The problem in Euroland is not that the 1c and 2c coins are too large they are annoyingly small. In contrast, the British 1p and 2p are annoyingly large.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John M. Steele Sent: 10 September 2012 16:12 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:51890] Re: Minus the Penny, Please We actually have a 50¢ coin. It weighs as much as two quarters and seems a little large. It is not very popular, therefore, not much circulated. I wonder if your criteria should be the number of coins or the weight of the coins to make up each amount, or else the bulk of the coins. I think the bulk and weight annoy me more than the number. It is not necessary to drop the fractional part of a unit price (witness gasoline/petrol). Simply round the extended amount to the available currency. Overall, both our governments cause perpetual inflation and on average, prices creep upward. Whether or not they use penny elimination to try to hide it will not affect whether it occurs. We have had enough inflation that we could eliminate both the penny and the nickle and use decidollars. If we keep going, we could use whole dollars like the Japanese use yen. We never had a farthing to abandon, and our prices creep up (and package size shrink) too. --- On Mon, 9/10/12, Tom Wade <[email protected]> wrote: From: Tom Wade <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51889] Re: Minus the Penny, Please To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, September 10, 2012, 8:42 AM [email protected] <http://us.mc1849.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]> wrote: > http://m.good.is/post/chipotle-ends-the-penny-before-u-s-mint-does/?utm_medi um=referral <http://m.good.is/post/chipotle-ends-the-penny-before-u-s-mint-does/?utm_med ium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews> &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] <http://us.mc1849.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected]>
