Grey's Journal:
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Oh, how I loathe prices that end in `.99'. In England, unlike the US, tax is already included in the price tag. It's called VAT -- value added tax, a phrase I just love. It makes me imagine an army of accountants working day and night to add value to my purchases. It's satisfying to look at a price tag and know that the number displayed is the final amount. But, just as in the United States, some marketing drone decided that all prices in the United Kingdom will end in `.99'. In the US, I never cared because sales tax added a small amount and, so, $0.99 became an equally annoying $1.07 But in the UK, I have to wait for that one penny, and doing so makes me feel like a miser. (A note about names: while every one in the United States calls the one cent coin a penny, that is not its official name. However, in the United Kingdom, the official name for the one pence coin is `penny') After I give the cashier a pound for my £0.99 purchase, I usually pretend I have something else to do -- wrestling with the napkin dispenser or reorganizing my wallet -- so I don't look like I'm waiting only for my change. When the cashier gives me the penny I feign surprise, as though I forgotten the money was due to me, in order to keep up the charade that I was truly busy arranging my credit cards in alphabetical order. In order avoid waiting for a single penny, I pay for everything with large bills. A £5 note waits in my pocket for use on a £4.99 item but I use a £20 note instead. This way I feel justified waiting for £15.01 and not like a cheapskate waiting for £0.01. But, this causes its own set of problems. Because there are no paper notes smaller than £5, I get a lot of coins back. It seems that moments after I visit the ATM my paper money vanishes like a magician's trick with a poof! and is replaced with innumerable coins that I try to stuff in my wallet, but eventually overflow into all of my pockets where they jingle like the bells on Santa's sled. Every time I take out my wallet, I feel the coins stuffed inside trying to jump out all at once to crash on floor with a loud noise and then roll off in every direction, leaving me to scamper after them, hurriedly apologizing to the surrounding customers `sorry, sorry, excuse me, pardon me, could you lift your foot?' The omnipresent .99 annoys me for two additional reasons, the first being is anyone really fooled by the lower price? Is there someone out there who won't buy a jacket potato for £3.00 but will gladly hand over £2.99? If there is such a person, I want to meet him, and punch him. This tiny reduction of the sales tag gets more annoying the higher the price. For example, there is a real estate magazine I enjoy perusing when I visit my parents on the North Fork of Long Island that lists all of the absurdly expensive and unique properties available in the Hamptons. Most of the houses confidently list their prices in round numbers such as $10,000,000; but I go mad when I occasionally seeing an ocean-side palace listed for $49,999.999. I've made a verbal stand against 99-ism, but I'm afraid it's a lost cause. When I go out to the movies with friends and they ask me what the price is for a ticket, I round up and reply, ``Eight pounds,'' almost invariably they ask in response, ``Really? I thought it was seven ninety nine.'' The secondly reason the omnipresent `.99' annoys me is: my mind reels at all the lost energy because of that one pence. I buy some snack for £0.99, and the casher takes my pound. In a sane world, where the price was £1, this would be the end of the exchange. But, it's not. Now the cash machine drawer opens. How much electricity did that use? What about wear and tear on the machine? The clerk hands me the penny. How many calories did that motion burn? The answers, of course, are `hardly any', but now let's multiply that by the number of cashiers in England and the number of transactions per day. On a nation-wide level, that's a lot of food that needs to be grown for the workers expending those calories and electricity that needs to be generated for the machines. Let's also not forget the lost time involved in this transaction. For the sake of argument, imagine that I make one transaction a day where I have to wait for one penny due to a .99 price. Let's also assume that this adds five seconds of unnecessary time to the purchase. Big deal, you say, so I waste five seconds. But, when we multiply that by the population of Britain (60,094,648) we have 83,465 man-hours -- nearly a decade of human life -- wasted every day in the United Kingdom, all for the sake of a penny. If you were able to gather up all those lost five seconds over a year, you would have saved enough time for fifty human lifetimes. Less wasteful, but even more annoying than the single penny are the two pence coins. A more poorly designed bit of monetary history I have not seen since the Yap Islanders carved boulders into circular coins six feet in diameter to use as currency. If two pence coins were a rarely seen curiosity, like the American $2 bill, then I wouldn't mind, but I have a glass jar full these unwanted coins. I understand that it is necessary to have a penny, because it is the smallest unit of currency, but why-oh-why a coin that represents two of the smallest unit? It's useless as I have yet to find a price that ends in .98 and, worst of all, the two pence coin is huge. As the second most valueless coin, it's also the third biggest, just a hair smaller than the fifty pence and two pound coins. In the United States the coins currently minted are: 1c, 5c, 10c, 25c, and the 50c. (There was an attempt at a $1 coin, the Sacagawea dollar, but it was a failure and the US mint has since stoped producing them) Whereas the British coins are: 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2. If you arrange the American coins by size order, it's roughly by value, only the dime is out of place: 10c, 1c, 5c, 25c, 50c. But, do the same with the British coins, and the result is madness: 5p, 1p, 20p, £1, 10p, 2p, 50p, £2 -- not one pair in order. But, I really do like the £1 and £2 coins for they are well designed. Big enough and weighty enough to feel valuable, but not too big or too weighty to be cumbersome -- as is the JFK half dollar in the States, a coin that feels like a drink coaster in your pocket. There is also something pleasantly medieval feeling about using these large gold and silver British coins. I feel I should carry them around in a little burlap sack -- the kind evil kings in movies always throw contemptuously at some lesser character as a reward for betraying the hero. I would get such a kick out of flinging a little sack of forty coins at my landlady for the week's rent. The other thing that impresses me about the British money is what they put on it. The back of the two pound coin currently has a motif that honors technological progress throughout history. In 2001, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first transatlantic radio broadcast. I once held a two pound coin with a strand of DNA on the back. Also, the inscription around the outside of the coin is `standing on the shoulders of giants' a reference to Isaac Newton's famous quote. Currently Charles Darwin lives on the £10 note and before him was Charles Dickens. I cannot tell you how much it makes me smile to see a scientist on the money, especially someone as controversial as Darwin. Not having been raised in England, I had to look up the two unrecognized faces: on the £5, Elizabeth Fry (a social reformer, who worked to improve the lives of prisoners and the homeless), on the £10 Edward Elgar (a musician and composer). In contrast, the American bills are all former heads of states, hence the bills are sometimes referred to as `dead presidents'. The only exceptions to this rule are Alexander Hamilton (who set up the Nation's Banking system) and Ben Franklin, who graces the $100 and, in my opinion, is the most deserving of the bunch. Called `the greatest president who was never president' Franklin has perhaps the most impressive resume of any American who's ever lived -- having been a journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist, abolitionist, scientist, diplomat and inventor. He invented lighting rods and bifocals, was the first postmaster general of the United States and founded the first public library. He is also the only founding father who has his name on all three of the documents establishing the United States as a new nation: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris. The only thing I hold against him is his incorrect guess of which charges move in an electric current. He discovered electricity and knew that there were two kinds of charge, positive and negative, and he know that one of them moved while the other stayed still. But he couldn't determine which was which. So he guessed, incorrectly, that the positive charges moved. By the time the mistake was discovered, physics book authors left the error unchanged for consistency's sake and to drive future generations of physics majors mad. I can't tell you the number of times I cursed Ben Franklin's name in my electricity classes, knowing that reality was the opposite of the calculations I had to perform. Looking at all the US paper money led me to think about who I would add to and who I would take off of the American currency. First to go -- unquestionably -- would be Andrew Jackson from the $20. He earns my eternal resentment for his actions which led to the Trail of Tears. When Cherokee land became desired by the United States in 1830 due to both population growth and the discovery of gold, Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, forcing 20,000 cherokees to be relocated. When the US Supreme Court, headed by John Marshall, declared the Indian Removal Act unconstitutional, Jackson gave the court the finger by saying `Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it,' knowing full well that the Judicial Branch had no way to do so. Forced to do so at the hands of General Windfield Scott and 7,000 troops, the Cherokees were marched 1,200 miles from their home in Georgia to Oklahoma. It is estimated that 4,000 to 8,000 Cherokee died en route. Also of some dubiety is Ulysses S. Grant on the $50. Every where I look to find information on him lists two facts: 1) his role in bringing the Civil War to a close, and 2) that he was one of the worst presidents in American history with the most corrupt office. While I do recognize that wars need to end quickly, I'm not impressed by military skill. I don't think the ability to kill large numbers of people quickly and efficiently should counter out `Worst. President. Ever.' and land one's face on the currency. If I was in charge of the US Mint, the first person I'd put on the bills would be Mark Twain. While he didn't march Indians to their death or take kickbacks, I think he should be honored for giving America it's distinct style of writing: short and to the point. If it wasn't a federal crime to deface currency, I'd tape his face over Jackson's on every $20 that crossed my path. Second on my new currency would be Thomas Edison, a man so diligent that he accumulated 1,093 patents in his name -- though there is some doubt about how many he came up with on his own. He was notorious for refusing to share credit. His workshop was a kind of assembly line for inventions. Other people's products came in one end, and Edison and his team worked to improve them. And when product came out the finish end, Edison took the credit and obtained the patent. But he really wasn't that bright in many ways. Nikola Tesla, a physics genius and friend of Edison had this to say about the man's methods: `If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.' But it precisely this tireless, ceaseless action that makes Edison such a poster-boy for the American work ethic. Also under consideration is the amazing Helen Keller. Most Americans know her only as the deaf and blind girl who overcame her crippling disabilities and who learned to communicate, but that is not where the story ends. She went on to be a writer and a lecturer with a keen interest in defending the rights of workers. She joined the industrial workers of the world (IWW, aka The Wobblies) and was one of the co-founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. While she was held up as an example of overcoming disadvantages, those same disadvantages were pointed at by her opponents when she became a socialist, to which she responded: I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums of New York and Washington. Of course I could not see the squalor; but if I could not see it, I could smell it. With my own hands I could feel pinched, dwarfed children tending their younger brothers and sisters, while their mothers tended machines in nearby factories. Besides the advantages of books and of personal experience, I have the advantage of a mind trained to think. As for other candidates for my new currency, John Wayne and other American pop icons kept coming into my mind. At first I thought popular culture was to silly for currency, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Who wouldn't love an Andy Warhol bill -- a red and white striped Campbell's Soup imitation? Well, lots of people wouldn't, so perhaps we should pick one bill to be the `pop culture bill' and change who's on it every few years or so. It seems we need some Hollywood star on our bills. Almost without exception, when I talk to Europeans it's movies they think of when discussing America. One girl I spoke with told me that on her first trip to New York City, she cried tears of joy because it was every movie she had ever seen. Another acquaintance had a similar sentiment about California -- enchanted by its unreality. John Wayne seems a good a choice as any, capturing both the idea of Hollywood but also of an American West that never existed. After all if John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe don't, in some way, embody a certain American romanticized ideal then I don't know who does. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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