There’s a bit of hand wringing going on around Facebook amongst typically the anti-Harper crowd. Normally I’d join in, because it’s worth wringing hands over practically everything our Prime Minister has going wrong in our country. One thing he’s managed to not get wrong, is ending the penny. It’s a relic, and I’m very much for preserving history, but I don’t need to carry historical currency in my pockets when it is worth only a fraction of what a penny was worth when I was a kid in the 1980s.
Why shouldn’t you worry about retailers making at most a couple cents extra on a rounded final total, on cash transactions? Because those two cents are not that valuable to you, for one thing. Another, if you happen to use a debit card or credit card, you’re not affected by rounding yet. If you do use plastic to pay, you’re already paying upwards of 50 cents per transaction to the bank, while your retailer is also paying a fee to the bank plus maybe 2.5% of the purchase price (which they pass on to you through higher prices).
Long story short, if you have the opportunity to pay your retailer in cash, ask that they keep the one or two cents you might be owed, because both you and they are already more than 48 cents ahead of the game the banks are playing with us all.
P.S. And if you read the link at the top of this story, you should note that the Conservatives still haven’t managed to find Pierre Poutine with the help of the RCMP and Elections Canada’s 630+ day investigation. The Cons have moved on to lying about new robocalls though. Since a Liberal MP was fined $4900 for a robocall with a misleading identification, I guess the CRTC will be fining the Conservatives soon too for their “Chase Research” push poll.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
Ah yes.. the new school of learning.. What Canada and Canadians need to know!
Alliance Reform New Math 101 .. Conswervative Harper mathematics .. and penny perfect, fiscally floundering, Professor Flaherty flim flam – flip flop n fly for F-35’s. Take a seat class.. and put those Blackberry’s in silent mode.
Today in Slush Funding 201 we will learn how to grin like a lying treasury muskoka monkey with his hand in your pocket. Tony Clemente will lecture about shoveling ‘stray funds’ into General Accounting for propaganda, media minding, gazebos, and studies of election robo-engineering.
For Social Media Engineering 101 we get the queenly prof Harper bustling royally in his kitchen n twittering gayly while breaking fast with Ray Novak and their dear cat and at least one photographer that was there for a sleepover… and a cluster of security men.. none of them anywhere anywhere near the rough n tumble Tim Horton’s crowd or a hockey rink or teepee or teen aged children.
Just another get schooled day in Canada you say ? Well.. pay attention dunces !
Homesteading 101 portrays the doughty faux islander anguish n huffery from the dear senator Duffy, caught in his own green gabled lobster trap. Eh Tu Mike ?
What’s that you claim in PR 101 about Chaste Research, how to convert defeat into victory Mr DeLorey? Baseless Saskatchewan smears ? Didn’t happen ! Not us, never ever ! Of course ! But hundreds more billable hours for the illustrious electoral offender defender Arthur Hamilton.. oui oui ! a win for Canada’s lawyers is a win for all Canada !
Full speed ahead in Geography 911, and Perfessor Joe Oliver.. explaining how to float 30 year deals with China.. and never say ever about carbon cap or frack or tar sand bubble busting. All pipelines – emergency reverse and hard right rudder. Peter Kent will get any wildlife, habitat or habitants out of the way..
… permanently …. and.. eastern Canada is closer to India than western Canada !!
In Poli Sci 301, John Baird will explain advanced techniques to bray and bellow at any foreign or UN whiners and muslims that dare dispute our Sovereign Royal Harper Reform omnibus bill of goods & rights & might to kick environmental ass or First Nations arse wherever our own former forests, treaties or waters or resources used to be.
Tomorrow, class will review easy to remember ways to deny how many inbound or outbound Chinese LNG super tankers it takes to block the Douglas Channel if we already have the channel churning with China bound VLCC diluted bitumen tankers.. and inbound condensate tankers. The same bafflegard should deflect the same baseless smears regarding identical ships with identical cargo entering or exiting Port Moody at high tide or Prince Rupert.. so please take notes !
A remedial class for those MP’s that don’t understand why infected farm salmon are good to eat and a great export resource will be re-scheduled until Minister Keith Ashfield returns to explain the mystery of the extinct wild salmon fisheries. Gerry Ritz will continue his farmed surf n tainted turf BBQ class in the meantime.
Class dismissed …
The elimination of the penny itself may be a legal action but it’s collection is by definition penny shaving which is illegal. This act in itself is called Salami Slicing. This has also eliminated the lowest non taxable denomination of money that was available to Canadians, basically making all money taxed and even taxing children in effect, eliminating penny donation collections and other non profit charity donations, such as Pennies From Heaven, and other programs setup to help the needy. As well to give inflated Dow numbers on the markets to make it appear as if it has risen through Government changes (which it has) but through stealing.
Salami slicing refers to a series of many small actions, often performed by clandestine means, that as an accumulated whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all-at-once. The term is typically used pejoratively. Although salami slicing is often used to carry out illegal activities, it is only a strategy for gaining an advantage over time by accumulating it in small increments, so it can be used in perfectly legal ways as well.
An example of salami slicing, also known as penny shaving, is the fraudulent practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities, usually by taking advantage of rounding to the nearest cent (or other monetary unit) in financial transactions. It would be done by always rounding down, and putting the fractions of a cent into another account. The idea is to make the change small enough that any single transaction will go undetected.
It can easily be proven through math. Let’s use McDonald s from the Dow, who display the numbers for us and do collect the pennies.
There are 1154 locations in Canada. Average 10000 customers per day overall per location. Collect and average of 2 cents per customer per day.
This averages out to 20 000 pennies a day, which then converts to 140 000 pennies a week equaling 12280000 pennies a year or $122800.00 a year per location, multiply that by the overall number of locations and they make a grand total of $141711200.00 overall in shaved funds for the year. Now apply that to the rest of the Dow listed corporations and you get a massive spike that will level off then drop as the last pennies dissapear. It’s all smoke and mirrors at the people’s expense.
In the case of occasional cash transactions, where retailers are rounding both up and down, the end result is a wash, not at the consumer’s expense.
That is only if the return and intake matches, which it doesn’t. Stealing is still stealing even when a questionable politician makes it law. Try doing it anywhere else in the world you’d be charged.
No, they don’t have pennies in lots of places, because it really isn’t worth the time anymore to worry about them from a consumer transactional perspective. If the shop makes a few cents more each transaction, it’s little different than if the store raised its prices 1 or 2 percent, which is pretty normal and accepted anyway.
You only see them taking the pennies in, what you don’t see is the digital recording of the pennies they didn’t get, this number is still collected and then used against taxes at the end of year, that’s the catch isn’t it.
Statistically, the round ups and downs will even out over a large number of transactions working with random numbers. So there really isn’t a catch that way either.
I’m sure the charities would beg to differ, penny based charities rely on one or two cents to accumulate over time. The banks rely on your funds to accumulate a percentage of interest or cents to accumulate and add to the whole. The digit 1 is the basis of all math and it’s accumulation.