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A few days ago, I had to buy gas, and looking at the prices, three things struck me.
Premium: $3.26 9/10
Regular: $3.16 9/10
Unleaded: $3.09 9/10
The first thing that struck me was of course that It was time to write a rant about gas prices. After that, it struck me that I should get a job.
The
third thing that struck me was that beyond the gouging I was already going to get, if I pumped in a whole number of gallons, I would have to pay a whole cent extra, because I had no nine tenths of a cent pieces.
Somehow,that extra 1/3443th of the transaction that I would have to pay for if I pumped in exactly ten gallons stuck in my craw more than... Oh never mind that part.
Here in the states, there has been a lot of talk about getting rid of the penny as well. Loosing our venerated one cent piece would make matters even more disagreeable to me.
I suggest that rather than getting rid of the penny, we simply re-value it. All future pennies could be struck to say "9/10 cent," instead of "one cent." Since many products now end with some multiple of five cents, the penny is loosing ground.
However, no gas station in America does without their beloved nine tenths of a cent. Over the last decade, gas prices have steadily increased to nearly triple what they were ten years ago, but the prices have always ended in nine tenths of a cent. During this time, car ownership has continued to increase, so there will be no shortage of transactions that require nine tenths of a cent to complete.
With the re-valued "Lincoln 9/10," our civil war president will maintain relevancy, and continue to be an icon of racial restitution, and can keep a high profile well into the next century, or until Global warming puts California under the ocean.
9/10ths
http://www.stupidqu...om/answered/gas.htm
The 9/10ths scam [csea, Mar 22 2007]
Temperature / volume
http://www.users.us...t/~taaaz/AZgas.html
The temperature / volume scam [csea, Mar 22 2007]
US Pennies are mostly Zinc
http://www.usmint.g...s&action=fun_facts2
Since 1982 [csea, Mar 22 2007]
Cost to make a penny
http://answers.yaho...060805153709AARcFFI
Not worth melting [csea, Mar 22 2007]
Modest proposal?
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
[Hunter79764, Mar 31 2007]
[link]
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only in America <shakes head in wonder and dismay> |
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In Australia, the smallest denomination we have is a 5 cent piece, and if I'm pumping "gas" (petrol, that is) I try to get it to the 2 cent mark (eg $40.02) as a game (it also rounds down and I get two cents of free petrol). I usually end up missing it, and going to $40.03 and then I have to pay $40.05 'cause it rounds up, which means I break a $50 and end up with all manner of small change. *rolls eyes* |
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Of course, you could pay with EFTPOS and then it doesn't matter as your bank account can be in odd denominations. |
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Does your bank remember tenths of a cent? |
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[spiraliii], I hope you also plan to only eat food grown in your own backyard, with livestock fertilizer that comes from animals who have grazed on fallow pasturelands, and I hope you only use off-the-grid electricity, and gather your own rainwater, and weave your own clothing from the sheep you herd. |
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Because otherwise, your clothing, food, water, heating, lighting, anything you own made of plastic, and everything else in your life uses wayyyy more oil than you are saving by biking, and thus you should be ashamed of all the soldiers and iraqis you are selfishly allowing to die every day. |
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Loath it be to me to point out that non-"urban freegans often end up resorting to disgusting acts", like indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children, and dare I say it, men, in order to shore up their access to cheap bike tyres. |
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Keep your indignance to yourself? |
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[spiraliii], do you know how much oil is used to make those dumpsters?! |
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//I guess I should be more open to
accepting other's opinions and stop
drawing attention to the fact that people
can live a much happier life with less.//
That is a very generous offer which I gladly
accept. |
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I'm sure the bauxite mines where your aluminum frame came from were pretty happy-go-lucky places, too. |
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You also seem to be using a computer for idle personal entertainment. I fail to see how that shows a whole lot of amazing effort to cut down on every possible frivolous resource where you can. |
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The point is, unless you are one of those full out "freegans" you speak of that throws their all into it, you really have no place to say that our unnecessary energy uses are the wrong ones, while your unnecessary energy uses are okay, because "you're trying." Everybody uses less energy than they can. I could take half hour showers every day, but hardly anybody does. Don't tread in the zone where you are open to easy hypocrisy if you want to convince people of anything. |
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"Loath it be to me "!!!???? What the hell does that mean, m_Al_com? Did you mean "I am loth"? |
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Hey Spiralii, are you powering your computer with bicycle pedals? Or do you have some sort of dog powered hamster wheel contraption to keep it going? |
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On the one hand you are sort of right and people should be reducing usage. But there are perfectly sustainable levels that are above living like scavengers in our own society. |
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//"Loath it be to me "!!!???? What the hell does that mean, m_Al_com? Did you mean "I am loth"?// |
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He's conserving by not re-writing or using spellcheck. |
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He's got a point about keeping conservation in mind, no matter what you do. |
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Back on topic, please: that nine-tenths is part of the gas tax, somehow. I say it's the government's problem, we need a government solution. This one is odd enough to draw attention to the silliness. [+] |
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Nobody buys just *one* gallon of gas, so you will need a complete set of 1/10th pennies to pay for all the possible combinations. |
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I often buy 9/10 gallons of gas. Shouldn't they make a 0.81 cent piece for that? |
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So if you sit there constantly filling your tank with 5 gallons of gas at a time, you can get rounded down half cents every time. That can add up to a solid 3 cents resale profit on the street per tank, which is unacceptable piracy. Exxon should team up with RIAA to figure out how to stop this and lobby that 9/10 penny into circulation ASAP. |
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"Only $2.49 and 9/10 9/10ths" |
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spiraliii, Iraq supplies less than 5% of US oil. |
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That's my 9/10 cents worth. Don't make me whip out the other 1/10. |
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I want my penny to be worth more, not less, thereby I give you the 1.8 cent penny! But, before we make that switch, I want to go to the bank and invest a couple million dollars in penny rolls so that I can make a 1.6 million dollar profit when I sell them all back to the bank (because I like making free money). Actually, it might be worth more if it were all melted down, and then sold as copper, which would be legal to do if the penny were discontinued. |
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As far as I'm concerned, spiralii can take his freegan lifestyle off to the navy recruiter, and earn his freedom of speech like I did. |
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What burns me is that after all the fighting to get our pipelines safe, and guard the sea lanes so the supertankers can sail them, I get back home and my gas costs twice as much. |
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That's the spirit quantumn. Actually, you probably would make more by melting it down. Of course, that would be illegal. |
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Added a couple of related [links] for interesting reading. |
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Loath: unwillingness to do something contrary to your custom; "a reluctant smile"; "loath to admit a mistake"; "unwilling to face facts".
(princeton wordnet) |
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So probably more-or-less technically correct in its current form, but, I must agree, [baconbrain], archaic and unwieldy. |
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But then, more polite than "I think you've shit-fer-brains, but...", mayhap. |
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//I think you've shit-fer-brains, but...", //
Oi! |
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What's the point of having a unitary counting system based on the number 5, instead of the number 1? That's all you'd be doing if you eliminated the 1 cent piece. It's just changing the scale, that's all. |
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I never said it was acutally a good idea... |
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Indeed, its really a very bad idea, with no purpose other than to counter a currently existing bad idea. |
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Making currency with bizzare values is nothing new. A three cent piece was made to ease payment for subway fares, or something of that nature. A 9/10 cent piece is simply the bizzare extension of that sort of trend. |
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However, we wolud really not be changing the scale. a nickle would still be worth a nickle, a dime worth a dime, a dollar worth a dollar, and a penny... well, thos would need a new name, because they would be worth 9/10 of a cent. |
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It would probably be called the nenny (short for nine-tenths of a penny). "I'll give you ten nennies for nine pennies," they used to say. |
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Excellent! Nennies for ninnies!. |
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The US pennies and nickels now cost more to make than they are worth, so a 9/10 cent piece would have to be small. Perhaps we could start splitting pennies into smaller pieces. Gas stations could have a device for cutting pennies into smaller pieces. One would have to cut it into at least six pieces (.1666...) to get any closer to .9 cents. And, that would only be 1/30 of a cent closer (.8333...). Seven pieces would be within ~.043 cents, eight, within .025, and nine, within ~.011. |
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I look at it this way. All of the US coins go evenly into a dollar. |
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i.e. 100 pennies, 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 4 quarters, 2 half-dollars. |
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I've just divided a dollar by nine tenths of a penny, and it comes out to 111.11111... etc., it would never even out. |
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How would you get change in nine tenths coins from a dollar at the bank? I think $2.25 would give you 250 of them, but i'm not sure any less than that would come out even. |
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I think they only use this amount at the pumps to make the gas look a penny cheaper. but you just know if the total come out uneven, it rounds up to the next penny. |
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I think a price listed should be able to be made up off actual coins. Get rid of the nine tenths idea. |
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I think it's the gas companies that deserve the fish bone. nine tenths? it's just wrong. |
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// I think a price listed should be able to be made up off actual coins. Get rid of the nine tenths idea. |
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I think it's the gas companies that deserve the fish bone. nine tenths? it's just wrong // |
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AHA! I think you're beginning to see the *real* point of my modest propsal. |
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Aw, I'm 4/10's of a cent short! |
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