| The only real answer would be to revalue the dollar. Increase its
value by a factor of ten. Essentially, push the decimal point one
position to the left on all prices - overnight. A penny now buys what
a dime bought yesterday, a dime now buys what a dollar bought. A 50
cent candy bar is now a nickel. Gasoline is 23.9 cents per gallon, a
gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and a lb of butter are 20 cents each,
a McDonald's burger is a dime, large fries about 15 cents, minimum
wage is 62 cents an hour, a newspaper is a nickel, a lb of ground beef
is about a quarter, a haircut is a buck and a half, a barrel of crude
is about $5, the median price of a single family home is about
$20,000, a new car about $2,000, cross country airfare about $50, a
movie ticket is 75 cents, etc, etc, etc.
Best of all - we keep the penny!
On Feb 21, 9:43 am, AL wrote:
> John Gilmer wrote:
>
> > (not sure who wrote:)
>
> >>I would expect that, like most other things, competition on price
> >>alone would be ineffective.
> >>If they are in the same consignment shop, B might have the edge.
> >>If A is next door and B is across town, B's price is never seen.
> > So?
> > Rounding UP makes the calculations easier for everyone. At worse, it will
> > cost comsumers $.04 per item.
>
> Recommendations that anything be "rounded" up OR down to the nearest
> nickel tells me somebody skipped class the day rounding was taught.
> Rounding is to the NEAREST DECIMAL POSITION, not to the nearest half
> decimal position! If you eliminate the penny you must eliminate the
> nickel - it resides in the same decimal position as the penny. Or are
> you going to tell me all the accounting systems out there already know
> how to "round" to the nearest nickel without having to be modified? I
> think somebody needs to dust off their 5th grade arithmetic book - the
> topic doesn't even rise to the level of math.
>
> > Add it up if you will. The most lazy and stupid consumer might pay an
> > extra $50 the first year. After a year things will sort out.
>
> "things will sort out" - WHAT could that ever mean?
>
> But if we DID eliminate the penny and nickel:
>
> Having programmed accounting systems in a past life I can see a
> wonderful world of opportunity opening up for crooks. The
> rounding/truncating to the nearest decimal position of $.1 in a
> multi-million transaction a day, or even hour, system could feed
> enormous wealth to a hidden slush fund. You sometimes hear about
> schemes where the fraction of pennies truncated are accumulated in a
> hidden account? Well think 10 times that in terms of what would be
> truncated in a $.10 system. Fortunately we can rest assured no one would
> be that dishonest...
>
> What we have works, sort of. If anything needs to be changed I would
> think backing up the currency with something of real value rather than
> promises would be a good start.
|