USA Today says dump the penny

Joe Fischer wrote:

in fact the reason the euro came to be is because people in
all the different countries were more willing to accept the
dollar more than a neighboring country's money.

Cute theory g. To which current euro countries exactly did that apply,
according to your opinion?

Christian

Ken Barr wrote:
Most of the xx.x9 prices would actually be rounded DOWN
to xx.x5 in that case. Standard marketing practices always
want thangs to be priced UNDER the next higher doller amount,
which is why you see thangs priced at $8.99 instead of $9.00.

You clearly are not a student of human nature.
If you think some greedy merchant is going to be willing to take a 4
cent loss, you are sadly mistaken.
Ridding the coinage system of the cent would be regressive and hurt the
poor.

"The Bobino" wrote in message
ups.com...
Ken Barr wrote:
Most of the xx.x9 prices would actually be rounded DOWN
to xx.x5 in that case. Standard marketing practices always
want thangs to be priced UNDER the next higher doller amount,
which is why you see thangs priced at $8.99 instead of $9.00.

You clearly are not a student of human nature.
If you think some greedy merchant is going to be willing to take a 4
cent loss, you are sadly mistaken.
Ridding the coinage system of the cent would be regressive and hurt the
poor.

It didn't in Australia.

--
Jeff R.
(keep floggin' that poor old nag)

The Bobino wrote:
Ken Barr wrote:

Most of the xx.x9 prices would actually be rounded DOWN
to xx.x5 in that case. Standard marketing practices always
want thangs to be priced UNDER the next higher doller amount,
which is why you see thangs priced at $8.99 instead of $9.00.


You clearly are not a student of human nature.
If you think some greedy merchant is going to be willing to take a 4
cent loss, you are sadly mistaken.
Ridding the coinage system of the cent would be regressive and hurt the
poor.

Excuse me, but have you EVER worked in the private sector???

It is a HUGELY competitive world out there and you damn well better do
whatever you can to be that little bit better than your competitors and
'schmooze' the customers at every opportunity if you want to survive and
thrive in it. Believe me, everyday micro-economic market forces will do just
fine in keeping prices under control if that monetary lint is no longer
foisted upon us.

--
___________________________________________ ____ _______________
Regards, | |\ ____
| | | | |\
Michael G. Koerner May they | | | | | | rise again!
Appleton, Wisconsin USA | | | | | |
___________________________________________ | | | | | | _______________

On Thu, lid (Christian Feldhaus) wrote:

Joe Fischer wrote:
in fact the reason the euro came to be is because people in
all the different countries were more willing to accept the
dollar more than a neighboring country's money.

Cute theory g. To which current euro countries exactly did that apply,
according to your opinion?
Christian

All. :-) This is a two-fold situation, all the
different countries had currency that fluctuated in
value against each other and against the pound and
dollar. Were there any other countries besides
Belgium where the currency failed (1960ish)?

This problem was restricted somewhat
until the wall came down, and may not have been
felt much by many citizens that were not involved
with commerce and trade across borders.

So a "common" currency was needed for
several reasons, increasing cross border commerce,
stable (win together, lose together) exchange rates,
and reduction of imported dollars (and pounds).
While the impression may be that the euro
was meant as simply a "common" currency, all
the reasons that made it more important may not
be obvious (like reducing the use of dollars).

Two thirds of US currency is still circulated
outside the USA (or lost or destroyed), sadly a lot
of this is probably due to the drug trade.
I think there was an effort by one of the
US Treasury Secretaries to weaken the dollar
against the euro, to stimulate US exports, but
that may not have been any better idea than
the misguided legislation to use the metric system
to stimulate sales of US cars abroad (nobody could
afford to drive a US car in Europe, gas has been
$3 a gallon there for a long time). :-)

The increased use of dollars in any country
that has it's own currency is a bad thing, governments
gain a lot by printing/minting their own money,
including pride and identity. And the US cent
helps preserve the faith and trust in the dollar,
A monetary system is more than just coins
and bills as an "anytime" medium of exchange
that is superior to bartering.

The euro is more than identity symbol,
it is an economic tool, more helpful to some countries
than others. But it takes some of the self government
away, and chances are there will be problems with
governments who have budget and trade deficit
problems.

Thank God the US doesn't have those
two awful problems. :-)

Joe Fischer

In article . com, "The Bobino"
wrote:

Ken Barr wrote:
Most of the xx.x9 prices would actually be rounded DOWN
to xx.x5 in that case. Standard marketing practices always
want thangs to be priced UNDER the next higher doller amount,
which is why you see thangs priced at $8.99 instead of $9.00.

You clearly are not a student of human nature.
If you think some greedy merchant is going to be willing to take a 4
cent loss, you are sadly mistaken.
Ridding the coinage system of the cent would be regressive and hurt the
poor.

I may not be a stoodint of human nature, but I do have
an MBA and spent several years in high-tech marketing.

Talk to a dozen marketing professionals, and ask them which
would be the best price for an item: $9.00, $8.99, $8.98,
$8.97, $8.96 or $8.95. About nine of them will say $8.99,
two will say $8.98 and one will say $8.95.

Talk to a HUNNERT marketing professionals and not a single
one of them will pick $9.00.

--
Ken Barr Numismatics
P. O. Box 32541 website: http://www.kenbarr.com
San Jose, CA 95152 (souvenir cards, MPC, Hickey Bros tokens)
408-272-3247 Next show: Fremont CC 07/28 - 29 (w/ Mac's Coins)

In article ,
Ken Barr wrote:

Talk to a dozen marketing professionals, and ask them which would be
the best price for an item: $9.00, $8.99, $8.98, $8.97, $8.96 or
$8.95. About nine of them will say $8.99, two will say $8.98 and one
will say $8.95.

Talk to a HUNNERT marketing professionals and not a single one of
them will pick $9.00.

You are probably correct, but if you're trying to show that rounding to
the nearest nickel will make more than a rat's ass worth of difference,
I disagree.

Repeated purchases of one item, priced in such a way that the item's
price, including sales tax, would always be rounded up would indeed
cause the consumer to lose.

But how many times do you purchase a single item? If all the items were
priced with a 9 at the end ($1.99 for example), you'd just have to buy
three items to have your total purchase price rounded down ($5.97 for
example). Sales tax, of course, obscures this even further.

I can't see how, in real life, rounding the total price to the nearest
nickel will make much of a difference. If we stop using pennies, the
savings are enormous--both the cost of producing the pesky things plus
the $65 million per year spent dealing with them at the point of sale.

Paul

--
Paul Anderson
OpenVMS Engineering
Hewlett-Packard Company

Jeff R. wrote:

You clearly are not a student of human nature.
If you think some greedy merchant is going to be willing to take a 4
cent loss, you are sadly mistaken.
Ridding the coinage system of the cent would be regressive and hurt the
poor.

It didn't in Australia.

It didn't in Europe either. (Well, in those countries where rounding
cash amounts is common.) And of course it does not necessarily mean that
the price of a single item has to be "adapted"; it is quite normal to
round the total only, and only if one pays cash.

Christian

Joe Fischer wrote:

On Thu, lid (Christian Feldhaus) wrote:

Joe Fischer wrote:
in fact the reason the euro came to be is because people in
all the different countries were more willing to accept the
dollar more than a neighboring country's money.

Cute theory g. To which current euro countries exactly did that apply,
according to your opinion?
Christian

All. :-)

From my experience, the answer comes much closer to "none" ...

People in what today is Euroland did not accept the US dollar more than
a neighboring country's money. Well, certainly not in France, Germany or
the Benelux countries. Of course a merchant who has the alternative of
either getting dollars for what he sells, or not selling what he would
like to sell, will prefer the former option. :-) But the same applies
to the currencies of the neighboring countries.

So a "common" currency was needed for several reasons, increasing cross
border commerce, stable (win together, lose together) exchange rates, and
reduction of imported dollars (and pounds).

What is certainly true is that the euro was created to have a single and
preferably stable common currency for the EU member states. The primary
purpose was to support the internal market and make deals/payments from
one member state to another easier.

The idea behind the euro has, from the early days (Werner Plan, 1970)
been to have one and the same currency in all member states. While that
was not possible, for various reasons, we did have the European Currency
Unit (1980-1998) and the exchange rate mechanism (where all member
currencies had fixed exchange rates within a certain fluctuation band).

You could invest in that currency unit (XEU) just as you could invest in
the mark (DEM) or can invest in the pound, dollar, etc. So all this has
been possible for a long time before the euro was "born" in 1999. What
the euro changed, apart from the aspects of monetary policy, was that
the fluctuation band was eliminated, and that "everyday" payments were
now possible in that new currency ...

Ah well, currency investors have a new option now. The Russian ruble
became fully convertible a few days ago g.

Christian

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:35:36 GMT, in (e) wrote:

that's why gas is always .9

Only since gas pumps had a calculating mechanism,
I can remember buying gas for 10 cents (even) per gallon,
but I had to use a handle to pump it out of the ground
into a glass container on top the pump, and then let
the purchased amount flow by gravity into the tank.

But there have been places where it was .4 or .6
for a while, it just wasn't worth the effort as no change
in sales was reported.

But even with a calculating mechanism, 10 gallons
comes out in even cents, the .9 is not an object in itself,
it is a way to avoid the next higher unit, especially if
that unit is a dollar, as 1.00 dollar looks a lot bigger
than 99 cents.

But gas at the present price will destroy the
economy of the whole world, whether that is the
objective or not.
Oil was $3 a barrel in 1970, and 25 times
that now, and nobody can afford to continue with
the same driving habits of yesterday.

Ideas of rounding legislation have been pretty
much abandoned, the objective now seems to be to
simply stop minting the cent.

Maybe the price of gas will force people to
spend all their cents, and Brinks will be busy
hauling cents back to the FRB, but the mint
doesn't have to buy them back, so the FRBs
will be stuck with paying the cost of storage. :-)

Like they were with the SAC and Suzy
for a while.

Joe Fischer