The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything.

Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a choke-hold on retailers, and the whole thing is basically a scheme that funnels money from the poor to the wealthy via interest and fees on the consumer, interchange fees, and rewards programs.

> The Coca-Cola Company sought ways to increase the five cent price, even approaching the U.S. Treasury Department in 1953 to ask that they mint a 7.5 cent coin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_price_of_Coca-Cola_from_...]

The obvious way to raise the price by 50% is to cut the amount by a third, selling 4.33oz Cokes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BottleDigging/comments/1kng6aq/coca... suggests that Coca-Cola was comfortable producing bottles in several different sizes.

Now, a 4 1/3 oz Coke is obviously too small to be worth bothering with. But that's also true of a 6 1/2 oz Coke. These sizes seem more like something you dispense with an eyedropper than something you drink. A normal can is 12 oz! Who'd want to buy a six-ounce beverage?

You can address both problems at once by doubling the price and increasing the volume all the way up to 8.67 oz.

Funny story, Coca Cola just announced thin 7.5oz cans last month, to be available in January.

Shrinkflation is often done by phasing out an old size, often by jacking up the price first to aid the sales of the "family size" version on its way out, and then introducing a "New" size that's just a bit smaller.

But even if there had been, an 8oz can is 23% bigger than a 6.5oz bottle. 6.5oz is ludicrously small. How did that become a commercial size in the first place?

As far as I can tell, a juice box today is 6.75oz, but you buy them in bulk and they're not actually large enough to be good for a small child's lunch.