Re: OT: the euro & 01.01.02 (was NATLANG/FONT:)

I seem to be the only one in the world in favor of keeping pennies.  It
seems silly to have the smallest coin be worth 5 units and have all
other denominations multiples of this.  It would make more sense to
redefine the value of pennies to be five times their face value and work
up from there.  (Easier said than done, of course.)
-M

Padraic Brown wrote:
>
> Am 21.12.01, John Cowan yscrifef:
>
> > > Everything smaller than the dollar, except for one cent and half cent,
> >
> > Which were (and are, in the case of the cent) copper.  The other coins are
> > copper-nickel alloy, with the outer surfaces having enough nickel to
> > look silver; the dollar coin has some kind of veneer (brass?) that makes
> > it look gold.
>
> They are some kind of brass alloy. Most interestingly, they are
> clad sandwiches (like our other coins - if you look closely, you
> can see the middle layer, which is pure copper); and they have
> the same electrical properties as the earlier failures (the
> infamous SBA dollar), so that vending machines can accept both.
>
> > Canadian coins look essentially the same, but with different markings
> > on the faces, of course.  Nickel is ferromagnetic, and in the 60s
> > (perhaps still?) one could tell a Canadian nickel from a U.S. one
> > because the former, but not the latter, would stick to a permanent magnet.
>
> To my knowledge, Canadian coins are still (pure) nickel.
>
> > I think not, but it used to be common to price articles at 1 bit,
> > meaning you could pay for them with a dime and receive no change,
> > or with a quarter and receive a dime in change -- it balances out.
> > I remember being a child in the early 60s and not knowing what
> > "two bits" (a quarter) meant.
>
> The term was only a century out of date by then!
>
> > <rant>Pennies are a god-awful nuisance and should be abolished.
>
> Get on the bandwaggon! There have been some ideas kicked around
> COngress aimed at no longer making them.
>
> > We
> > spend a fortune in minting them every year, and most of them go straight
> > to coin jars and stay there almost forever.
>
> To be honest, they pay for themselves that way. It may cost half
> a cent to mint; but the fact that billions of them sit in jars,
> never being redeemed, means a positive sum in the Treasury's
> books.
>
> > It's only the fanatical conservatism of the U.S. in such matters that
> > keeps them in being at all.</rant>
>
> Actually, it's more like "typical American unwillingness to
> change". I think there must also be a dash of "no leadership
> amongst the leaders" in Government - i.e., they don't want to do
> anything more than maintain status quo, regardless of ideological
> bent. The same thing keeps us from the sensible discontinuation
> of the rag dollar and the sensible introduction of $2, $5 and
> possibly $10 coins. We are the only industrial country left with
> such a low valued paper note.
>
> Padraic.
> --
> Bethes gwaz vaz ha leal.

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