We don’t care about pennies, even the government doesn’t care about pennies. Now give us some good sasha gray content, she’s playing my favorite video game right now.
Obligatory CGP Grey
Let’s kill the nickel and dime, while we’re at it
There are enough in circulation that nobody will miss the lack of printing for decades
I work at a bank, and people are trying to buy all of our pennies as collectors and leave none for the people who are actually going to use them. it’s a clusterfuck lmao
The penny died pretty quick in Canada, I would argue and say it’ll be gone within 3 years, tenders will just round up/down the total and no longer hand them out.
It reminds me of a popular misconception about Earth and our atmosphere and climate.
A lot of the people who advocate for the environment believe that reduction in trees will jeopardize our oxygen and that we’ll run out of breathable air at some point.
The problem is actually that trees capture and hold carbon, the danger to the environment is almost strictly just the release of excess carbon.
If we lost every last tree and phytoplankton bloom in the world, we would still have enough breathable oxygen to last potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, with some estimates depending on a lot of complex factors, saying that some level of of population density could stay alive for millions of years.
(Edited figures)
Some of you dummies think I’m saying climate change isn’t a concern. You needa learn to read.
That seems off
Where are you getting this millions of years number? Seems really unrealistic considering millions of humans live at altitude and have barely enough oxygen in the air as it is
I rechecked, I will revise it, there are some huge variables and nobody can really agree. It would likely be anywhere between thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, but I have seen some people confidently state that if we’re not running industry and most sea life dies rapidly that it could potentially be millions of years but the carbon/oxygen cycle is wildly complicated so it’s still a pretty hard idea to calculate.
This exchange talks a lot about how different variables can wildly swing the results. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/46125/how-long-could-earths-oxygen-supply-last-if-no-new-oxygen-were-produced
Now do daylight savings!!
They tried in Ohio. They couldnt stop running over kids waiting for the bus in the morning dark so it was reverted.
Exactly. Fuck DST.
No one can agree on which time to use so time change will never go away. It’s really annoying. I don’t give a shit which we use, just toss of the ducking time change. It’s 1 hour, people gotta chill.
I say we compromise and just shift to the half hour in between then. What a stupid disagreement
Yeah why not. Anything is better than this dumb time change
Sunset at 5pm sucks, it feels unnatural, let it be dark early in the morning idgaf I want the sun to be out when I get off work
I agree with you but also I don’t care anymore lol. I just want the change gone. No one agrees on which though. Someone needs to just flip a coin and we all get used to it and adjust
Someone else mentioned children waiting for the bus get run over at a much higher rate if it’s dark early in the morning, which is a pretty valid argument
That being said, I’d much rather it get dark later in the day
Fuck at this point does it even matter? The time change is bullshit on a baseline so long as it’s done on the state level it shouldnt be too bad since eventually one of them will probably win out.
I am a champion of the idea of keeping daylight saving over standard time but I am more and more starting to think that the time change is the best compromise we are going to get with the people who insist on getting to work at 8am in the light.
Let’s look at NY city.
June 21th longest day, sunrise is at 5:24 am (Set 8:31 pm)
December 21th longest night, sunrise is at 6:42 am (Set 4:32 pm)
If you got rid of daylight savings time then the sun would rise at 4:24 am in June and set at 7:31 pm.
(Most people in NY probably want the extra hour of light at 7:31 pm instead of 4:24 am)
If you kept permanent daylight savings then the sun would rise at 7:42 am in December and set at 5:32 pm)
(Most people in NY probably want some light before 8 because it’s going to be dark after dinner anyways)
So many people are awake before 8 am compared to 5 am
So many people enjoy the light at 7:30 pm in the summer
Switching really is the sweet spot for NY
Location is definitely important too in hating or liking DST
Ontonagon, Mi sun sets at 5:25 pm tonight (7:58 am rise)
Dexter, Me sun sets at 4:10 pm tonight (6:33 am rise)
Same time zone, both northern cities.
If we didn’t get off DST Ontonagon wouldn’t see the sunrise until almost 9 am today
People in Dexter might have preferred to stay on DST getting light between 7:33 am to 5:10 pm today
The farther west you live in a time zone the less you like DST generally. Farther east, the more you like it.
Ontonagon is so west it should really be in Central Time zone.
If that was the case then the sun would set at 4:25 pm tonight (6:58 am rise) (basically Dexter ME times)
At that point they might want to stay on DST and it would make it exactly what it was today, sunset at 5:25 pm tonight (7:58 am rise)
I live both north and east of NYC, I want the later sunlight in summer and winter. The first hour of light is wasted on me and many others. Farmers maybe not, but around here that’s pretty much over by late October anyway.
I’ve also lived at the most extreme opposite end of the Eastern time zone in Michigan, and like the late evening sunlight even more!
They tried permanent DST in the '70s for a few years. People hated it so much we went back to switching the clocks.
I just think humans don’t work well with such a sudden change even just 1 hr. Maybe there’s a way we could add/remove a minute every day over two months or something lol
Programmers would be on suicide watch if we did that
As I was typing it I was trying to figure out how it would work on electronic devices and my head exploded. Let alone just your everyday clock.
Just get rid of half of it. I love “fall back.” I hate “spring ahead.”
I like it initially, but after a couple weeks I want to die. Walking out of the office into cold darkness at 4-4:30pm is soul crushing.
Fall back every year! Yes! No spring forward!
One of the only things the Trump admin is doing that I actually agree with and have since I was a child. Fuck coins in general but getting rid of the most dead weight coin of them all is a step in the right direction.
I agree getting rid of the penny is a good thing, but it’s really bad that this is setting a precedent to give the president a lot more power
It’s also a really poor implementation considering the government has given no guidance on how businesses must handle it
Note that the legal framework for phasing out the coin is entirely absent. This was an illegal act as well because only Congress determines what money exists and will be used according to the Constitution.
the constitution hasnt mattered for over 20 years now, glad your finally waking up to that fact now though
It still exists and can still be used. They’re just not making more of them.
You’re missing the point because they didn’t use precise language
Congress establishes what coins and bills are to be minted. The executive branch executes that directive. Congress has directed the executive branch to mint pennies. The executive branch determined 0 is a number of pennies to mint. The Mint is not minting pennies, despite congress directing them to do so
If the president is allowed to interpret laws congress passes so broadly, it gives an incredible amount of power to the executive branch. Historically, the president hasn’t been given nearly that level of authority
It’s illegal because congress said to mint pennies, but the executive branch is not minting pennies
The mint doesn’t continuously produce all coins at all times. They produce them in response to coinage needs.
Most people are using bills or digital payments, so coinage is down across the board. Inflation means the penny is worth so much less that it’s infrequently used, so there’s no point in minting new ones right now. If there is a need, they’ll start minting again.
Manufacturing capability is not the problem, the problem is executive overreach in every aspect of our nation and lack of consequence for those breaking the law.
More to the point, it isn’t sensible.
A penny lasts decades as a tangible item of currency. I have pennies in my change purse right now that were struck in the 1960’s.
The value isn’t in how much it costs to make it but in how long it lasts as usable token of trade.
At this point most people just throw pennies away. At best they’re being saved in a change jar to be brought to the bank. Almost no one is using pennies for payment of goods and services. It’s a useless waste of money to produce and congress should have gotten rid of them decades ago
The only issue here is that it isn’t congress getting rid of it. It’s the president taking power from congress to get rid of it
How long it lasts as a usable token of trade
So it’s still worthless. Genuinely, what can a penny purchase? A nickel? A dime? None of these coins can buy something individually, and a large chunk of the population doesn’t carry them because the utility they gain for having exact change is less than the coins are worth
To be clear, I understand the coins vs. bills argument, but I’m personally in favor of cutting all coins up to the quarter. Or cutting all coins except dimes and half dollars, but dimes are annoying coins
I prefer redecimalization. Just redesign money with a zero chopped off. Also get rid of the $1 bill and replace it with a coin. This would make the coins represent the current value of 10c, 50c, $1, $2.5, (maybe $5), and $10, with bills for $20, $50, $100, $200, and $1000. Bills would be representing amounts of money that while commonly exchanged, isn’t actively everyday transaction amounts, those would be represented by coinage.
It’s similar to the current situation with yen, where usually you’re rooting in your pocket to pay for something small, not opening your wallet. Though for the life of me I can’t understand why the 1¥ coin remains
I appreciate trying to save resources here, but Americans are way too fucking stupid for that to work, amid a myriad of other issues I see with this
They’d get over it. Just give it a new name and they’ll figure it out eventually.
I’m sure there will be some holdouts, but that’s not exclusive to Americans.
That’s not what decimalization means. We’re already on the decimal system, it’s not possible to decimalize again.
You’re thinking of revaluation
It just don’t make no cents.
Yeah, but like, is it a valuable token of trade? It’s 1c, yes that’s money, its a whole percent of a dollar, but it’s illegal in most of the country to pay someone less than 12.5 of them per minute of labor, an unlivably low wage. The $15/hr wage is increasingly normal for low skilled labor and is a quarter a minute. A quarter is great as you don’t need to fill your pocket with it to buy something from a vending machine. Ok that’s not the most honest comparison as vending machines haven’t taken pennies in at least a decade. It’s a denomination sufficiently small to cause a lot of people to just not bother with them, they just aren’t worth the time to use them or keep track of them.
Pennies are produced and put into circulation, but people are not saving them and exchanging them for dollars, and they don’t spend them again. They are constantly being produced and lost. Maybe in the 1960s people felt the need to gather their pennies for reuse but not today.
I guess. It all depends on whether or not you can afford to igonore pennies.
If I can not have to break down a dollar bill by fishing 54 cents - two quarters and 4 pennies out of my change purse, I’ll do it.
I’ve found that it’s when people break bigger bills down, that smaller notes tend to disappear faster.
This is what the term “nickel and diming” is about… It’s getting you to give up more money in total by taking smaller amounts more often.
It is a thing that’s real.
The flip-side of that is what happens with getting paid daily, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. It’s the day labor that ends up constantly skint, because they weren’t dealing with large whole number balances. Even getting paid weekly, I was saving less than when I went to every two weeks. Now that I’m self-employed, I choose when to bill, and I do so monthly. Get BIG checks and sink it all straight into savings. Because I am paid every 4 weeks, I have to change how I spend and spend less and save more. LOTS more.
Pennies count at that point. Critically.
I’ve yet to earn more than 35k in a year - (and that was years ago) - and the biggest thing is havng a balance and seeing that numnber in the savings account rise. I have found that sticking to large lump sums - psychologicaly, you want to hold onto it more and it does change how you aproach savings and money in general.
I can take a couple hundred dollar bills and slip them into a book on the shelf and they’ll sit there for months before I dig them out. I can try the same thing with 5 20 dollar bills and they’re usually gone within a week.
Yes and it needs to be done legally. Granted though it needs to be at least 5x as long as other currency. Its not that I don’t think the penny should be taken out as much as it should be done appropriately.
You can also still pay in pennies with a credit card. Everything is so stupid.
Soon:
A: “Penny for your thoughts” B: “Lol, okay Gen Z”
I’d give my two cents but I guess they’re just gonna go up in collector value possibly
We have enough pennies in circulation that your great-granddroids are going to be digging them out of the couch cushions of the ruins of homes for decades.
What a boomerism
Well I guess it’s time to start making ass nickels.
Abolishing the USD cent comes way too late.
Was abolishing the half penny in 1857 a good idea? If so, then abolishing the quarter would be a good idea today. It has about as much buying power as the half penny did in 1857.
Yeah, but honestly getting rid of coins is an admission that inflation is high relative to 40-50 years ago. When pretty much every government wants to keep that fact out of the public consciousness. Especially the current US government who wants to both claim we don’t have inflation at all, and are the ones getting rid of the penny.
I’ve been saying we should drop the penny for almost 2 decades, but I still kind of look at getting rid of the penny as a sign of our current government’s abysmal handling of inflation.
So I don’t know the term for it, maybe it’s just propaganda, but a quarter feels like it has value.
The penny however doesn’t have that feeling. Vending machines often say “No Pennies” and toll booths say “No Pennies”, even though the Penny exists everyone sorta already agreed the Penny wasn’t worth the hassle.
I think you could probably convince people the same is true for the nickel. Although eliminating just the nickel is tricky since you’d keep the dime and quarter and that divides weirdly. So you should also remove the dime but that now really starts to feel like it had value.
But the quarter. That would be a hard sell. You’re basically eliminating all coins at that point. Unless you plan on making the half dollar wayyy more popular.
When we got rid of the half penny it was worth more than what dimes are worth now. Quarters are the only useful coin. We should be rounding all transactions to the nearest quarter.
Logically I completely agree. I just don’t think you could convince the US as a whole that’s the way to go.
Should just have dimes.
$1.1 $1.2 $1.3
There’s no reason to break our currency into thousandths. Hardly a reason to break it into hundredths.
Could keep quarters to keep hundredths
Transactions already need a nickel to do 5 cents. So requiring a quarter to do 5 cents isn’t crazy.
Say you have to pay $1.05
Dollar and 3 dimes, quarter in change.
$1.15
Dollar and a quarter, dime in change.
But I think just dimes are needed
Just dimes would probably work logically, but it would feel too weird. If you’re going just dimes, you probably just want to go all in and say no coins.
50 cent piece would be the way to go. Should then also really push $1 coins, and add in a $2 and $5 coin, although I don’t know if Americans would realistically use them. Coins are much more durable than paper currency though, which would save a lot of money long term
I mean the dollar coin never caught on. I know we still printed the dollar bill, so maybe you could force it by halting the dollar bill. But overall I don’t think new coins are the answer.
Based on one source, Cash is only ~20% of transactions. Maybe it will always be 20% or maybe it will be smaller and smaller as time goes on.
I think you’re better off eliminating current coins.
Paper dollars make no sense either.
I feel like we should be normalizing $1, $2, and $5 coins at this point. I know $1 coins exist, but nobody uses them. If I drop a $1 coin in a tip jar, people say sarcastically “thanks, that 25 cents will go a long way” because they think it’s a quarter.
Canada has $1 and $2 coins, but it’s all irrelevant as 99% of transactions are digital tap cards.
Canada was a decade ahead of the US when it came to implementing tap. It’ll take the US a long while to get to the same level of universal acceptance, starting from so far behind
It’s about damned time. We honestly should have nothing smaller than quarters right now, going by the same logic as discontinuing the half-penny forever ago (which had more equivalent purchasing power than the dime does now).
Good, while we’re at it we should redecimalize. A coin that can’t pay for a significant portion of something is worthless. People used to buy snacks with coins, and like, thats where they thrive. Coins are more expensive than bills but they can change hands a lot more times. A dime for a soda or a cheap snack, maybe a nickel if it’s a good deal on a bag of chips is about right.
Like, this isn’t even a monetary policy failure, it’s just something that should happen every century or two in an inflationary economy with a 5% target.
The rule should be “if you pay with it at a restaurant it should be a coin” because it represents a daily use rather than weekly or monthly and much higher levels of wear and tear.
If not for credit cards we’d probably need $10 coins.
Zimbabwe has entered the chat
Those $100,000,000,000,000 bills are fire!
Fuck pennies. Even back in the 90s, it was annoying to receive.
Pennilesspennyless bastards!That final penny struck is going to sell for a shit ton of money.
I’ll buy it for two pennies. That’s 100% profit for the seller.
CGP Grey must be doing the crab dance
well, he also asked for the death of nickels and dimes, so maybe not yet
John Green, too.
I knew i was forgetting someone who asked Obama about the penny, couldn’t remember who
