this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
-7 points (37.0% liked)

Personal Finance

4684 readers
3 users here now

Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!

Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Prices of things are becoming absolutely insane. $800+ rent, $30,000 cars, $10 sub sandwiches, etc. It would be nice to do a 3/1 split and cut everything by 2/3. Then we would have $266 rent, $10,000 cars, and $3.33 sub sandwiches. Wages, debts, everything would drop to 1/3 what they are now. It would also make coins useful again since a vending machine soda would be 2 quarters again.

all 40 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] amio@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. Costs rise all the time. Ideally, so does your income, giving you mostly the same purchasing power as before - just because 10 is a larger number than the 8 you paid a year or two ago, doesn't mean you realistically expended more value (e.g. time spent working, or foregoing other things).

Rejiggering this would involve a lot of work. It would not give you any more or less value, it would be cosmetic. It would also be based on a very subjective "this shouldn't cost as much as $X" where both X and the rough value of the $ are... just something you happen to be used to. A trivial example is how this looks to anyone with a different currency, or to an American in a different time.

Now, of course, a large amount of people in the entire Western world have gotten shafted for 50 years plus, and the purchasing power has gotten even worse in the past 5, but that's basically a separate issue.

(Also, coins are pretty expensive compared to paper money, IIRC)

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, incomes have risen a hell of a lot slower than inflation causing the average person to be poorer overall. Redominating the currency would not fix that problem. That is a systemic issue where inflation is higher than wage increases, so people demand higher wages, which then causes inflation to increase, and it's a spiral.

[–] walden@sub.wetshaving.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I don't really see a point in doing that. I dislike coins.

[–] johnjamesautobahn@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I dislike coins too, but mostly because a dollar is the smallest useful denomination and anything below is rounding. In a 1900 era world where you could buy something material for a nickel or dime, it was worthwhile to use those coins.

[–] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

In the Eurozone, you have 1 and 2 Euro coins, which are super useful all the time for small purchases. I'd really love to see them here too.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But why do you dislike them? Because in this event a coin would actually be worth using, where now it's just an annoyance.

[–] AnonTwo@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does anybody like decimals? Even if you add more worth it's more math.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

That's true. Have a look at Bitcoin where they are sending satoshis around (0.00000001).

[–] e_t_@kbin.pithyphrase.net 1 points 1 year ago

I kind of like how the Yen is denominated: all prices are integers. It would be roughly equivalent to pricing everything in cents, but at least there'd be no decimals.

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I don't think that would work out in the way you think it would. Also, this isn't really personal finance.

[–] DeadNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's an interesting idea, but the caveat here will be to do this for all currencies in the world, otherwise the concept of foreign exchange rates would get fucked up.

One of the primary parameters for determining exchange rate between two currencies is to first determine how much the same service/product/lifestyle cost in those two currencies.

Unless you "adjust" both the currencies (and in turn, all the currencies in the world), one currency (or country) would spiral into an economic abyss.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

wouldn't the same logic apply. So for example, a euro would be $0.36? That should be easy for computers to handle

[–] DeadNinja@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Correct, but only if you can make the European Union to agree to slash the value of 1 Euro from $1.09 as of now, to $0.36 ( what you proposed) - and then get every other currency in the world to follow suit.

Good luck with that.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago

The European Union wouldn't have anything to do with it. The market would, because the dollar would triple in value and therefore the euro would be one-third its value compared to the dollar.