Even Dollars

Today's society seems to be dominated by ideas of efficiency, and rightly so: the most efficient methods of using time or resources lead in the end to a more profitable endeavor. With such a premium placed on this virtue of the modern era, it is surprising to see that one of the most mundane aspects of life, paying for goods, is also one of the most wasteful and inefficient aspects of our society. However, the solution is simply and easily implemented: include tax in the price of goods (like gasoline) and set the price to even dollar amounts.

Why the Current System is Flawed 

Go to the average supermarket and purchase a single item; perhaps a book for $4.99. The sales tax of your state is 8.875%. You clearly have no idea how much money you owe until you've checked out, and even then one must receive a number of small coins in change. This scenario illustrates two of the most inefficient and easily fixable aspects of added sales tax: namely the inability to ready exact change if one must pay with cash as well as the existence of change which is detrimental to the company and the individual.

Supermarket Traffic Jam

Let's take them one at a time. First the exact change. Although there are fewer people who pay exclusively by cash today, there are large populations that prefer this classic payment method. However, time is wasted by counting out cash that could have been readied before hand if the price were known. Although the amount of time it adds to a single transaction may be negligible (15 or 20 second) the time quickly adds up when a line of customers wishes to pay for their goods until the amount of time wasted is minutes. The same phenomenon happens in traffic jams: a single car slows down and the car behind it slows down too, going ever so slightly slower. Eventually the chain continues until the freeway is at a standstill without any cause except the magnification of small changes in speed. In such a way check out lines become horribly inefficient and slow means of paying for goods when every transaction takes longer than necessary thereby wasting the time of the cashier as well as every person in line.

Coins are Leeches

When a large supermarket has coins and bills delivered by an armored car, a fee is added according to the weight of the money transported. This is ultimately the reason that dollar coins, although more efficient for a country, are less efficient for a business since they weigh more than a bill and therefore cost more to transport. Since storing and transporting coins costs money, it should then be questioned how to either eliminate or restrict the amount of coins that are handled.

Enter the even dollar method.

Since all goods already have taxes included in this system, a cartload of groceries may cost $214.00. This is an exact number, one that can be paid in all bills. When all customers orders ring up as even dollar amounts the need for pennies, nickels and dimes to give exact change is eliminated which means the store does not have to waste as much money transporting and storing change.

Final Thoughts

Although changing the current system would be complex and involve cooperation between manufacturers and stores in complex agreements over price, in the end including tax in goods saves the public and stores time and money. Of course, I'm not the first one to ever propose the idea: England already includes taxes in the price of goods. In the end, the stores that employ this method will not only gain a competitive edge over other stores by saving time and money, but will draw a larger customer base due to convenience. I understand this is a complex and very involved issue, but the ideas behind it are sound: they only need implemented.

Let me know what you think: do you own a store or business? Could you implement this system? Does it sound feasible for your purposes? Leave a comment below!