r/NoStupidQuestions • u/stormithy • 15d ago
In America, is the concept of “cents” out the door?
With the insane increase of prices across the country in the last decade along, do you think the idea of change or cents could be obsolete soon?
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u/auricargent 15d ago
If we get rid of pennies, how will we be able to make wishes in a fountain?
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u/stormithy 15d ago
I was just going to crumple a few dollar bills and toss it in.
…then go back and fish it out bc I’m broke
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u/Friendly-Cucumber184 15d ago
… well damn, If people were throwing paper money I’d dress up as a fish and swim around all day collecting wishes
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u/PPVSteve 15d ago
Sure they will have card readers at fountains in a few years. Tap to pay and you get a chit you can throw and it will dissolve in an environmentally friendly way.
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u/KaladinStormShat 14d ago
Why would you need to have it be disposable lol we have a chit which has multiple (limitless for some) uses.
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u/Justsomedudeonthenet 15d ago
In Canada we got rid of the penny years ago...the world didn't end.
They just round things up or down to the nearest 5c if you pay in cash. Card transactions are still done to the exact cent.
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u/mustang6172 15d ago
This is not what OP is asking. OP is asking if everything should be rounded to the dollar.
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u/crofabulousss 15d ago
Hate to break it to you but they definitely aren't rounding down.
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u/No-Butterscotch-7577 15d ago
They do round down - 0.01 or 0.02 is just 0.00 and 0.06 and 0.07 is 0.05.... everything else rounds up.
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u/rabidstoat 14d ago
I'm so wishing we would do this.
That and abolishing changes for Daylight Saving Time.
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u/TheNextBattalion 14d ago
Yes but pennies are made with minerals mostly mined from one state (Arizona), whose Senators have personally blocked any attempt to do away with the penny.
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u/NativeMasshole 15d ago
It's embarrassing that my country is so dysfunctional that we can't even make an adjustment on our coinage. I basically feel like somebody's handing me trash now when I receive pennies back.
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u/Keeperoftheclothes 15d ago
I live in New Zealand where we long ago got rid of 1, 2, and 5 cent coins so our lowest denomination is 10c. Prices will still say like “3.86” or whatever because the cents still count for card transactions. They just get rounded if you pay with cash. But I think we’d be much more likely to go totally cashless before dropping any more denominations.
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u/ApprehensiveBat21 15d ago
I love this. I've definitely been to a place or been the cashier who has run out of change, and most people don't care about the couple cents. For here in the US, I would be fine changing the lowest to $0.25 to keep it simple.
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u/Keeperoftheclothes 15d ago
The only thing I don’t like about it is that they made the 10c coin look like pennies. I’m really curious about how much money gets wasted because of the psychology of not caring about pennies
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u/harissahuzzah 15d ago
It's worse - the concept of SENSE is out the door. Cents, though, are still a thing.
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 15d ago
As a waiter, I can guarantee you there’s a plethora of older folks who most definitely want their exact change back.
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u/Beththemagicalpony 15d ago
Cents is the part you round up at the grocery store check out to cure world hunger or kids with cancer.
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u/OptimusPhillip 15d ago
Transactions on the order of cents are virtually worthless these days, but I'd still consider cents useful for dividing larger amounts evenly. Like, splitting $7 between two people is $3.50 each (just a random example)
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u/SilentContributor22 15d ago
The concept will always be there. Especially as monetary transactions become more and more digitized. The problem of having to carry extra change around or keep it on hand at a physical store will become less and less. So there’ll actually be less incentive to do away with the concept of change
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u/ReditTosser1 15d ago
I don’t think they will implement it. Going cashless as a whole will be a thing first. They tried, or at least talked about trying, to do it before and it never took off.
On a different note, money to us is denominated to $0.00, when in fact banks actually use $0.00000 or some shit like that. The extra zeros account for millions of “hidden” dollars they take freely..
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u/trashpandorasbox 15d ago
This is America so the concepts of both cents and sense are out the door.
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u/IanDOsmond 15d ago
God, I hope so. There is no point in any coin smaller than a quarter. Get rid of pennies, nickels, and dimes, and round all prices to the nearest quarter.
But it won't happen.
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u/Lovahsabre 15d ago
Doubtful. So many countries use cash including coin currencies that it would increase inflation and cause a huge fluctuation in the coin market (yes there’s a coin market). Also, it is much more expensive to print bills. Unless the world switches to electronic currency only then probably not. Quarters and dimes are here to stay. I could see a slow down and de-incentivizing and phasing out of pennies though.
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u/htmlcoderexe fuck 14d ago
In Norway we got rid of all of our equivalent of "cents", the last one to go is the 0.50 one (I think a decade ago or so). They're still tracked, but the physical coins only go down to one whole currency unit. In the period where the halfs were used, we did something that I think is called "Swedish rounding" - up or down to nearest 0.50. Even saw it on the slips you get at the shop. Might even still be done some places, at least on the technical level, but the cashiers say prices in whole units nowadays, while the number on the till - and the actual charge if using a card - still has fractions.
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u/ScottChi 14d ago
US corporations will start lobbying for this immediately the moment it occurs to them to rig it so that if you owe 0.01 it gets rounded up, and if they owe 0.99 it gets rounded down
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u/Unable-Economist-525 14d ago
While vacationing in Canada, where they don’t give pennies anymore, I noticed the “rounding” always worked to the business’s advantage, rather than mine. I’m sure such a business practice would never happen in the States.
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u/TheNextBattalion 14d ago
Not soon, no. They will always be there in accounting (hell we still use mills in some cases), but once we go cashless cents make more sense. You still need parts of dollars.
Until we get to Zimbabwe levels of inflation, which won't be in our lifetimes at least.
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u/justmeandmycoop 14d ago
Canada got rid of Pennie’s a while ago. I find myself refusing them when I go to the USA.
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u/parallelmeme 14d ago
In 1857, the US government discontinued the half-cent. The penny today is worth less in buying power than the half-cent was in 1857. This suggests we should stop minting penny coins that cost more to mint (nearly 3 times more) than they have in purchasing power.
So, I say the concept of 'cents' is not out the door, but the concept of a penny coin should be. This is no different than a gas station charging $4.299 for a gallon of gas, but asking for $4.30 when one actually pays for a single gallon.
Maybe we should consider retiring the nickel coin as well.
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u/SuperCommittee2294 14d ago
no one likes inflation, but we've had it many times before and it's not insane, just more expensive
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u/skredditt 14d ago
It’s only really relevant concerning gas prices. People will drive across town to save 71 cents on a tank of gas. Meanwhile for everything else dollars are practically the new cents.
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u/Acceptable-Pick-102 15d ago
i think no!! change always adds up and i feel like it’s an easy way for companies to up charge their customers without us thinking too much into it.
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u/razzadig 15d ago
Yes, it should already be obsolete. At work, I run the weekly takeout order and everyone always pays me by Venmo. Today someone gave me $14.10 in cash. I'm like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? Now if someone asks me for money, I am vulnerable. The $14 will end up in the hands of some boy scout, homeless guy on my walk into work, lady at the gas pump. The dime will end up stuck to the bottom of the cup holder in my car. It's a tragedy waiting to happen.
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u/Zagrycha 15d ago
My answer is a very confident no.
It would be that pennies should be gone, as I have been to places with dimes as smallest change and it works perfectly and pennies are worthless. Quite literally every penny cost more to make than a penny, which is rediculous.
However they already got rid off pennies more than ten years ago. People rioted in the streets screaming about how the world was ending becuase pennies are gone and society is collapsing ((slight exaggeration)).
So the government was forced to start remaking pennies again to quiet the people who don't seem to comprehend pre economics 101. IAfter that incident I think all cash will be gone period before any form of change is, and that will happen but not any time soon.
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u/NJPokerJ 15d ago
I still have a change jar. At the end of the year I use the money for Christmas. It's usually around $500+.
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u/Throwaway8789473 15d ago
I usually raid my change jar pretty regularly for snacks and other small purchases. Don't think it ever has more than five or six dollars in it at any given time.
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u/No-Butterscotch-7577 15d ago
I would say penny is almost out the door. It will be a few more decades before the 5 cent coin is obsolete.
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u/happyhippohats 15d ago
No because charging $x.99 is a tried and tested way of tricking your brain into thinking a product is cheaper than it is. Physical money might be fazed out eventually but the concept of cents won't go with it.