Philip

Someone else out there decides to have a rant about pennies being a useless part of the US currency. While I travel through USA I inevitably end up with loads of pennies as they had the intelligent idea that you shouldn’t know how much tax to pay until you hit the counter, ending up with some bizarre non-5 or 0 cent count. It’s really hard to get the right number of pennies out when there’s about 5 people behind you urging you to get a move on.

In my view, they should:

1) Declare the price up front. None of this calculated tax nonsense when you get to the counter. You can anticipate and get the right change out before you hit the counter.
2) Switch to a minimum 5 cent denomination. Maybe even 10 cents.
3) Ditch $1 notes in favour of coins and bring in $2 coins or more widely circulate $2 notes like in Australia. No more grubby “I found it in a toilet” $1 notes!

Anyhow, usually what I do in USA is find one of those penny squashing machines that turns them into a surfboard or something, that’s about all they’re good for.