A penny± for your thoughts

Gov't scraps penny, a 'currency without currency'

I have just done some quick math on this and decided that all prices are about to go up by 1 or 2 cents as a tax on using cash...

	9.99	$10.00	$10.01	$10.02	$10.03	$10.04	$10.05	$10.06	$10.07	$10.08	$10.09	$10.10
GST	$10.04	$10.05	$10.06	$10.07	$10.08	$10.09	$10.10	$10.11	$10.12	$10.13	$10.14	$10.15
QST	$10.14	$10.15	$10.16	$10.17	$10.18	$10.19	$10.20	$10.21	$10.22	$10.23	$10.24	$10.25
	-$0.01	$0.00	$0.01	$0.02	-$0.02	-$0.01	$0.00	$0.01	$0.02	-$0.02	-$0.01	$0.00

Since the most common strategy of retailers is to set a price to $X.99 so as to trick the brain into NOT seeing that X=X+1 then most prices would cost Quebecers an extra penny.

Obviously the math does change across Canada as provincial sales taxes vary. I do, however, see an opportunity to abuse this and make a statement, if only for a short while…

Say you are going to pay cash for an item, it's price ends in 9¢, buy 3. 9x3=27 which becomes 25 taking 2¢ from the store. Similarly, prices ending in 4¢ become 4x3=12 which becomes 10. As for 8's and 3's buy 2 since 8x2=16 and 3x2=6 which become 15 or 5 respectively and which liberates 1 cent from the store.

I trust most stores will stop using these numbers 3,4,8,9 to end a price tag in Quebec pricing before long. Though I also suspect most will raise their prices to the next multiple of 5¢ and in the end we will still loose. Also remember that this only works if you are buying an item ending in 1,2,6,7¢ to pay in cash rather than Interac... Electronic pennies are "free" to print and will continue to exist so why give them to the store?

-DIrtyKID©