Re: Monetary units (was: Types of numerals)

John Vertical wrote:
> I dunno about hostility, but I can understand the annoyance. Imagine if
> you had one-thousandth coins instead; would you agree that minting those
> would be a complete waste of material and effort? You'd need dozens
> before you could spend them on anything.
> Now, with pennies, the only difference is that you'll need a ten times
> smaller pile before they're worth anything. A single penny is still
> essentially government-produced scrap metal by itself... except maybe to
> little children, who might be happy to find one on the ground and be
> able to go buy one gummibear.
I quite agree that eventually we will have to abandon the penny, I just
don't think we're quite there yet.  It certainly wouldn't be a problem
if we did drop them, I just don't think it's necessary.  And they're
still useful for charities, which often have boxes by sales registers
that people can drop change in.  Pennies provide a surprisingly high
percentage of the money they take in.  I can't remember the figure right
now, but I believe it was almost 20%.

A mil coin ($.001) would almost certainly be impossible to produce today
for less than $.001, but they did exist in earlier times, used primarily
for sales tax purposes, at a time when the dollar's purchasing power was
less than 10 times its present value, making those coins less valuable
than current pennies.

> Hm, here in Finland all displayed prices include the sales tax, so that
> problem doesn't exist.
I imagine there's a single nationwide sales tax, though?  In the US,
many cities have their own sales tax, so it'd be a headache for
retailers to have to have different prices in different cities to
account for sales tax.