The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

Many are reporting this as if failing to mint new pennies each year is going to produce some kind of shortage. There are billions of pennies sitting in drawers or jars in homes across the nation (I certainly have one with about a thousand pennies in it).

I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.

Most of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change.

Personally, I think stores should just start setting prices to avoid the need for pennies, but that would be too easy, I guess.

Setting prices to avoid the need for pennies is probably technically challenging given the combination of requirements to post prices and sales taxes that don't always round the same way.

If the effective tax rate is 7.432%, you can price single items so that the price plus tax ends up in a multiple of $0.05, but if you get a purchase with multiple items, you either need to round somewhere or post prices that are like $9.346263437.

Imagine a world where they just posted the price you would pay at the register on the shelf instead of some number that is ~93.082% of the price you would pay.

I know it's hard to imagine the price on the shelf being the price that you pay, but I believe it is possible even in complex tax situations.

I live where there is no sales tax, so it's not hard to imagine!

But good luck convincing every state, county, municipality, and other weird governing body that requires something other than that and also collects a weird sales tax.

Or go with the solution that papers over all that nonsense: a flexible and maximum $0.04 per purchase discount.