Posted on 09/13/2021 8:13:11 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
So we are in Brussels, capital of the European Union and presumably the inventors of the Euro. I went to buy an item that cost 1.26 so I gave them a 1 Euro coin, 2 10 cent coins and 3 2 cent coins, something that in America we would call exact change. The cashier refused to take it and asked for a 5 cent piece instead. Apparently they have outlawed pennies and 2 cent pieces in Belgium and are now rounding everything either up or down. So the driving force behind the Euro currency now refuses to take their own money. Gotta love bureaucracy!
I am old enough to remember one cent gumball machines and penny stamps that could actually mail a postcard. It was an age of 5 cent Snickers bars and ten cent comic books. All of that is now a thing of the ancient past lost to inflation.
“...a brass $0.25 to replace the penny.”
Sorry...not sorry...NO! All brass needs to be turned into ammo, either cases or bullet jackets, until such time as the ammo shortage is resolved.
There is only one thing in our daily lives that we still buy priced in mills, an old common coinage from the seventeenth century. It’s an oddity of custom and tradition, but for some reason, we still do it. I wonder if we will be doing that for pennies in the future, long after the actual coins are no longer produced or even accounted in the totals, rounding to eliminate the antique coins?
Do they have a law that says everyone has to be in bed by 10pm? That’s the only reason I can think of for why everything shuts down so early. I thought it had something to do with Bruges but Brussels is the same way.
I read that it costs more to make a penny than the penny is worth. If that is the case it should be banned.
It’s not so much the coinage as the fact that they are trying to squeeze you out of it more and more. Spain just passed a law prohibiting you from buying anything that costs more than 1000 Euros unless you pay for it with a card. They also criminalized having more than 100 thousand Euros in cash unless it is in a bank. When you are forced to have everything in one place that the government can track It’s easier for the government to confiscate it. Think Cyprus.
It apparently costs 1.76 cents to make a penny. But I blame the government for that. Make it cheaper or privatize production if there is still value in using them. They have been copper plated zinc since 1982, but the metal composition has been changed many times before that to deal with production costs and wartime shortages.
They haven’t started rounding prices yet. Perhaps the law is too new.
I take it you never read Facebook during the Brexit elections. You may be surprised at how many people consider themselves to be EU citizens. Not French. Not German. Not any single country. EU. Brainwashing works.
Here in Canada the cent disappeared a few years ago now. Prices are still posted in cents but actual cents aren’t accepted by most retailers anymore. Change and prices are simply rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cents. The only place one can take them is to the bank now if one still has a hoard of them. They are still technically legal tender but for all practical purposes no. As time has gone on they are becoming less and less seen.
Offer them a $52,000 Bitcoin, and ask if they can make change... heh.
No idea
Technically the governing bodies are the individual country’s parliaments.
Thank you.
Please don't keep us on tenterhooks!
What is that "one thing" that we still buy priced in mills? Motor vehicle fuel?
Regards,
With the UK leaving, the move is now towards subsidiarity. Poland, Hungary and Italy are pushing back. And with the German federal elections I have a lot of hope for this to be enshrined decentralisation.
Also France and Germany, besides of course Hungary, Poland, Romania, Italy have been talking of European civilisation as Christianity. Not as loudly as I would like, but clearly.
What is needed is a European confederation of independent countries as it is now, but without the EU parliament. The decisions to be purely by the EU council ie the council of the elected heads of government. That makes is less democratic, but more a confederation of countries rather than a state in its own right.
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