h a l f b a k e r yThis is what happens when one confuses "random" with "profound."
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Just as it says. In the USA, a penny (the one-cent coin) costs more than face value to mint and there are occasional calls to stop it and round all cash transactions to the nearest five cents - Canada has done this already. But sentimentality and a reluctance to round make this difficult.
Take the
opportunity to go all out. Rename the nickel the "shilling", and start giving prices in dollars and shillings. That way there's not that annoying gap between the smallest monetary unit and the smallest coin. Banks and stores could keep doing math in decimals, and just change the display on the register*. This would help provide employment for many unfortunate programmers who have been twiddling their thumbs since the curing of the Y2K bug.
The change of name would make a clean break, and provide free math practice to anyone who doesn't start making ten-shilling purchases on their credit card in despair.
*(Or declare the shilling equal to one half-florin, and give prices in dollars and florins, but that's not nearly so fun. In either case we can rename the quarter the 'crown' while we're at it.)
Numbers in Kanji
http://imgcdn.geoca...95-90763e6f77d0.jpg
[not_morrison_rm, Aug 23 2014]
[link]
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What an excellent idea. It would be even better if, following the
Canadian lead, the obverse of the coins were stamped with the
likeness of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. |
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Not often the Canadians get something right, but it had to happen
eventually. |
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Can we take the pennies,melt them down and cast them in five cent pieces as well? |
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This is an excellent idea, but it doesn't go nearly
far enough. You should consider combining the
best elements of the monetary systems of: |
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Pre-decimalisation England
Pre-Columbian Pago-Pago
1700's South Wales
1800's Easter Island trade currency. |
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1 Dollar = 20 shillings
5 shillings = 3.33recurring tapos
1 shilling = 24 fynnet
2 fynnet = 7 pennies
1 penny= 4 farthings
1 farthing = 11 whynnets. |
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This has the advantage that certain monetary
units are incommensurable. Therefore, buying
certain goods using certain notes or coins would
cause the salesperson to spontaneously combust. |
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We would pay 13.33 recurring tapos to watch that, more if it was an
Apple shop. |
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I'd pay more than that to see you try to carry 13.33
recurring tapos. |
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Easy - we'd proffer 40 tapos and demand two dollars change, in
tapos. |
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Yeah, as if you'd like to clean up all the tapopoop. |
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Things nominally cost 10x as much as in the 60's, so we could have ditched the nickel as well. Then you can go back further and see where a cup of coffee is 5c, using the exact same coinage, as opposed to a minimum of $1.25 these days: from that we can determine that the 10c piece is pretty superfluous as well. |
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Obviously they could have ditched the nickel and dime as well, while retaining quarter-dollars and the elusive half-dollars which not only makes sense, from a human point of view, it's also quite computer-computation friendly. |
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As it stands, we're not a cashless society yet, but the government has taken the first step by rendering us all penniless. |
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//As it stands, we're not a cashless society yet, but
the government has taken the first step by
rendering us all penniless.// |
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//have ditched the nickel as well. |
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Then you'd end up with some prosaic currency like the Yen, where the smallest coin in a 1 Yen, and 100 of those makes up, errr, no special unit of currency at all. |
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My western mind seems to work on "a [number of these] makes up a [insert unit of currency]". |
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Don't get me started on 10,000 as a separate unit of numbers.....
example, "this car is a bargain at only 19.7 [ten thousand] Yen" |
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The Indian 'lakh' and 'crore' (100k, 10m) strike me as handy units; I wouldn't mind seeing them used when talking about monetary units other than rupees. |
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I just like this. No reason, just because I do. |
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// Then you'd end up with some prosaic currency like the Yen, where the smallest coin in a 1 Yen, and 100 of those makes up, errr, no special unit of currency at all. // not "you'd" so much as "you've". |
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The other option woulda been to revalue the currency by a given percentage or factor (probably 10), change everybody's bank balance amount, and print and press new cash: plastic bills were already in the works (since rolled out), all that would be needed would be new metal stampings. Older cash can still be used at non-face-value until it gets pulled out of circulation by the banks. The IT yotes'd have to brush off their y2k skillsets for a small bump in the IT sector economy when everybody buys an incremental rev number of their software to deal with changeover. |
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This woulda caused a royal pain in the ass to the general populace of... well, nothing actually, except having to rethink stuff for awhile (which is where the factor of 10 comes in handy). Small lift in the general mental health of the public who now pays 30c for a loaf of bread, instead of $2.87; who now can get lunch without having to deal with 4 digits of numbers plus tax on same. |
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But that makes too much sense, obviously. |
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[FT] So under this system I'm making ten percent of
what I did the day before and my bank balance is a
tenth of its former self? (speaking for the gray cell
challenged). |
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10% of nothing, is nothing, in my case. |
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//The Indian 'lakh' and 'crore' (100k, 10m) strike me as handy units |
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Hmm, ok this car is 9.7 10,000 Yen, so is that 97,000 Yen? Problem is when you get higher than that, like a house, where you get 1,850 10,000 Yen...which is (without a calculator/spreadsheet) ? |
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And the same problem going the other way, as we don't price stuff in 10,000's. |
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//1 farthing = 11 whynnets// |
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Shirley that should be whynots [Max]? |
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to get 9.7 10,000 yen just multiply by ten & add three 0's? |
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Seems simple enough, can't see a problem so have I missed something? |
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// multiply by ten & add three 0's? // |
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It's far more efficient to multiply by a hundred and then add two 0's. |
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My brain handles 10's better, the processor's on old model with some strange quirks. |
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Perhaps it's just me, but the Japanese language can easily handle 97,000 (que ju nana sen yen) as is...so it seems like going to a supermarket where anything over ten quid is priced in hexadecimal. |
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And, they aren't using the actual Kanji numbers on the price signs, they are using the boring old western number system...so what's with the mix and match? |
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[cudgel] ayup. Just lop off (or round) the last digit on everything and move the decimal point left one (for countries with "metric" currency) |
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//My brain handles 10's better, |
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Hmm, mine too, but how about a currency for those with less than fingers? |
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Or those in more remote, rural areas genetic diversity-challenged areas that have a few more than ten? |
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If you mean Hampsted garden suburb, the
natives haven't got beyond drawing aurochs
on cave walls with lumps of chalk, let alone
burnt sticks; rarely, one of them makes it to
University to learn how to knap flints. |
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But "Shilling" doesn't mean anything to me. |
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Come on everyone, think, work and generate a real revaluation for the penny. It all makes perfect cents. |
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//10,000 as a separate unit of numbers// |
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The word you're looking for is "myriad", [not morrison]. That's the word for a group of ten thousand of something - e.g., "this car is a bargain at only 19.7 myriad Yen". Greek, you know. Like a monad, dyad, triad or decade, but more. |
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Which reminds me - the Indian word 'crore', meaning 10,000,000, is sometimes very useful |
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