David Owen in the New Yorker wrote: “In 1940, an average one-pound loaf of bread sold for eight cents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means that a penny in those days bought enough bread to make a good-sized sandwich. These days, a penny doesn’t buy much more than a bit of crust.”
“I’ve been throwing pennies away for years.”
Her indoors would throw coppers away but I think we need to start being rational about this. I’m not saying we should start to hoard our pennies (though saving them and putting them in charity boxes is a good use of them) but rather making some sort of statement about the number of retail outlets that still price with a .99 suffix. Is there any reason for it these days? Is anyone really going to balk at paying £5 for something that yesterday was £4.99?
The easy way to resolve the .99 thing is to stop using cash – only accept credit, debit and ‘voucher’ cards. Totally. If you stop producing pennies and take existing pennies out of circulation then you’ll have the same issue with .95 pricing as the 5 cent or 5 pence coin becomes the new common denominator. Switch to electronic cash and it won’t matter.
I seem to recall that the .99 was added to force the clerks at the checkouts to put the $5 in the register and give the penny as change back to the customer – it was lack of trust in the clerks rather than a pricing scheme designed to fool the unwary consumer.
These days it’s effective as 99 p doesn’t look like a pound and 4.99 doesn’t look like a fiver.
Is that really the case? I look at 4.99 and see a fiver. I have done ever since I was old enough to count. Is anyone actually “fooled” ?
I think so 🙂