INFLATION TALK (a.k.a. ELIMINATE THE CENT, NICKEL, & DIME ALREADY)

Our monetary system is a mockery of value.

     A common argument I hear against eliminating the penny is that it will cause additional inflation because stores will price their items in such a way so as to benefit from the round up.

     First of all, that is stupid. Psychological pricing isn't going to go away with the loss of the cent. If anything, you'll get a better deal. Do you honestly think $19.99 is going to suddenly become $20 after the cent has been eliminated or do you think it will be much more likely to see a price of $19.95?
     Remember, $19.99 is twenty bucks. So is $19.95. It just doesn't look like twenty bucks because our brains, for all their marvel of evolutionary engineering, are easy to fool. No retailer wants you to think you're spending twenty bucks. They want to exploit that part of your brain that only sees the 19 and assumes the product/service is only nineteen bucks because the vast majority of people can't be bothered to think that thought through after reading the entire price.

     So no, prices are not going to go up because the penny is lost to our monetary system.

REFLECTIONS...

     Yesterday I learned that Digby has a boyfriend. I also learned that I am in no way happy for her. I never realized that I had actually hated her...

     It's strange getting a glimpse of your soul. Any other of my crushes over the years, if I found out they had a boyfriend or when they announced their engagements, whatever, I was actually pleased. Yes, I wished it could've been me in a more perfect world but nevertheless I was glad to have learned they had found some happiness in life. It is what I had always wanted for them. Again, ideally they would've found that happiness with me, but in this imperfect world I'm still glad they found someone. I really am.

     But not Digby...

     Why the difference, I wonder? She's not the only girl to have hurt me before nor is she the first. Do I really hold such a terrible grudge because she was the last girl I could've introduced to my father before he passed? Was it because she was never straight with me? Was I really so in love that having my heart broken over such a long stretch of time would so thoroughly blacken my soul? I don't know...

     Such invidiousness...

     It's like having a mirror capable of reflecting my soul held up to me. I saw the darkness in my heart for the first time in quite a while. I'm ashamed... I thought I cared about her. That was painful to confront. Strangely, it may prove liberating. I've been pining for this girl since July 2007...a long time indeed...and even after not having seen her with any sense of regularity for almost three years. She's stuck with me. No one has replaced her. I'm not sure I've ever wanted a girl more. I've come to calling her The Omega as though she would be the last of her kind...that my heart could not bear to take up the burden of another infatuation.
     Number Twelve briefly shone after her, but unlike Digby, she was honest with me and her potential for influence over me faded rapidly. I let her go before she became a full-blown crush. I was able to let her go and let her go easily. I've seen her with her boyfriend and how happy she is with him and I, in turn, am happy for her that she has such a man who has stood by her all these years and through the traumas she's had to endure. When the First One finally finds a man, I'm sure I'll feel a little pang of jealousy but I will ultimately be glad she has found someone she has deemed worthy of her. It is, after all, what I have wanted for her since high school.

     Still, this dark jealousy might prove liberating. To see me hate her happiness and feel it so openly only shows me that I could not really have cared for her. To want to destroy this budding love between them in some perverse effort to isolate her that she may find love with only me is insanity. I can't claim feelings of love for her if I wish this upon her in any capacity.

     Knowing this; having confronted this aspect of my soul, maybe I can finally let her go...

A CAUSE CONSERVATIVES WILL SURELY RALLY BEHIND?

     Reading Numismatic News the other day, I learned that the Presidential Dollar series is now slated to end with President Ford and not Reagan as previously thought. The reasoning behind this is that ex-President Jimmy Carter is still alive and since living people are not eligible for depiction on coins, the mint is not about to skip his presidency just to do Reagan.

     I wonder if this will put Republicans in a phony uproar like they did to get "In God We Trust" moved from the edge of the coin to its obverse (remember the so-called "godless" dollars fiasco that Republicans used to score easy political points with their constituents?). While it would have fit better on the reverse of the coin, it was put on the heads side forcing the use of an even tinier font.

     To have their idol shunned like this. Surely it will be some liberal conspiracy and most certainly Obama will have had something to do with it even though the law was written during George W. Bush's term by a Republican dominated House and Senate. I know Republicans have been wanting to put Reagan on either a coin or paper currency for years now. I remember it suggested for the dime in time for the centennial of Reagan's birth. Another for the $10 bill as Alexander Hamilton is an easier target for removal than would be Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.

     Now while I'm tired of Presidential portraiture on our nation's coins, I'll admit there would have been some poetry to having Reagan's dime debut in 2011. The Roosevelt dime began in 1946. By 2010, 65 years worth of them would have been produced. How fitting that the dime would be "retired" after its 65th anniversary and that the portrait being retired at the traditional age for retirement would be that of the man who championed Social Security in the first place?

     But that did not happen as politics once again got in the way. This is why you shouldn't have real people depicted on coins...you can never get them off once on. Roosevelt's constituencies including the March of Dimes opposed the change, never mind that literally tens of BILLIONS of Roosevelt dimes currently exist and would continue to exist long after a new coin's debut. You regularly find dimes going back to 1965, the first year after silver coins ceased. Fifty years worth of dimes. They're not going away, but (mocking tone) no, we "need" him on the dime because of our charity. Ugh...so provincial.

     I'm guessing this "snubbing" of President Reagan will fire the Republicans to finally get their Reagan coin. Maybe he'll be the new dollar coin of the realm. Maybe in their zeal to get Reagan dollars out into the public's hands, the Republicans will finally end the dollar bill (and hopefully the Sacagawea dollar too...I don't need annual concurrent dollar coins) to get their hero into commerce.

      We'll see what happens when Fox News gets a hold of this non-story...