Many countries eliminated their pennies without chaos or unfair burdens on shopkeepers. In Canada, the process was widely popular after the fact even though newspaper articles prior to the elimination intimated it wouldn't be due to their "both sides" style of reporting.

It's indicative of the current US administration that they managed to screw this up despite many examples world wide of how to do it properly.

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quickthrowman 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unfair burden?? I think you’re blowing this out of proportion..

Credit card fees are 2-4%. Rounding to the nearest nickel costs at most $0.02 (1,2 round to 0; 3,4 round to 5)

It is cheaper for the merchant to round to the nearest nickel for any transaction of one dollar or more than it is to pay CC merchant fees.

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bryanlarsen 13 hours ago | parent [-]

It costs on average 2 cents because without legislative authority to round to closest the retailer must round down and eat up to 4 cents of difference.

Cash costs retailers money too. Safely transporting it to the bank, et cetera. For many, cash is more expensive than credit cards.

	▲	zahlman 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Cash costs retailers money too. Safely transporting it to the bank, et cetera. Yes, and now they won't have to incur that cost for pennies.
	▲	ezfe 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They can reprice items to minimize rounding

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terminalshort 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you believe this is going to cause chaos or significant burdens on merchants I have got a bridge to sell you (but I don't take pennies). This quote tells you all you need to know.

> The government’s phasing out of the penny has been “a bit chaotic,” said Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents. The pro-penny group is funded primarily by Artazn, the company that provides the blanks used to make pennies.

	▲	zahlman 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The same thing happened many years ago with the same company (previously called Jarden Zinc). > Americans for Common Cents is a non-profit lobbying group dedicated to the protection of the one-cent coin. The group is primarily interested in preserving the penny for economic and historical reasons. In 2012, Executive Director Mark Weller was paid $340,000 by Jarden Zinc to discuss issues relating to minting with members of Congress and the US Mint.[41] Weller has acknowledged this funding, saying that “We make no secret that one of our major sponsors is a company that makes the zinc ‘blanks’ for pennies."[42] Weller has testified on multiple occasions before Congress. In 2020 Weller testified that the use of cash protects privacy, provides economic stability and "is a public good" that should not be replaced by mobile money.[43]

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zahlman 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> even though newspaper articles prior to the elimination intimated it wouldn't be due to their "both sides" style of reporting.

No idea what you're talking about here. This isn't a left-vs-right issue, and journalism gave the concerns approximately the attention they merited.

> It's indicative of the current US administration that they managed to screw this up despite many examples world wide of how to do it properly.

No, it's indicative of problems uniquely caused by existing American governance and law. When we did it, we didn't have an issue analogous to the one with SNAP payments described throughout the thread, because our welfare programs don't work that way and our legal code isn't designed to enable the same kind of future pedantry. Besides which, the Biden and Obama administrations (and others before them) didn't even attempt this as far as I'm aware, despite that the US penny being costly for quite some time. (As far as I can tell, the current cost is mostly not due to the cost of the base metal, which is almost all zinc since 1982. Checking commodity prices and doing some back of the envelope math, switching back to copper would cost them an additional two cents per penny.)