Businesses are running out of pennies in the US

7 pointsposted a day ago
by 1659447091
(bbc.com)

6 Comments

jleyank

a day ago

Canada got rid of the penny in 2013 and things continued as before. Exact prices when charging and rounded change when paying with cash. Which less and less people and vendors are using…. Several countries have considered going cashless, given the risks and inconvenience of carrying cash. The only reason to keep it is to be able to transact without the Net. None of which needs small change.

1659447091

a day ago

>>some cities, including New York, require retailers to give exact change and others don't allow cash payments to differ from card payments for the same item

The corner stores in some poorer communities are losing up to 4 cents a transaction because local (small government) laws that this country values (or valued or pretends to value when their influencers say so; depends on which way the wind blows now I guess).

Laws that dont allow being charged different. They are rounding down, to avoid lawsuits but I would guess it only takes one to cause a stink with that and put the store out of business.

If the corner shops have to close down, thats also those communities “grocery” store. They are not all walking around with smart/iphones/credit cards. Thats where this was shortsighted. Even the article says no one is really asking to bring the penny back.

bediger4000

a day ago

In February, President Donald Trump said producing the coin was wasteful and too expensive and called on social media to "rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time".

Some cities require businesses to give exact change. Other venues can't charge different amounts for card and cash. There's no rounding to the nearest nickel guides. A mess caused by the edict of a single, uninformed, man.

elmerfud

a day ago

What Trump says is not wrong, and because some local municipality has passed ignorant laws is not a reason to keep the penny around or to delay it's removal. Move fast break things I believe is the motto. But for being hacker news there seems to be a lot of stodgy people here when it comes to anything good that Trump wants to do. I suggest you go see what CPG Gray says about it to understand the real problem, which is the problem across lots of government.

Congress has the sole constitutional power to make money and set its value. What Congress did with this power was to abdicate it to the executive branch to determine the amounts thereof of the monies in circulation. So while you might want to scream "orange man is bad" which I do agree there has been several bad decisions, this one is because the absolute failure of Congress to do the job that it was empowered to do by the Constitution.

So put the blame we're blame exists. You get to re-elect a massive portion of those congressmen every two years. So you don't have to wait for the "bad orange man" to leave office. Most of what people cry about that Trump is doing is actually because all they seem to focus on is the president and never about the Congress which has abdicated its power in many places to the executive branch. Because Congress seems to have its sole focus on getting reelected and not actually managing the portions of government that they were empowered to do by the Constitution.

bediger4000

a day ago

Trump is wrong. Those cities and venues have the laws for a reason, their reason. We used to respect and desire small, local government. Now all power is concentrated leading to one size fits all solutions that don't work for everyone, and are promulgated with representation.

elmerfud

14 hours ago

You clearly didn't seem to read anything that I wrote, especially the point about where the constitutional power to make money and set the value comes from. Nor does it seem you understand anything about the Constitution itself. Because you cannot talk about respecting the power of small government and local governments while simultaneously ignoring the document that says any powers that aren't specifically listed here are granted back to the States.

So let me say this again, and maybe you can go look it up yourself, the Constitution gives the power to make money and set the value to Congress. Congress gave that power over to the president. There was a time early in the history where states and localities thought that they had the power to make money and it was a big confusing mess. Which is why the power was directly written in to the Constitution that the money is a federally governed thing.

So any state or locality that is trying to pass some law or ordinance overriding the making or setting the value of money is automatically wrong. You have representation the power is within Congress every two years you get to reelect around 60 to 70% of Congress. So stop complaining on hacker News and start paying attention to the congressional elections.