Re: Zinc firm eager to keep pennies in circulation


"Richard L. Hall" <richlhall0@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message
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"Dr. Richard L. Hall" <richllh0@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"shreadvector" <fred.e.shecter@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Aug 20, 8:46 am, RWF <rwfemail2006-use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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DOMAIN-IN.SIG> wrote:
In article <iNqxi.58358$5j1.9...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
ster...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

"Michael G. Koerner" <mgk...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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stonej wrote:
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/198721/

ALL the more reason to 'de-politicize' our coins and banknotes.

Heck, I'd go all the way and give the 'Secretary' (Treasury
Department)
*FULL* latitude over ALL issues relating to our physical money,
including
but not limited to: 'what denominations should exist?', 'coin or
banknote?', 'composition?', 'dimensions?', 'obverse/reverse/edge
designs?', etc.

I do *NOT* like our current politically and lobbyist driven
cash.

Grrrrrrr...
Where are all these cents used ? I did some envelope
calculations. A
Wal-Mart that did 10,000 cash transactions a day, and forgave the
cents,
would lose $250.00/day or $ 90,000 a year. A thousand Wal-Marts
would lose
$90 million. Not small change. However they could calculate the
amount of
cents not used, notify the treasurer/US to stop making that many,
and ask
for half of the savings !

Dumping the one cent coin wouldn't result in "forgiving" the
difference. Retailers would round either down or up, which
would, on average over all transactions, cancel out the
difference.

The average taxpayer will lose 2 cents on every cash transaction -
figure 14 cents a week - $7.28 a year if just 1 transaction per day.
Now multiply that by 250,000,000 to calculate the total screwing the
public will receive at the hands of the "eliminate-the-penny" crew.
Don't kid yourself that merchants will won't figure out a way to screw
the public by rounding up either.
Another question to ask is why the feds let the dollar become so
valueless that people would even think of eliminating the cent coin.
It's a plot I tell ya, a plot!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Impossible and illogical. Cahs registers will automatically display
the amount due for cash transaction and the rounding will be done JUST
AS IT IS NOW for sales tax. There is no evil plot with sales tax
rounding and there will be no evil plot with roounding to the nearest
5 or 10 cents. It is already done in major coountries around the
world, so there is no need to make up false "horribilizations".
http://www.geocities.com/fredeshecter/rounding.pdf


You make the mistake of assuming that a sales tax will always be charged
on a purchase. That simply isn't so. In fact, there are more than 30
states in the U. S. that don't charge tax on various items such as food,
drugs, OTC meds, magazines, etc. In addition, there is a truth in
advertising law in the U. S. and the U. S. is a very litigious society.

Here's a simple scenario. A weekly supermarket circular advertises a
can of soup at 68c. Someone goes into the store picks up a can and
takes it to the checkout. The cashier says, "Cash, check or charge."
The person produces a dollar and the clerk says, "That'll be 70c." The
guy says it was advertised at 68c. An argument ensues and the guy
eventually pays the 70c. The next day, the store is hit with a class
action lawsuit claiming that the store violated the truth in advertising
law.

No store is going to want its clerks arguing with customers and no store
is going to want to fight a class action lawsuit (which often end up
more to the benefit of the lawyers than the consumer.) And no store is
going to stop advertising. So the general trend will be to price all
items at the nearest nickel. And since most prices in a supermarket are
of the $x.x9 variety, the rounding is usually going to be up. In
addition, someone is going to have to pay to modify the cash registers
to do the rounding. And you can bet that that cost will be passed on to
the consumer.

Even if it only costs a typical family $25 per year in increased grocery
costs, with 120 million families in the U.S., that comes to $3 billion
per year. All so the mint can save a paltry $8 million!?

I think you'd serve your cause better if you stop arguing that it isn't
going to cost the consumer anything. Only a fool would believe that.

I am going to sign up tomorrow for foolhood then. Pointed cap, the whole
schmeer.

You don't have to wait until tomorrow. You've succeeded tonight.

Sure, one item costing 68c in a non-tax state will cost you 70c if you
pay in cash. But the guy who drives to the store to buy just that one
item has incurred enough transportation expense to make the two cents
totally insignificant.

Stupid comment. The issue is not transportation costs but class action
lawsuits. If a lawyer can make a million dollars or so by such a suit why
would he worry about the few cents it cost him to drive to the store. In
my neighborhood, the stores are close enough to walk to.


By the way, does research actually show that "most" supermarket prices
end in a 9 as you claim? Next time I'm there, I'm going to do a quick
scan of things that I regularly buy and find out if that statistic has
any validity whatsoever. Unless, of course, you can point me to a
scientific study of same.

In my supermarket they do. I would estimate by looking at the prices that
about 90-95% of all the regular prices in the store are of the form $x.x9.
I found 2 boxes of organic cereal at $4.61 and another at $5.08. And a
handful of prices ending in either 0 or 5. But there were not very many
exceptions to the $x.x9. In the local 7-11 it goes up to about 99%.


And if true, there will only be a *one*-cent loss on "most" single-item
purchases.

I buy about 50 items a week. So if I lose 1c per item that's 50c per
week. Multiply that 52 weeks and that comes to $26 per year. Right on my
estimate. And I'm single. Take a family of 4 and it gets much worse.


Finally, the computers of every supermarket that puts things on sale have
to be modified every time that happens, so in the light of that I doubt
very much that the cost of algorithm modification will be significant,
plus it will be a one-time cost, even if it is.

Another stupid comment. Obviously you don't know the difference between
modifying a data base of prices and modifying the software or hardware to
accomplish the rounding algorithm for the total price.

James the Dunce
You got that part right.

Your early resort to ad hominem shows that you have run out of fresh ideas.
I wasn't expecting to take down a Ph. D. so quickly.

James


.

Relevant Pages

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