A penny for your thoughts.

Quote:

Support for Penny Grows Stronger as Congress Considers Elimination; Nostalgia, New Alloy Options and Concerns About Rounding Fuel 13 Percentage Point Increase in Americans Favoring the Penny


BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 8, 2006--While debate over the future of the penny has been heating up with new legislation aimed at eliminating the coin, data shows increasing support for keeping the one-cent coin in circulation. Coinstar, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSTR) announced today new poll results that reveal 79 percent of Americans favor keeping the penny, up from 66 percent just a year ago.

"When people become educated about the issues around the penny, such as new solutions to lower production costs and rounding at the cash register, they appear to be more inclined to keep the penny as evidenced by the 13 point increase over last year," said Alex Camara, senior vice president and general manager of Coinstar's worldwide coin business.

Penny support now extends beyond romantic notions about penny candy and penny loafers.

-- 31 percent support keeping the penny if alloys are changed to
reduce rising production costs and 48 percent say leave the
penny as is (79 percent support). Only 15 percent favor
discontinuing use of the Lincoln cent.

-- 51 percent are concerned about price rounding to the nearest
nickel if the penny disappears.

-- Almost two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) still feel the
penny should be retained as an important symbol of American
culture, history and the economy.

While support for the penny is stronger, there also is more evidence that its value as daily tender is fading. Sixty-nine percent of people will pick up pennies off the ground compared to 79 percent just a year ago.

The Coinstar study also revealed that -- if the penny does disappear -- more respondents would not change their payment behaviors to avoid "rounded up" pricing. Forty-six percent of respondents report they wouldn't change how they pay for things compared to 37 percent who would use debit/credit to avoid rounding up.

Coinstar estimates that about 11 percent of the $10.5 billion of coin out of circulation in the United States is pennies.

Other findings from the survey include:

-- 58 percent are not very concerned or not at all concerned that
the penny costs more to produce than its value.

-- While support for picking pennies up off the ground is
eroding, the practice varies widely by age group (60 percent
ages 18 to 34 compared to 89 percent for seniors 65+).

-- 23 percent of people who pick up pennies still respect
superstition (only pick up heads), and 27 percent of this
group actually turn over a bad coin (tails) to benefit the
next person.

About the Poll

In its ninth year, the Coinstar National Currency Poll was launched in April 1998 to provide information to better understand coin and currency habits in America, and track trends, behaviors and attitudes toward currency -- both traditional and new forms, as well as related topics. Poll results are compiled by an independent market research firm through a telephone research study. Each edition of the Coinstar National Currency Poll contains a nationally representative sample of more than 1,000 Americans age 18+, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

We got rid of the half cent over a hundred years ago, I say it's about time the penny got taken out of circulation as well.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah. I'm cool with a rounding system. It's something like that in Australia (those who live there can advise better). No one-cent coins there, and it's fine.

I also like the Australian notes. Each increasing dollar values comes in increasing bill size and a different color. It's subtly nifty for organization and access. Pretty too.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by andkeener

We got rid of the half cent over a hundred years ago, I say it's about time the penny got taken out of circulation as well.

I disagree. Taking away the penny would cause problems. Anyone pricing something would have to consider what sales tax would do to the price, making sure that the end price would be rounded to the nearest five cents. Obviously, states with no such tax wouldn't have as big a problem. Solution? Destroy sales tax.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Or include tax in the displayed price of an item... again, like Australia.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by nazpyro

Or include tax in the displayed price of an item... again, like Australia.

Yeah I don't know why we don't do that already. All it does is make you more pissed off when you get up to the cash register and THEN realize how much money you are really spending after everything is rung up. I, for one, would rather know up front how much i'm going to be spending on things before I get to the cash register.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm okay with keeping the penny, but I am all for reducing the cost of production. I could do without the copper paint job, and just let it have a zinc shine. I just can't imagine counterfeiting a penny, so I don't care what the damn thing looks like.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Okay, so they start raising the price of gasoline by a nickel each time, instead of a couple pennies.

What a great plan! They sure convinced me that pennies are worthless.

FELIPE NO

If you can't afford to drive, then you can't afford to drive. I don't think raising the price of gas 4 cents more at a time is going to change that fact. And even if some people have to sell their car and start walking, riding the bus, or finding other means of transportation would that not be better for the environment? The US STILL has WAY cheaper gas than most parts of the world.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by andkeener

If you can't afford to drive, then you can't afford to drive. I don't think raising the price of gas 4 cents more at a time is going to change that fact. And even if some people have to sell their car and start walking, riding the bus, or finding other means of transportation would that not be better for the environment? The US STILL has WAY cheaper gas than most parts of the world.

People often forget that the U.S. mass transit system is so inefficiently, that cars are still the backbone of travel. It may sound like those pennies are just so frivilous, but it is the difference between gas increasing 1 cent and 5 cents at a time. People could argue that there will be fewer five cent increases than one cent increases, but there will not be five times less increases :eyebrow:

A lot of people argue that Americans pay so much less for gas than it's international counterparts, but at the same time, they don't have many alternatives for travel. That is why Americans tend to consume three to four times more gas than people from other countries. I'll still argue that Americans could revert back to bicycles, but that is a very dramatic change, especially for the fattest country in the world

Jam it back in, in the dark.

They'd still just do increases in a few cents. Then once you got the total sum, rounding occurs if you're paying by tender (you can set yourself up to round down to save 2 cents!) or pay exactly by credit/debit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't like the notion of companies rounding to the nearest multiple of five. It just seems like we'd be messing with the mathematics of money. Would you want someone to round down your paycheck? We don't need a haypenny because it's a fraction. From what I've experienced, people don't like calculating in fractions, even ones as simple as that. Along the same lines, removing the penny might make math a little easier. This might lead to an overall dumber nation. On top of that, students might no longer learn the traditional math counting system considering that a large number of "real world" math scenarios involve money.

How ya doing, buddy?

Did you REALLY just suggest that taking the penny out of circulation might make people forget the number 1?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Acro-nym

On top of that, students might no longer learn the traditional math counting system considering that a large number of "real world" math scenarios involve money.

Because after the elimination of the half-cent, all of us suddenly forgot how to add halves.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm not saying they'll forget the number. Scores in games, the dollar, etc. are examples of it being used. No, I'm saying that teaching traditional math may be harder without the money-related examples, given that the monetary system would not be following the same rules.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Acro-nym

I'm not saying they'll forget the number. Scores in games, the dollar, etc. are examples of it being used. No, I'm saying that teaching traditional math may be harder without the money-related examples, given that the monetary system would not be following the same rules.

"If Johnny has 25 cents, and he takes away 3 cents, how many cents does Johnny have left?"

"If Johnny has 25 apples, and he takes away 3 apples, how many apples does Johnny have left?"

FELIPE NO

So, maybe it wouldn't be any harder to teach, assuming we just reprint math books substituting money word problems for some other kind. What do I know? No one answer that...

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Fatt

People often forget that the U.S. mass transit system is so inefficiently, that cars are still the backbone of travel. It may sound like those pennies are just so frivilous, but it is the difference between gas increasing 1 cent and 5 cents at a time. People could argue that there will be fewer five cent increases than one cent increases, but there will not be five times less increases :eyebrow:

A lot of people argue that Americans pay so much less for gas than it's international counterparts, but at the same time, they don't have many alternatives for travel. That is why Americans tend to consume three to four times more gas than people from other countries. I'll still argue that Americans could revert back to bicycles, but that is a very dramatic change, especially for the fattest country in the world

I agree. Five cents doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that five cents times thirteen gallons of gas equals sixty-five cents rather than twenty-six cents with only a two cent raise. My dad has to drive about forty-five minutes in order to reach his job. He's put in 17 years and he can retire with full benefits when he turns 50 (unless something very odd happens).

If the U.S. had better public transportation then it wouldn't be a problem. It doesn't, and I don't think a guy in his mid-40's wants to ride a bike up what could almost be a mountain at 5 a.m. for five days a week. Also, the town I live in is a small, dinky town where jobs are so limited that people are fighting to get a summer job at a fast-food restaurant.

I don't know, I think that oil companies are price-gouging b/c they saw how dependent we are on oil after the war started. For all we know, it could be like the diamond situation that was on 20/20 years ago. I just want to avoid as much price gouging and paycheck reduction--as someone mentioned earlier--as possible. I wonder how bad this would affect the price of stamps.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Acro-nym

So, maybe it wouldn't be any harder to teach, assuming we just reprint math books substituting money word problems for some other kind. What do I know? No one answer that...

You realise they re-issue math books a lot, right? At least if your school has ANY funding. Otherwise we'd have textbooks with "Yergi the russian communist leaves Moscow on a train bound for Siberia, where he'll be isolated for being an intellectual at 64 mph..."

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Something just dawned on me...

Has anybody ever seen the move Office Space? Pennies add up... Pennies ADD UP!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Fatt

Something just dawned on me...

Has anybody ever seen the move Office Space? Pennies add up... Pennies ADD UP!

I love that film! My boss at my main job let us watch it in his office during a slow day. I think two people from that movie also do voices for "King of the Hill". It's impressive to see how one misplaced decimal point in a software program could lead to thousands of dollars.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Visavi

I love that film! My boss at my main job let us watch it in his office during a slow day. I think two people from that movie also do voices for "King of the Hill". It's impressive to see how one misplaced decimal point in a software program could lead to thousands of dollars.

It's created by Mike Judge who created King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead. He also does the voice for Hank Hill. The guy who plays Milton in the movie plays Bill Dodrieve.

I say get rid of the penny, I don't like .99 ending prices. Make it end in a zero or five.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I would say keep the penny for a little bit longer. As the economy continues to change, the need of the penny will continue to decrease. In the meantime, reducing its production costs would be a viable temporary solution.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Just because the penny is eliminated doesn't necessarily that prices will suddenly occur in multiples of 5. Prices could remain as they are, it's how you pay that would be effected.

As for rounding it wont make much of a difference at all. If you round up at 2.5+ cents and round down at 2.4 - statistically speaking you're going to break even over the course of a lifetime.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Hotobu

Just because the penny is eliminated doesn't necessarily that prices will suddenly occur in multiples of 5. Prices could remain as they are, it's how you pay that would be effected.

What are you even talking about? How could prices remain as they are? How could you pay $.79 for a Snickers bar? You'd have to round up, which would cause you to pay more. Further, how would you receive your due change? If the pennies are removed, then the store would have no way of giving you what is owed. Functionally, you'd be paying $.80 for a candy bar while the store gets away with claiming that it costs less than that amount.

Quote:

As for rounding it wont make much of a difference at all. If you round up at 2.5+ cents and round down at 2.4 - statistically speaking you're going to break even over the course of a lifetime.

Technically, no. You'd lose in the long run.

How many retailers do you seriously believe will take the hit by setting prices that are rounded down? None will, I assure you. When a business stands to benefit from the extra pennies derived from rounding up, they will always give themselves that benefit. Once again, the lack of available percentages makes it all to easy to manipulate the price scales to the store's favor.

Here's an example. Gasoline is priced to include fractions of a penny. A typical price today would be $3.03.9, or three dollars and three and nine-tenths cents per gallon. Theoretically, you could purchase only one gallon and pay exactly the posted price, but you couldn't possibly receive that one-tenth of a penny that is due to you as change. We have no way to physically represent such a small amount. Technically, they owe it to you, but it's ultimately your loss. For every ten gallons of gasoline purchased, the station earns a free penny. Over the course of a year, that can really add up.

Your cost is rounded up by default, taking advantage of unrepresentable numbers. This is why eliminating the penny is a poor idea. Stores could continue to charge unrounded fractions, but there'd be no feasible way to deliver the remainders.

I am not an expert mathemetician or financial plotter, but I still carry concerns that eliminating the penny will result in hyperinflation of our economy.

Our current system is based upon a Base 100 set. A dollar is representative of 100 pennys. It is $1.00; this is how we mathematically represent it, using the Base 100 decimal system.

A system in which the nickel is the lowest denomination would be a Base 20 system, as there are twenty nickels in the standard dollar. The net value would be identical to one hundred pennies, but it would only require twenty pieces to achieve the same value.

Yet how do you accurately represent this in the current decimal system? Figures such as $1.65 seem simple enough, rounded out to the nickel, right? But hold on! Can't do that! You're technically saying that there's one-hundred sixty-five pennies involved, not thirty-eight nickels. The decimal system represents pennies, not nickels. Nickels are merely considered to be collective representations of five pennies, for purposes of quicker tabulation.

But suppose we abandon the penny and stick with a numerical representation that isn't entirely accurate anyhow. The nickel, essentially, becomes the new penny. It's the lowest figure by which prices may move. Therefore, whenever prices rise, they will do so a nickel at a time. This is a much more significant jump than a penny's increase. Once again, consider gasoline. It's alarming enough to see the price jump by several pennies in one week. Imagine the shock of seeing it rise by a nickel each time.

Unfortunately, the gold standard, the basis upon which our currency is given trade value, is based entirely upon the power of 1%. Internationally, the price of gold does not always remain rounded off to the nearest nickel. It rises and falls by pennies each day. In a given year, its value may experience, for pure example, a $0.23 gain.

Yet what happens when the value of gold is rising by percentages of one, while our prices increase by percentages of five? Inflation, that's what. The net gains of gold would be unable to keep up with the disproportionate cost increases in goods and services. Inflation weakens the American dollar, and it also cuts the net value of our gold reserve. We have to accept that gold is priced on an international market; if it's based upon domestic markets, our currency has absolutely no representative value overseas. Therefore, the system by which the price of gold rises and falls should dictate the system we use to represent our gold reserves. That system is a Base 100 set, not a Base 20.

"But gee, we eliminated the half-penny and did just fine." This is because the half-penny was a value that was, in fact, smaller than the lowest base increment that we use to measure the value of the gold reserve. We can safely eliminate those fractions and not jeopardize our system of representational values.

The penny is the most basic unit of currency we possess - it's the unit by which all other forms of our currency are calculated. Although it's not always a practical value, it's an essential value because all other values in our system can be converted to pennies. Yet it's also a small enough value that it allows much greater flexibility in our pricing system than having a nickel base would allow. There are far more options in a field of 100 than a field of 20.


I sincerely hope this makes sense to people. It's a difficult concept to convey, especially when supporters would negligently oversimplify their argument by saying that nickels are still negotiable in terms of whole dollars. Just because a dollar is divisible by both factors does not mean that is a proportionately even adjustment. The math is deceptive. It's fundamentally a poor basis for endorsing what boils down to American lazyness.

Unless the whole world is willing to adjust to a system in which .01% has no representable value, we cannot functionally abandon the penny. That's the simple fact of our global economic system.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Unfortunately, the gold standard, the basis upon which our currency is given trade value, is based entirely upon the power of 1%. Internationally, the price of gold does not always remain rounded off to the nearest nickel. It rises and falls by pennies each day. In a given year, its value may experience, for pure example, a $0.23 gain.

Yet what happens when the value of gold is rising by percentages of one, while our prices increase by percentages of five? Inflation, that's what. The net gains of gold would be unable to keep up with the disproportionate cost increases in goods and services. Inflation weakens the American dollar, and it also cuts the net value of our gold reserve. We have to accept that gold is priced on an international market; if it's based upon domestic markets, our currency has absolutely no representative value overseas. Therefore, the system by which the price of gold rises and falls should dictate the system we use to represent our gold reserves. That system is a Base 100 set, not a Base 20.

The United States, like most economically modern countries, hasn't been on the Gold Standard for years.

Maybe you should take an updated economics course

Jam it back in, in the dark.