Posted on 11/27/2012 1:30:24 PM PST by angelcindy
The U.S. is following Canada's footsteps regarding the production of pennies and nickels. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner, our U.S. Mint intends to remove the penny and nickel coins from circulation beginning early in January 2013.
(Excerpt) Read more at wealthwire.com ...
Economically, they should move to coin dollars as well. It’s not worked in the past for one key reason: they need to also quit producing cloth dollars.
“Paper dollars” have too short a life span to be economical. Plus, the mint has plenty of coin dollars already warehoused and ready to go.
When I was overseas on active duty 20 years ago, we didn’t use pennies. Transactions were still made ‘to the penny’ and rounded. 1-2 cents round down, 3-4 round up. Worked just fine.
Been there, done that!
I have more than 10,000 BUFFALO nickels, ranging from junk to UNCircs...! Actually, my GRANDchildren own them now, but they are still in my possession. Unfortunately, all mine have four legs!
Still need quarters as the easy way to get to 50 cents. But it’ll be strange. In the end they probably won’t really round off to 10 cents, but to things you can make change to easily with quarters and dimes.
Bid farewell to all American currency. They will push us to marks on the wrist and forehead soon.
I'm thinking the same thing. They'll downsize dollar coins, then make $5 coins and $10 coins. The new $10 coins will be worth an old dime. Not as bad as Zimbabwe hyper-inflation, but we're headed down an inflationary path.
As a consumer, I have the right to fantasize.
Penny for your thoughts? Got a wooden nickel?
Oh geez, gas will now be $3.90, $4.00, $4.10, $4.20.... fuel prices will falsely sky rocket... as will everything else. It's hitting me now. We'll be broke in six months. At least we'll have obamacare.
Sounds like everything will be rounded off up to the nearest dime. More sales taxes from this, also.
Except the people LIKE the paper dollars, which is why we keep using them. The government is supposed to work for us, they should stick with paper. The people don’t really give much of a crap about pennies and nickles. But we use paper dollars, the mint can shove the coins.
The same applies to the "zinc" penny [97.5% Zn, 2.5% Cu] and is the reason that it is against the law to melt them for the metal value nor can a traveler take more than $5 of them or ship more than $100 at any one time (face-value).
The real question and quandary is, what will happen to the penny/nickel bubblegum machines? (Yeah, I know, they are already gone!)
“Because currently, there’s almost a nickel’s worth of metal in a nickel.”
It is worse than that; much of Europe in the 1950s (both Western & Warsaw Pact) started using cheap metals and/or paper. The fact is that soon everything you can buy in a store will cost more than $.09 (it won’t even be possible to make a piece of candy for less than $.10); that is why they aren’t even bothering to make them more cheaply.
Who makes the decision on coinage amounts each year for each denomination?
This is a tax increase in disguise.
What happens if you buy something for 79 cents, and there is a 6% sales tax?
79 * .06 = 4.74
How do you pay 4.74 cents? They round it up to 5 cents.
Just like there used to be a half penny coin, so people would sell things for 1.5 cents. Then the govt stopped making the coin, and people quit purchasing in half cent amounts.
People will simply quit selling anything for an amount less than a dime. Need something that only costs 2 cents? You’ll need to buy a 5 pack.
“You’re in more dire need of a . . . . nickel . . . . than any White man in history”!
dude, you just made my head hurt...
So what they can do is just add tax up to the nearest 10 cent increment. And it really wouldn’t be a tax - it would be a glitch fix.
“Except the people LIKE the paper dollars, which is why we keep using them.”
The reason we use paper dollars while Canadians can’t is that their government took them out of circulation; the dollar coin was all that was left. If our government wants to get rid of paper dollars they would never leave bank branches again; you would simply receive dollar coins anywhere you had been receiving singles. To their credit, Canada very quickly modified their vending machines, video games and such when they replaced the $1 and $2 bills with coins; I think it went smoothly.
This is it! Obama’s Fiscal Cliff is going into effect!
Seriously? When has this government cared if something was costing more than it's worth?
Can’t they just make plug nickels out of wood?
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