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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

(www.cnn.com)
349 points andrewl | 6 comments | 12 Nov 25 16:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.726s | source | bottom
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hrimfaxi ◴[12 Nov 25 16:17 UTC] No.45901988[source]▶
I watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.
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basscomm ◴[12 Nov 25 16:31 UTC] No.45902153[source]▶
> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them

It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.

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1. Retric ◴[12 Nov 25 16:47 UTC] No.45902379[source]▶
I’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
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2. Symbiote ◴[12 Nov 25 17:49 UTC] No.45903246[source]▶
In most other countries, since prices are shown including all taxes you can often have the money ready while waiting in line etc.
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3. guntars ◴[12 Nov 25 18:19 UTC] No.45903729[source]▶
Another aspect of the idiotic "we don't know what your tax is going to be" system (they do know it, actually) is that prices will typically end with .99 and the tax will push it over the next dollar and cause a bunch of change to be returned, instead of a single penny.
4. dylan604 ◴[12 Nov 25 18:49 UTC] No.45904210[source]▶
> but not waste time during a retail transaction.

we could just go back to writing checks while we're at it.

5. zahlman ◴[12 Nov 25 20:10 UTC] No.45905766[source]▶
It's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing.

I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.

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6. Retric ◴[12 Nov 25 20:24 UTC] No.45906005[source]▶
Wasting people’s time is rude here not illegal.