Posted on 11/30/2012 7:10:34 AM PST by upchuck
“They are already rounding fairly up and down (to the nearest cent).”
Well, that depends on how you look at it. They’re not rounding down unit prices on goods or they wouldn’t all end in 99 cents, or 49 cents, etc. They do that because it’s a marketing trick, to make people pay a higher price than they would if they simple priced it with round numbers.
So, if a product is 1.69 today, it won’t be 1.70 after the pennies are gone, because that doesn’t work for their marketing purposes. If we’re lucky, they’ll price it at 1.65 and they will take the hit, but I think it’s more like that it would be priced at 1.75 and we would take the hit.
Congratulations, you get your wish. Geithner has announced that as of January 1, 2013, the US mint will no longer make pennies or nickels.
And now, with the elimination of the $1 bill, the government is pushing hard to become a “paperless society”, in which all money exists only on government controlled computers, even if it is in the bank.
See any potential problems with that?
I like dollars. Kid like dollars. I hate coins.
100 $1 are easier to manage for a gas station employee than 100 heavy coins.
The Fed spent a $Billion or so just storing all of the unwanted $1 coins that they have already minted. That’s not a cost savings.
The coins are so unpopular that the Fed stopped minting them last year, I think.
“How are we going to tip strippers? :)”
Throw heavy coins at them. Win-win.
They are just making way for the new obama gold dollar coin, it’s all shiny on the outside but the chocolate center melts.
"People hate these dollar coins! They won't use them! We're just warehousing these things at great cost!"
"What shall we do?"
"Oh, that's easy. We won't give them a choice. We will force them to accept the things they find unacceptable."
This was previously rejected only a year ago due to the added costs on business. Vending machine based companies will take a big hit as they are forced to convert.
So, if a product is 1.69 today, it won’t be 1.70 after the pennies are gone, because that doesn’t work for their marketing purposes. If we’re lucky, they’ll price it at 1.65 and they will take the hit, but I think it’s more like that it would be priced at 1.75 and we would take the hit.
I’m surprised there is so much retailer paranoia here on FR.
“When I was a kid, pennies actually purchased things, and a quarter would get you a soda and a candy bar.”
You were lucky! I used to pay 5 cents for a 7 oz. Coca-Cola, take wooden nickels when we had them, barter for a plug of tobacco, and use mills to pay taxes. Tell that to the young’uns, and they won’t believe you....
“There are no words.”
There are, but they’re not nice.
Call Robert Mugabe and his economic team - they got rid of the Zimbabwe dollar in no time at all!
(on the other hand, given what we can expect over the next four years, why bother . . .)
Might as well, since soon a loaf of bread will soon enough cost about $100,000.
Sure, they will price them to be competitive, but they are still out to make a profit. They’re not going to price them any cheaper than they need to to beat the competition. If all the retailers have the same idea about rounding up, then there is no competitive disadvantage to doing it the same way.
Then there is the alternative, that they will just play games with the product sizes to keep the apparent price low, but still charge more. They’ve been doing that for years to hide the cost of inflation while foisting it on the unsuspecting consumer. Maybe that’s one of the reasons even us free market folks don’t give them the benefit of the doubt much anymore.
When I was a boy, our coins were made of 90% silver. A silver quarter would buy my lunch at school. Man, do I feel old.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no reason to suggest that.
Years of tax increases as opposed to tax decreases is the reason. Sure, 10% of $5 compared to 6% of $5 is only .20, but when you add $4 to a $100 purchase, it adds up for those of us on tight budgets who watch our pennies. I can accept the arguement that retailers might round down to foster warm fuzzies to the consumer, but really, what incentive does the government have to round down instead of up?
“...a loaf of bread will soon enough cost about $100,000.”
And we’ll all be billionaires and fall into the highest tax bracket.
...and they are much more convenient to put RFIDs into.
Government doesn’t do the rounding (but some states make it illegal to round unfairly).
Well, we could do all that you propose, and in 50 or 100 years, we’d just have to do it all over again, if our country manages to survive that long. We’d really just be treating a single symptom and failing to address the disease, or the more serious symptoms, such as the fruits of our labor being constantly robbed from us by the schemes of the inflation pushers.
Or, we could cut to the heart of the problem, and get rid of the Federal Reserve, go back to a real monetary standard, and never have to worry about it again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.