Should we eliminate the penny?

Why do we still have the penny?

It seems to me like there really is no value left in keeping the penny around. It's worth nothing. To me it's worth less than nothing, because they're such a damned hassle. I have to carry them around, all the time worrying about how to get rid of them at my next transaction so that i don't get more of them.
Plus they make you look like an idiot when you're at bat at the cash register and you're digging through your pockets searching for that last penny you swear you have.

So why are we still minting the darn things? This must cost the country a fortune each year just to manufacture them (more than 1 cent, I'm sure). Am I missing some key economics background that justifies their existence? Will the loss of +/- 2.5 cents/transaction somehow cause our economy to rapidly fluctuate and die? Will this somehow affect the value of the dollar? Is it for historical reasons, or because saying "nickel" instead of "penny" in all of our adages don't sound as catchy?

Maybe a few pennies can feed a village in Africa for a month, but the homeless people around here give me dirty looks when i give them a handful of coppers...

So let me know what benefits there are to making these things. My buddy thinks the nickel should go as well...

 

I live in England,but have the same problem with the Engish penny.

I was actually only talking about this this morning to a friend.I carn't remember the last time that i used anything smaller than a 10p coin to buy something.

I end up at the end of the week with a wallet or pocket full of 1p,2p and 5p coins.

Perhaps we should ship all the change we don't want to Countries that are poor.

If everyone give there change that takes up wallet space to charity they would make an awful lot of money !!!

 

Personally, I feel guilty donating anything less than a $5 bill to charity. Pocket change, IMO, buys nothing. But anyways, I think it would be better if we all carried some sort of credit card instead of money. The cost of producing the card for all citizens might initially be higher than printing money, but in the longrun a credit card lasts longer than paper money and the money saved from not having to print and mint paper and coin money would be...a lot

 

1stAD I like your card replacement idea, but wouldn't the government know too much about us?

I agree we should get rid of the penny. I'm really interested to know how much it costs us a year to mint the darn things.

 

I heard that it costs 1.5 cents to mint a penny.

I work as a cashier in a grocery store, and I can tell you that about 60% of people are already using cards. Mostly debit cards. Also, most of my customers are 40+. The rate is probably even higher for young people.

Personally, I use my card as little as possible. Cash for everyday things, card for large purchases. I don't know why. It's just the way I do things.

I think we should get rid of the penny as well, but I feel that that could increase inflation.

 

I dont think so. Went to Burger King the other day buying a meal that cost $2.46 with tax, so that one copper abe lincoln came in handy.

 

everywhere I go here that I buy stuff with cash has a "penny dish" next to the cash register. Basically, if you buy something for $2.51 then you give the cashier $2.50 and a penny from the dish.

Similarly, if you get 27c change from something then its usual to pocket the 25c, and put the 2c in the dish.

I think pennies are useless. However, they need 1c flucuations to maintain the economy. Say for example with the price of gas - it needs to go up or down 1 or 2c frequently to match the market price. This could not be achieved by going up or down 5c.

The same could be said for interest rates. They need to go up and down by a penny at a time.

Remember, a penny flucuation in interest rates means +/- millions and millions of dollars.

malkie

edit: However, in the UK (where I'm from) we used to have 1/2 pennies. With inflation, these eventually became redundant as it made no difference to increase the cost of something by 1/2 a penny. The same thing might happen eventually with pennies....

 

Well, maybe we could keep the idea of the penny but not the penny itself. Let's use the example of gas prices:

We could still charge 149.9 or what not; that is, we would still charge to the penny. However, for the final price we would round to the nearest five cents. Supposedly, the rounding up and rounding down would even out eventually.

 

I think that for the reasons outlined above (the price of gas, the way sales tax works, etc.) I think that the penny is going to be around for a long time. However, "always in motion the future is". I agree with 1stAD, that cards should and will become more prevalent. Perhaps the penny won't become extinct until traditional cash becomes more threatened.
If we get rid of the 1 cent designation, how would we say "a penny for your thoughts"? Or how could I "give you my two cents worth"? Such sticky problems!

 

Personally, i think we should eliminate the penny, i mean, change in general, not to mention the penny with no more value thana candy bar wrapper, is a little annoying to carry around. most people, except for bums, usually always carry nothing but bills, 20s, 50s, 100s, and for crime lords, 1000s. In this time and age, pennys, nickels, and primarily all small change except for quarters are practicly useless to have and carry around, but i honestly do not think any country will stop producing pennys.

 

primarily all small change except for quarters are practicly useless to have and carry around

Yeah until the soda machine at work says exact change only.

Anyway. I throw my pennies away when I find them in my pockets. I keep the silver though.

 

I like pennies. Plus it's cool to make the souvenier kind at those machines.

 

Yeah until the soda machine at work says exact change only.

Well, soda's ain't our lot in life.

 

I cant wait for the day that ALL paper currency and coinage, is eliminated!! Of course, the Armored Car industry would become an endangered species!!

 

they still come in handy for poker

I'll see your 2c, and raise you 4c

On a good night I can come home with 36c.
ALthough there was this one time I was fleeced, and ended up buying myself back into the game with a stick of gum and a shoelace I was taken for a frightening 52c that night

malkie

 

With that, we could use plastic money.

 

Most places around here don't take cards for anything less than $3.00, and some don't take them for anything less than $5.00. To get a paper in the morning from the box, I need quarters, nickles and dimes. But the box won't take pennies, and neither do pop machines.

Get rid of the penny I say.

 

Unless they can make those darn soda machines accept pennies, I'm all for their ultimate removal.

GO 'CLONES!

 

Bah, pennys are good. Keep them I say, most of the time when you buy something you dont end up with it being a nice number like .50, its usually .57 or something like that. You still need em.

I hate those stupid cards. My friend swears by them, and ya know what? We go to the movies and he puts it in the machine and it doesnt work. This happened three times over the course of a year. So I had to pay for him He finally figured it out about 2 months ago, it was that he had to pay a 1 dollar charge when he was trying to withdraw 20 dollars. And he had a 20 dollar a day limit on his card. So in essence he had tried to withdraw 21 dollars. I despise cards.

 

And he had a 20 dollar a day limit on his card.

It takes two minutes in a bank to change that. My limit is set to $500 right now. It's enough to buy most anything I want, but it means that my account can't be cleaned out in a day if my card is stolen.

 

Wouldn't life be simpler if we eliminated pennies and all prices were rounded off to the nearest 0.05?

 

Wouldn't life be simpler if we eliminated pennies and all prices were rounded off to the nearest 0.05?

But even then, what about tax? And every penny does add up, so who wants to pay more than they previously would have? Unless it was always rounded down, even if up was closer...

 

How about if it was always rounded up to the nearest five cents and the extra money went to the state government as a kind of painless tax.

 

But it all adds up.... and I don't see that pennies are so annoying to keep.... they have their uses.

 

For as long as I can rmember, may Dad, at the end of the day, goes up stairs and empties his wallet of pennys and puts them in jars. At the end of every year, he puts them in rolls and deposists them in the bank. Theres a use for your extras.