The Dutch and the Swedes have managed OK. If you go into a Dutch supermarket, things are still priced €0.99 - if you buy two such items, you pay €2.00 if you pay by cash but €1.98 if you pay by credit card , if you buy three items you pay €2.95 cash or €2.97 by credit card.
Your half-penny and farthing argument does not hold - banks did not handle these coins and computer systems would certainly have been challenged to display ½d and ¼d on statements - there were enough problems displaying "£" instead of "#". Finally, are petrol prices are quoted in units of €0.001 - they certainly are in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France (at least they were two weeks ago). -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Wade Sent: 10 September 2012 13:43 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:51889] Re: Minus the Penny, Please [email protected] wrote: > http://m.good.is/post/chipotle-ends-the-penny-before-u-s-mint-does/?ut > m_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews > We sometimes get the occasional suggestion over here to ditch the 1 cent coin, and I must say I am totally against the idea. When we dumped the old predecimal farthings (1/4 penny) and halfpennies, prices automatically dropped the fractional component. If you are going to display prices in centieuro (or centidollars) then you need a coin of value 1 cent, and resorting to rounding up or down only makes a very elegant decimal system based on 1/100 slightly less simple. You also open the door to price creep (yes, they may say they only round down, but they will end up increasing the displayed price to compensate). Then, what coins will we drop next ? Will we end up with a small range of acceptable values for cents, e.g. multiples of 25, and suddenly find we've transitioned from a decimal based to a fraction based (quarter) currency ? Not all proposed changes are necessarily good. The real problem with the US coinage is too few rather than too many coin types. You need a 2c and replace the quarter with a 20c and a 50c. By using this approximate binary multiple (each coin is twice the value of the lower one) you increase the number of coin types, but you decrease the average number of coins you need to use to make up any given amount. As an exercise, take all values from 1 and 99 and sum the number of US and Euro (*) denominated coins needed to make up each amount. The Euro denominations produce a smaller number of required coins for most of them. Have more coin types, and carry around less as a result. (*) not just Euro - our former punt had identical denominations, as does the current pound. -- Tom Wade [email protected]
