Canada did it. It’s nice to have fewer useless coins.
DaveLong
4301
Buh buh buh… that’s Billion… with a B! Lock him up! Lock him up!
When you owe the bank a few million, the bank owns you. When you owe the bank a few billion, you own the bank.
Oghier
4303
Not when the bank is the IRS.
Timex
4304
How the fuck does someone owe seven BILLION in back taxes?
Why the hell do these guys even care about cutting their taxes, since they apparently don’t fucking pay them anyway?
vyshka
4305
Greed? Anyone know if he was involved in pushing citizens united?
JoshL
4306
From the article linked in the tweet:
Perhaps the biggest Mercer foundation beneficiary has been the Citizens United Foundation, which received $3.8 million from 2011 through 2015. The foundation’s advocacy arm, Citizens United, wants Koskinen to be impeached. It also spearheaded attacks on Clinton last year over her use of a personal email account to conduct official business during eight years as secretary of state. David Bossie, who is president of both Citizens United entities, and Rebekah Mercer collaborated on the super PAC that backed Trump and later as members of Trump’s transition team.
I hear that for very reasonable rates you can rent a Presidency for 4 years to make such problems go away.
jpinard
4308
She was not Secretary of State for 8 years. Only 4.
gruntled
4309
It’s the hedge fund that owes the billions in back taxes. It involved a kind of derivatives (“basket options”) for which the only purpose was to convert capital gains from short-term to long-term.
jpinard
4310
Isn’t it amazing how these “patriots” are never paying their proper amount of taxes, if they pay them at all?
ShivaX
4311
You’d love America too if you got all the benefits and didn’t have to pay your share.
RichVR
4313
Same here. But I’d have to hire someone to carry them for me. Too old and weak myself. If I did, it would probably cost as much as the pennies I have. So I’d essentially be paying a stranger all of my pennies… to carry them? To own them? Hmmm. I have to think this out a bit more.
USA military bases overseas had gotten ride of pennies at least 15 years ago. Instead, all change is rounded to the nearest nickel, either up or down. The stores still accepted pennies, and the prices still said .99 at the end, but they just didn’t give them out.
On the other hand I lived in Napoli as a teenager, back when they were still on the lira, which was about 1000 to the dollar. The government never minted enough coins — to save money — especially lower denomination ones like 1 and 5 and 10 lira, and consequently no store could ever make the correct change. So in practice they’d give you most of your change, then they’d give you a couple of pieces of candy or a book of matches, etc, and shrug.
Why not just change the prices?
Stores where world wide, including the the USA, so any price changes done by AAFES would impact not only overseas bases but also in the United States itself, and pennies are still used on military bases in the US.
There are 3 good reasons that I can think of though not the change the prices. .99 sells better than .00. Credit cards meant that most people didn’t use cash to begin with, so pennies are not an issue. Finally, even when I worked at the AAFES convenience store in the early 2000’s, I usually found that my drawer, after I counted the money, was within 10 cents of the receipts, so its not like the store or customers were losing money on it.
Edited for grammar and flow
We should totally adopt this in the U.S… I’d be completely happy with handing a store or restaurant ten dollars for an $8.97 bill and getting a dollar and a Jolly Rancher back in change. People who don’t like hard candy could simply horde them like they do the pennies anyway, then give them to their grandkids or nieces and nephews or neighbor kids or something. Plus, think of the positive effect on the economy when we have to open a Jolly Rancher factory in every state to keep up with demand!
CraigM
4319
Hell yes. I am 100% down with this plan.
Hell get rid of the nickle while we’re at it.
They both suck, and both cost more to make than they are worth, and create clutter.
