COINS ARE EVIL and they must be stopped

[prickvixen]

I was thinking about change tonight, coinage, and I decided that it's just become a device for tricking people into spending more money than they mean to. Because decades ago, coins were actually viable denominations, rather than a nuisance. You could actually buy things with a nickel or a dime, like a meal or a book or something. Now coinage has just become a mechanism for forcing people to do fractions in their head, which most people don't do very well, and for chiseling fractional amounts of money off of consumers. At least that's my impression of it.

Comments

[smack-jackal.livejournal.com]

In Japan, coins are good. Of course, EVERYTHING comes out to even numbers more--more-or-less--and consumption tax (sales tax) is figured into the advertized prices for things. A 230 Yen _thing_ costs you 230 Yen at the counter. Coins only for denominations below 1000 Yen, too. (~$10)

Of course, we couldn't do anything rational like that. Fuck, we can't even get a dollar coin to stick.

[yippee.livejournal.com]

try putting a dollar coin into a stripper's g-string...

Either that or there's a dopey dragon somewhere sitting on a big pile of Sacagawea dollars.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

We could do that here, have everything round off, but business would insist that it be done in such a way that they retain the profit they're making from people not being able to multiply 5 * 1.49 in their heads. All of this is quite conscious, just as having everything end in 9, to make the cost seem smaller, is conscious. That's why everything in the grocery store is priced some weird number instead of being $1.50 or $3 or something. They'll also do that fun thing where a product is, say, 5 for $4 one week, then 4 for $5 the next. Any device where they can confuse the consumer into not understanding the actual cost.

Although in the supermarket, there's the additional factor that the margin is so low compared to hard goods like housewares and electronics, so there's constant price readjustment, like a handicapper adjusting the odds. And yet another thing they do in grocery stores is have a scaling discount, where the deal on a product gets gradually worse over time, so they can determine the maximum they can get away with charging for it. That's one of the main points of UPC codes, incidentally; tracking inventory, and determining what's selling and what isn't, and why. Being able to ring stuff up quickly is just a side benefit.

[obonicus.livejournal.com]

I think it's more a question that there's no easy solution -- or that there really is a problem. Fractions exist even when you're dealing even in coins; down here, a long while ago it wasn't uncommon to go around with over 1 million in local currency in your wallet. And it wasn't uncommon to receive change in 1000 or 5000 bills. Also, people aren't that bad at figuring math if they hve to. Back when our money lost value from one week to the next, people managed to figure out how much to pay for things. Maybe it has to do with people giving little value to their money, instead?

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I was kind of engaging in hyperbole when I wrote this. It isn't that there aren't other factors, but it's certainly become a device to be exploited by business. Which is, like, what else is new? :)

Still, one would think that as inflation makes small denominations less useful, they would be eliminated; or the monetary system would be restructured, so that, for example, we're going to call a dollar a penny from now on, but it retains its current purchasing value. Although that takes a huge psychological toll, when you're suddenly working for '$400' a year instead of '$40,000.' The psychological impact is a real worry, given how much the health of the economy is based on the mood of consumers... people start getting budget-conscious and all of a sudden it's a problem for the economy, or so they'd have you believe in 'Money' and 'Fortune.'

What you're talking about at the end is an economic crisis. Yes, people are very concerned about their money then; and what you say sort of ties in to what I'm getting at. When people are price-conscious but not alarmed, they're more easily deluded into making a poor decision. Remember that what we're talking about are tiny amounts per transaction, which add up to huge profits for the company in question. It only takes a moment of confusion or apathy, and the stakes are very tiny for each individual consumer. But they add up, and businesses count on these individual reactions and these devices.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that would feel nice.

DIMES MUST DIE!!!!!!

[matthigh.livejournal.com]

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