From: Viveka Turnbull sent: Wed 7/12/2006 10:56 PM
> This is very interesting... I love the idea of the communal solution. I
> can't imagine Sydney-siders doing such a thing, I am inclined to think they
> would complain that the government wasn't doing anything and then do nothing
> themselves. I get very excited about community initiatives... are they
> spontaneous or is there a way of fostering them?
The penny bins are informal and not ubiquitous. I assume they are mainly put there in response to cashiers who don't want to keep adding and eliminating rolls of pennies from the till.
From: Mic Porter sent: Thu 7/13/2006 9:17 AM
> What is wrong with the Italian system, pre Euro - scrap the small coins,
> give sweets as change!
In the US we are struggling with a pandemic of diabetes and obesity. Even in the land of subsidized cane sugar and corn syrup, any official pandering of candy would be political TNT.
Those arguing for elimination of the penny usually stick to a rhetoric of uselessness---a penny ain't worth a nickel, so why bother?--so anything other than rounding prices to the nearest 5 cents would backfire. It's been years since I've seen something listed with a cash value of one mil. That was common in the '50s and early '60s. Now nobody worries about a tenth of a cent unless they have a whole shipping container load of them. My tax bills get rounded to the nearest dollar.
From: Terence Kavanagh sent: Thu 7/13/2006 3:47 AM
> are Americans going to push
> Jefferson off his coin to make way for Lincoln? ...and move the others
> [Washington;Roosevelt;Kennedy;a native American] off their coins?
>
> There is more to this than purely the 'metal', I hope.
Abe is already on the fiver so Washington is below him on the bills. Jefferson, too, if you have one of the relatively rare $2 bills.
As I said in my post yesterday, the metal itself is very political but the guy on the coin is even more overtly so. There have been a couple of recent moves to put Ronald Reagan on the dime. Although rationalizations have been offered, it is clear that the choice of coin is based not just on the desire to have my former California governor on a coin but to make sure that Franklin D. Roosevelt is not on one.
From: Chris Rust sent: Thu 7/13/2006 4:09 AM
> But I'd be equally happy with the groat
I thought that was something you guys ate, not a coin. Or have you been looking at too many John Heartfield collages and have the two confused?
Gunnar
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