of 2.
|
| It requires 7 coins in [ 1 .. 64 ] range to reach 100, but the
| average of popcnt( 1 .. 99 ) is only 3.19 coins per transaction,
| way better than 4.1 coins.
| IanKerr wrote:
| Now account for the amount of mental overhead required for the
| average person to calculate change or coinage of a random
| amount in base two coins, as opposed to multiples of 5 or 10,
| and see if your 3.19 coins per transaction really saves you
| time.
| aaronax wrote:
| One could simply switch to a base 16 numbering system as
| well!
| Const-me wrote:
| I think the amount of mental overhead with base 2 coins is
| still less than with the proposed [ 1, 3, 11, 37 ] solution.
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