... an issue solved in NZ by a process that so far as i can tell goes something like this: product cost x. nearest round number above x is y. if we sell it as y and treat that as the after tax value, then deduct the tax from it, we get z money. if z is greater than x by enough to cover costs and make profit, then price the item at y. otherwise repeat with different y value.
it's probably nothing of the sort, but it sure seems like it given the tendency of customers to just hand over 20 dollar notes and not get change unless they bought a whole bunch of little things. even then it's not unusual to get a 'buy three and get a dollar off' deal to end up with round numbers again.
of course, y can't be too large compared to the actual value of the item, so you do still get oddly priced things... but they're typically things you wouldn't just buy individually, and the total gets rounded to the nearest 10c if you pay cash anyway... and people tend to use debit cards for buying expensive stuff (as opposed to lots of less expensive things)...
all of which comes down to 'yeah, most of the time your change is going to be in coins worth less than a dollar, especially as you'll tend to pay for things where it otherwise might not be using the dollars in the first place'
of course, again, the fact that the NZ dollar is worth less than the US dollar plays a part here.
(i kinda wondered why, when they ditched the 5c coin here, they didn't just revalue everything so our old 10c became a 1c, $1 became 10c, and $10 became $1. they replaced everything but the 1 and 2 dollar coins over the course of a couple of years Anyway, all sorts of things track fractions of cents electronically already even if transactions beyond tax, interest, oil, and exchange rates don't tend to Use them... so why not? would make more sense.
probably would have been a bigger deal to make the changeover if they had though... and odds are good that we'll end up losing the 10c to inflation within the next 30 years (if the loss of the smaller coins is anything to go by)... meh *shrugs*
... good grief, do you people not understand the concept of a wallet?
or has some bit of madness lead to wallets with No Coin Compartment?
if so, there's a nice niche market for someone to exploit. just... don't do the standard thing of putting divisions and such in the coin section... all it does is cause them to get stuck or end up down the sides and falling out when you open it. (usually a side effect of the zip starting somewhere on the bottom, going all the way up the side, over the top, back down the other side, and under the bottom edge again, leading to a need to have something to stop the thing just hinging open completely and dumping all your coins on the ground. there's gotta be a better design than this though.)
swiss silver is good. worth too much to be practical for regular small transactions without eliminating all the factors that go into ensuring that it actually is what it says it is, purity wise, but a good basis.
(the main reason anyone makes a 'profit' on silver, by the by, is massive inflation of the 'currency' used to buy and sell it. the rest is increasing demand for it's practical applications.)
i believe the standard solution to this was to either implement a system of paying tips using a debit card at the door on the way out, or do like a lot of 'not the USA' countries do for restaurants, and just pay the staff in question properly in the first place, increase the entry fee and toss the practice of tipping all together.
Re: Get rid of the $1 bill, the penny and the nickel.
to be fair, New Zealand originally had 1, 2, and 5 cent pieces as well. inflation's just rendered them all but valueless and debit cards etc cover all the issues where they matter, so they became a needless expense and were discontinued.
(oh: it kinda helps that our central reserve bank is an actual government entity, not independent. it's separate, so far as i can tell, in the same way the judiciary is separate, but it's still a government entity. 'course, the coins are still minted in canada these days.)
Re: Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
should be noted, we did the same thing as the Australians with our bills.
what you'll find tends to happen is that people very quickly get in the habit of actually Using their change rather than hording it. (mind you, here abouts if one got dollar notes at the rate one gets dollar coins... let's just say it's fairly common for people to walk around with a couple of hundred dollars in $20 notes in their wallets. that's a Full Wallet. add in all the ones and twos one would have that are in coin form in a separate section of one's wallet (and don't have to Bend!) and it starts getting quite ridiculous.
of course there's also plenty of people who walk around with no cash on them at all and just their debit card.
a mixture is more likely, mind you.
only time i see the sort of numbers of coins people are complaining about here is in a shop's till. no one Actually carries that many (or pays someone in single dollars when a stack of 20s and 50s makes more sense.)
Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
good lord. you consider something maybe two centimeters across and certainly less than 5mm thick 'big'? a screwed up note is bigger! I'd dread to see what you'd have thought of our old 50c coins here... or pound coins. (or our two dollar coins which are a bit bigger)
mind you, if they're proposing dollar coins that actually ARE impractically large, then whoever's proposing it needs a quick whack around the head and to be replaced for their trouble.
or, you know, make them out of a different metal like most sane places so they are an entirely and noticeably different colour and weight.
or punch a hole in the middle like some places do... then, hey, don't even need a wallet. a bit of string'll do the job!
seriously, they don't have to be That different to tell them apart. (also note: the other way to make the weight difference more obvious is to issue new coins for the lower values as well, which are Lighter. NZ did this recently. this lets you make your dollars lighter as well while still being noticeably heavier than your cents. not that NZ did that bit. our dollar coins aren't that heavy to begin with.)
substantually more... on the other hand it would have fit in your pockets more easily.
on the third hand if your friend is paying you that much:
a; why the hell did he have that many dollar notes? seriously, go to the bank some time! ask for change in more reasonable units. actually USE them instead of constantly paying in large notes and getting change back and then not doing anything with it.
b; why on Earth did he pay you in single dollar notes rather than 20s or something?
... on the other hand, NZ went from 1 and 2 dollar notes to using coins surprisingly soon after switching from pounds to dollars. something to do with the costs of replacing the bills :P
Re: Make dollar coin so that it doesn't look like a quarter
the NZ dollar coin is ~the same size as our 20c piece... but 2-3 times as thick,a completely different colour, and with completely different edging.
(actually, originally they had the same picture on them and everything. difference was colour, and not much else to the casual observer. weight, edging, and actual value on the coin were always different, of course.
oh, added bonus? if you ever track down an old NZ florin... you can still turn it into the bank for it's face value... of 20c. (it had the same picture on it too.)
(apparently when the change over was made, the new dollar was worth a half pound, rendering the florin=20c conversion near perfect.)
more amusing is the NZ/Aus dollar coin issue. basically for some weird reason Australian two dollar coins are about the size of NZ one dollar coins (the NZ dollar being worth less than the Aus dollar aside).
so, you can actually stick NZ$1 coins in Australian vending machines (well, older ones at least) and they'll treat it as an Australian $2 coin.
oh, and by 'silver' i mean coins valued in cents. until recently all our cent coins were silver colour, and dollar coins gold colour. (currently the ten cent coin is more of a copper colour, and when we still had them the 1 and 2 cent coins were also. the 5c went away at the same time we switched the colour of the ten cent.)
also, i am aware that an NZ dollar is worth less than a US dollar... so replace all those values in my above post with the next one down if necessary
standard solution here has been 'so be smarter about the units you carry'. people carry a stack of 20 notes, plus or minus a few 50s, 10s, and 5s depending on age, reason, budget, etc., and enough coins to make change. (if you're carrying more than about $10 in coins, and ~half that in silver, you're doing it wrong!)
and there's no real need to get coins out of the bank, you get a nice stash of 'em just from getting change when you buy stuff with notes.
you realise the entire point in back pockets is to torment those people dim enough to actually put anything in 'em, right?
your wallet (like 'pocket edition' books and an awful lot of paperbacks) goes in the ones on the side that your parents constantly told you not to put your hands in.
pretty much this.
and have a fixed time after which the banks will stop Taking the bills, too (except the relevant central one) to discourage people from just hording the things anyway and make it impractical for shops to keep accepting the bills as well. (without essentually stealing their money).
interesting bit of terminology: here abouts a bill is what you get telling you how much you owe. a cheque (check, for the Americans reading this) is as in chequebook. a paper precursor to debit cards, essentially. the cash is a note.
huh. 'round here the GST (basically consumer tax) was deliberately set to a number that would give you whole numbers as a result if the base price was a whole number. (of course, expressed as a percentage it was awkward, but the maths required to attain it was simple division. anyone could do it by hand, most in their heads... AND the shops always list the price Including the tax)
of course, they recently put it up to ... i think it was 15%?
a lot of shops just ate the difference on a lot of their products. those that didn't shunted things up to the next round number. life went on.
spanish pieces of eight were so called because...the coin came with pre-made weak points that let you divide it into 8 to make change by this method. the 'pieces of eight' are the result.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
it's probably nothing of the sort, but it sure seems like it given the tendency of customers to just hand over 20 dollar notes and not get change unless they bought a whole bunch of little things. even then it's not unusual to get a 'buy three and get a dollar off' deal to end up with round numbers again.
of course, y can't be too large compared to the actual value of the item, so you do still get oddly priced things... but they're typically things you wouldn't just buy individually, and the total gets rounded to the nearest 10c if you pay cash anyway... and people tend to use debit cards for buying expensive stuff (as opposed to lots of less expensive things)...
all of which comes down to 'yeah, most of the time your change is going to be in coins worth less than a dollar, especially as you'll tend to pay for things where it otherwise might not be using the dollars in the first place'
of course, again, the fact that the NZ dollar is worth less than the US dollar plays a part here.
(i kinda wondered why, when they ditched the 5c coin here, they didn't just revalue everything so our old 10c became a 1c, $1 became 10c, and $10 became $1. they replaced everything but the 1 and 2 dollar coins over the course of a couple of years Anyway, all sorts of things track fractions of cents electronically already even if transactions beyond tax, interest, oil, and exchange rates don't tend to Use them... so why not? would make more sense.
probably would have been a bigger deal to make the changeover if they had though... and odds are good that we'll end up losing the 10c to inflation within the next 30 years (if the loss of the smaller coins is anything to go by)... meh *shrugs*
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
or has some bit of madness lead to wallets with No Coin Compartment?
if so, there's a nice niche market for someone to exploit. just... don't do the standard thing of putting divisions and such in the coin section... all it does is cause them to get stuck or end up down the sides and falling out when you open it. (usually a side effect of the zip starting somewhere on the bottom, going all the way up the side, over the top, back down the other side, and under the bottom edge again, leading to a need to have something to stop the thing just hinging open completely and dumping all your coins on the ground. there's gotta be a better design than this though.)
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: How do they know they'll save over time?
(the main reason anyone makes a 'profit' on silver, by the by, is massive inflation of the 'currency' used to buy and sell it. the rest is increasing demand for it's practical applications.)
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Non tipping friendly@
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Get rid of the $1 bill, the penny and the nickel.
(oh: it kinda helps that our central reserve bank is an actual government entity, not independent. it's separate, so far as i can tell, in the same way the judiciary is separate, but it's still a government entity. 'course, the coins are still minted in canada these days.)
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
what you'll find tends to happen is that people very quickly get in the habit of actually Using their change rather than hording it. (mind you, here abouts if one got dollar notes at the rate one gets dollar coins... let's just say it's fairly common for people to walk around with a couple of hundred dollars in $20 notes in their wallets. that's a Full Wallet. add in all the ones and twos one would have that are in coin form in a separate section of one's wallet (and don't have to Bend!) and it starts getting quite ridiculous.
of course there's also plenty of people who walk around with no cash on them at all and just their debit card.
a mixture is more likely, mind you.
only time i see the sort of numbers of coins people are complaining about here is in a shop's till. no one Actually carries that many (or pays someone in single dollars when a stack of 20s and 50s makes more sense.)
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: As a Canadian, I despise One Dollar and Two Dollar coins
mind you, if they're proposing dollar coins that actually ARE impractically large, then whoever's proposing it needs a quick whack around the head and to be replaced for their trouble.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Say wha?
from where i'm sitting anyway.
might be a side effect of being completely divorced from all capacity to be heard on the meaningful issues though...
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: dollar coin solutions
or punch a hole in the middle like some places do... then, hey, don't even need a wallet. a bit of string'll do the job!
seriously, they don't have to be That different to tell them apart. (also note: the other way to make the weight difference more obvious is to issue new coins for the lower values as well, which are Lighter. NZ did this recently. this lets you make your dollars lighter as well while still being noticeably heavier than your cents. not that NZ did that bit. our dollar coins aren't that heavy to begin with.)
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
on the third hand if your friend is paying you that much:
a; why the hell did he have that many dollar notes? seriously, go to the bank some time! ask for change in more reasonable units. actually USE them instead of constantly paying in large notes and getting change back and then not doing anything with it.
b; why on Earth did he pay you in single dollar notes rather than 20s or something?
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Hang onto your singles boys!
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Make dollar coin so that it doesn't look like a quarter
(actually, originally they had the same picture on them and everything. difference was colour, and not much else to the casual observer. weight, edging, and actual value on the coin were always different, of course.
oh, added bonus? if you ever track down an old NZ florin... you can still turn it into the bank for it's face value... of 20c. (it had the same picture on it too.)
(apparently when the change over was made, the new dollar was worth a half pound, rendering the florin=20c conversion near perfect.)
more amusing is the NZ/Aus dollar coin issue. basically for some weird reason Australian two dollar coins are about the size of NZ one dollar coins (the NZ dollar being worth less than the Aus dollar aside).
so, you can actually stick NZ$1 coins in Australian vending machines (well, older ones at least) and they'll treat it as an Australian $2 coin.
also, Australian 50c coins are not round.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Inflation...
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Re:
also, i am aware that an NZ dollar is worth less than a US dollar... so replace all those values in my above post with the next one down if necessary
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
and there's no real need to get coins out of the bank, you get a nice stash of 'em just from getting change when you buy stuff with notes.
also: debit cards.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
your wallet (like 'pocket edition' books and an awful lot of paperbacks) goes in the ones on the side that your parents constantly told you not to put your hands in.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Think of the...
assuming your system is sane enough to actually HAVE $5 notes.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re:
and have a fixed time after which the banks will stop Taking the bills, too (except the relevant central one) to discourage people from just hording the things anyway and make it impractical for shops to keep accepting the bills as well. (without essentually stealing their money).
interesting bit of terminology: here abouts a bill is what you get telling you how much you owe. a cheque (check, for the Americans reading this) is as in chequebook. a paper precursor to debit cards, essentially. the cash is a note.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Re:
of course, they recently put it up to ... i think it was 15%?
a lot of shops just ate the difference on a lot of their products. those that didn't shunted things up to the next round number. life went on.
On the post: GAO Suggests It's Time To Ditch Dollar Bills For Coins
Re: Re: It's easier than you make it out to be
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