The United States is finally going to do away with pennies.

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Metric time is like getting rid of the penny. It may sound good on paper, but it comes with a lot of headaches that don't really become worth it very quickly. I do think that the penny, and likely nickel and dime, will eventually go away as inflation continues to chip away at the buying power. But, for a lot of items the difference of a penny is still meaningful. It's still fairly common around here to see things that are being sold for less than a dollar. For things more than a dollar, a penny isn't necessarily that big of a deal, but if the thing is selling for a dime, that's a full 10% that you're having to round just to avoid the pennies.

The tyranny of the metric system? You should do stand-up, you're hilarious.

They're a waste of money. That's a reason. Claiming there's no reason after reasons have been given is just dishonest.

If people worry that all pennies will suddenly go useless, that is not the case. Pennies will still be accepted in payment. New ones just won't be made.

No vending machines accept pennies anymore.

I remember when Canada did away with pennies back in 2012.

I don't see any downside to the metric system, except maybe for people who aren't used to it. At least you know where you stand with metric, where 1 meter and 1kg are the same wherever you go. But as a modern UK man with a background in science, I couldn't believe the confusion of American Imperial. It's not just the trouble you get if you want to do sums involving imperial. Many of them have the same names as the old UK system, but they aren't the same quantities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... nt_systems

What a mess. I'm just glad most US food sellers put the weight in metric on the packs as well as whatever the hell else they put it in. Metric is the only system of units I want anything to do with.

Last edited by ToughDiamond on 31 May 2025, 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

0.00000000000104% of the 2024 or something along those lines, indistinguishable from zero. And that's before considering the related tax revenue that comes from the salaries being paid to the employees at the mint, the employees at the companies that make the equipment and the taxes by the companies themselves. Effectively, it's costing zero to have the coins out there.

It's not about being used to it, it's that it's optimized for things that hardly anybody does, based on standards that results in the units being mostly awkward for use in the things that people typically do. Flip through a comment section any time the question comes up and it's a bunch of cope and rationalizations based on things that most people just don't do very often.

Even in this post, a foot is always a foot, a pound is always a pound, all of the US customary measures have been defined on the basis of the same standards as the ones that the metric system has for quite a while. I'm too lazy to look, but it's been that way for quite a few decades. The big difference, is that the US hasn't abandoned the way in which we divide the measures up. It's a very good system and a very antrocentric system.

I will concede though that there is some issues in terms of the US using an older version of the imperial measures, so it's probably better to say US customary as that's what it is, but the measures themselves are intended to be used for every day use and there's been active enforcement of it for quite a while to the point where they still go to stores and test the measuring devices to guarantee accuracy.

Not necessarily. Maybe MV just doesn't agree with those reasons, or thinks they're outweighed by the fact that people still use pennies.

Maybe, but I still think the metric system can seem awkward to people who aren't used to it. If it weren't for that I'd be harsher about folks who prefer imperial. I wish more of them would just say they prefer it because they're used to it instead of citing how good it is for doing things they never do, assuming you're correct about the excuses they make, but it's very human for people to be irrational like that.

One of the biggest worries the masses seemed to have when we were in the EU was that Brussels might stop the UK from selling ale by the pint. Thou shalt not mess with The Great British Pint. They never did.

Disagreeing with a reason isn't the same as a reason not existing.

^
I think you're taking what he said too literally.

Some good things about the metric system include
When measuring lengh the units multiply by 10s, ie 10 millimeters in a centimeter, 10 centimeters in a meter, 10 meters in a kilometer. Whereas the imperial system is more confusing, ie 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile(I had to look the miles up) which makes the math a lot more complicated & harder to remember.
When measuring temperature in Celsius zero degrees is freezing & below zero is below freezing. Whereas with Fahrenheit 32 degrees is freezing & when using Fahrenheit some people still say bellow when talking about temps being bellow freezing but the temps are not bellow zero.

Yes I like Centigrade - zero for the freezing point of water and 100 for its boiling point. Handy for cooking and pretty much anything to do with water at the kind of temperatures we usually see in everyday life. But what's Fahrenheit? 100 degrees is a bit above body temperature, and 0 is (if I remember right) the coldest thing Mr. Fahrenheit could find when he invented it. Not quite so straightforward, not to me anyway. And converting between the two scales is a tad tricky to do if you don't have a bit of paper.

I won't get started on dewpoints as a substitute for relative humidity, except to say that I don't care for them at all and that the conversion to humidity needs a computer program.

You've got the sprit, but it's 10 milimeters in a centimeter 100 centimeters in a meter 1000 meters in a kilometer.

Each next unit multiplys by a factor of 10

That being said I find metric easier because I've been using it all my life. I understand that someone using imperial would find imperial easier.