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One dollar in 1950 had far more buying power than one dollar does now. Something that cost a dollar in 1950 would cost nearly $14 in 2026.
The halfpenny, when discontinued, could purchase roughly as much as 12¢ could today.
At that time, it was decided that a halfpenny wasn't necessary, as transactions were of a high enough value that made tracking the numbers to the half-penny needless, and that you could just round to the nearest penny.
The equivalent today would be rounding to either the nearest dime or quarter, eliminating the need for smaller denomination coins.
Please, this is MAGA America, of course it's a scam. Your post is exactly why we should keep the penny.
There are many, many very wealthy people and corporations out there, and they keep track of every single fucking penny they touch, and they go to War if a single penny is missing. As an example, here you are figuring out the purchasing power of some anachronistic currency that hasn't been used in 200 years to justify it.
Those same people are now telling us that we, the working people, don't need to keep track of every one of OUR pennies, because we don't have enough of them to worry about. Don't worry, all their cash registers will do the calculations for you, and it will always be fair. We'll never round UP the numbers so you always end up paying a few cents more for EVERYTHING. It won't make a difference to you and your few pennies, but they will add up, and make the rich even richer by taking your pennies directly out of your pocket, a penny at a time. What are you complaining about? It's just a penny.
But it's my penny, and I want it, and before you call me a cheapskate, I'll remind the world that those calling me a cheapskate are the ones trying to take MY penny away. If it's important enough for them to take it from me, then it's important enough to defend it from them. I'm not giving these Jackals one inch.
Of course, the way around it is to use your debit card for everything, and your purchases will be calculated to the penny. And they will also be able to track every item you purchase, and where you are at any given moment, and every place you've been.
So should we bring back the halfpenny? Cause right now they're scamming you out of all those fractional pennies you could be saving, and that really adds up. They're up charging you 0.5¢ all the time, and robbing those halfpennies right out of your pocket!!!
But if you're not for bringing back tracking transactions down to the fractional cent, what makes it different to your mind? Why is that ridiculous, but rounding to the nearest 5¢ is way out of bounds?
Typical bonehead take.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at - we should bring back the Halfpenney. Good job getting the point, Brainiac.
I wasn't saying I thought that was your actual position. I was saying that your actual position made as much sense as that.
There's no difference in kind between rounding to the nearest penny or rounding to the nearest nickel. It's the exact same thing, and the question is just "where do you draw the line"?
So should the line never change no matter what? Regardless of any real life implications the line is drawn exactly where it was meant to be by God at the beginning of time and it is devoid of context or reason?
If we had massive deflation to the point where tracking to the fractional cent made sense, I would argue that it might be worth printing halfpennies again. But we don't. And the idea that companies are going to be robbing you of pennies is no more or less reasonable than the idea that they are robbing you of fractional pennies.
Hell, there's a real chance it'll go the other way in a lot of cases, as stores will start marking things as $X.95 instead of $X.99. Someone else did the math based on what economists projected the cost to consumers would be, and it came out to 2¢ per person per year. Not exactly a staggering number.
The fact of the matter is that we have to occasionally re-figure at what granularity it's worth tracking our fractions of a dollar to. Inflation will always be inflating, and in a few hundred years when a loaf of bread is $250 the idea that we would track fractional dollars will seem as antiquated as the halfpenny does now.
A lot of words for a simple concept:
We need pennies because we figure everything to the penny. We don't need half pennies because nobody figures anything to the half cent.
The wealthy want their pennies, and I want mine, too. Any other concept is just those with the money trying to steal from the citizens, AGAIN.
But we used to figure everything to the half cent. That's my point. We stopped figuring it to the half cent when we got rid of the half cent coin.
In the same way, we would stop figuring things to the whole cent if we got rid of the penny.
As an example, let's say I wanted to buy an item that was $1.75, but it was 50% off. How much does that cost? In reality, it should be $0.875, but we don't track to the half penny, so we just call it 88¢.
Or, if you buy something for $1.50, but there's a sales tax of 3%, that item will be $1.545 after sales tax, but they just round it to $1.55.
They're already rounding your numbers up. That's already happening. The only reason it feels different is because we "don't track fractional pennies," which is only true because we got rid of the coins that allowed us to track fractional pennies.
If we got rid of the coins that let us track individual pennies, we would also stop tracking all exchanges to the individual penny, and simply round to the nearest 5¢.
Which, in many cases, could actually work in your favor, I might add. If you bought something and the total was 1.52, they would simply round it down to $1.50. Sales tax law varies state to state, but that it's how the vast majority of states handle fractional pennies already, so precident indicates it would be that way for rounding to the nearest 5¢. E.g. if sales tax is 2%, and you bought something for $1.19, that comes out to $1.2138, but most states round that to $1.21, saving you 0.38¢ (38 one hundredths of a cent).
But something worth a dollar in 1950 is worth the same as something that's worth a dollar now in 2025.
Okay, let's try to break it down for you.
Let's say that, in 1950, you could buy 10 apples for a dollar. Would you agree that, in 1950, 10 apples were "worth" $1? One dollar's "worth" of apples was 10 apples?
Now, let's say today I can buy one apple for one dollar. Would you agree that 1 apple was "worth" one dollar? That one dollar's "worth" of apples was 1 apple?
Now, if we assume that the "buying power" of a dollar is measured in "how many apples a dollar can buy," that my current dollar is "worth less" than a 1950 dollar, because it purchases me fewer apples? That the two "dollars" have a different "number of apples I can buy" property?
Yes, in each case I've purchased a "dollars worth of apples," but it's very much meaningful to define how many apples that is, and track how that changes over time.
And if I cancelled the halfpenny because it wasn't worth having when it could only buy 1 apple, but right now it takes 12 pennies to buy 1 apple, then perhaps I should have gotten rid of the penny a long time ago. And the nickel. And probably the dime.
That's not how inflation works. "Worth" is a pretty variable term, "buying power" is typically a better description.
Think of it like this, using somewhat made up numbers. In the 50s you could get a cup of coffee for 10 cents from a diner. That same cup of coffee in 2025 costs like 2.50 dollars. Is the coffee "worth" more in 2025? No, it's the same 8oz cup of coffee but the money has less buying power
But you give a store a dollar back then and you got a dollar's worth of goods and now you still do.
You get a dollar's worth of goods, but the amount of goods you get is less, because a dollar is worth less.
Well the dollar is worth the same (a dollar) but the goods are more expensive.
Yes, a dollar is a dollar. But it is not worth the same value.
The dollar categorically holds less value. Worth is just a measure of how much value something has to people.
The goods are more monetarily expensive, but have the same intrinsic value (e.g. calories do not give your body more energy now than they used to). Thus, the dollar is worth less than it used to be, and it requires more of them to equal the value of the same amount of food. A dollar today is equivalent to one other dollar today, but it is not worth one dollar ten, twenty, or 50 years ago.
If I could trade $100 today for $100 50 years ago, I would have more value even though both are classified as "one hundred dollars", because $100 50 years ago has more value and gets you more goods.
$1 today gets you the same amount of goods as $0.53 got you in the year 2000 in terms of actual buying power, hence why people use that term.
No you'd still have a hundred dollars.
Just because the bills are dated nineteen seventy-five doesn't mean you'd be able to buy more with it.
You have to go back in time to get more value from the same unit of money. Therefore, the current currency is worth less. It's called inflation.
I meant if you were in the actual time, 1975. As in, trading your current bills for those bills, and spending them back then.
You would still have the same number of dollars, but you'd have dollars that had more value in each, and thus more purchasing power. Prices were lower, because the value of each dollar was higher, even though the same goods were still priced in dollars back then and today.
A dollar is not an unchanging unit, because it's purpose is to be spent, and to represent value. One dollar is one dollar, but how much goods someone is willing to give you for a dollar changes, thus a dollar is never truly equivalent to itself at a different time in the past.
The value of a dollar will change from one second to the next, as the prices of goods in the economy are updated to reflect how many dollars someone thinks they are individually worth, and by doing so, the value of the dollar as a method of purchasing power changes.
There is no objective measure by which the dollar determines its value, and there is no peg that one dollar will always be worth. One dollar today gets you less than a dollar 50 years ago, thus the dollar today is worth less than a dollar 50 years ago, even if the denomination on the bill is the same number.