Write Your Congressman About Our Coins
It’s really easy to write to your congressman these days. Simply go to house.gov, enter your zip code, and click on the send email link (at least it was for MY congressman). So, here is what I wrote to mine this morning. Please join me in calling for the elimination of the penny, nickel, and quarter.
Congressman Wolf,
HR 5512 is considering coin modernization. Instead of merely replacing zinc pennies with steel pennies, I recommend eliminating the production of pennies, nickels, and quarters. Then continue production of dimes and half dollar coins.
Eventually, retailers will drop a decimal place from prices, such as from $14.95 to $14.9, and the penny, nickel, and quarter coins will be undesirable.
By discontinuing production of pennies, nickels, and quarters, we will save hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year.
Thank you,
Paul Douglas Boyer
MadMoneyMachine.com
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I think there is more involved in abolishing pennies than simply discontinuing their production. The sales tax where I live is 7%. I think you’d need a universal rewrite of the sales tax code (or whatever it’s called), as well. Something tells me that those in power wouldn’t choose to round it down, either.
Nope, it works both ways: WalMart is not going to round prices up from $14.95 to $15.0. They will mark them as $14.9. So in that case we save money.
If the gobmint stops printing pennies and nickels (and quarters), then stores will have no choice but to price things in only one decimal place. A 7% tax on $14.9 would be $1.0 (actually $1.043) but just like we now drop the .003 from the price, we would then drop the .043 from the price. Total price = $15.9
There is nothing in natural law that says we have to have two decimal places. I’m sure in Zimbabwe they’ve dropped decimal places by now (and probably even a few thousand numerical places as well).
Thanks for the comment bodotdot.