Death To The Penny

This is a pretty good discussion. I have no idea what it will take to kill the penny. The cost savings of eliminating it are not a mystery to anyone in Washington, but I suspect the same politics that have kept the $1 bill in production have also kept the cent alive.

DoubleEagle said:


And he hits one out of the park! This is the entire case wrapped up in half a dozen concise sentences.

As has been said many times in many threads, rounding ends up as a wash for both the seller and buyer over time for those small cash purchases that remain. The card users, check writers and virtual payment options all retain to-the-cent amounts.

One cannot buy anything substantial for a penny or nickel these days. The penny, nickel and dime are only used to make change for larger purchases. The dime is sufficient for this purpose.

Eliminate the cent now and the nickel in a couple years and be done with it.

I think the only coin most people would worry about picking up is the quarter, so just eliminate anything under the quarter. There's no real difference between 14 cents and 31 cents anyway, for example. Neither value is much different from 25 cents. It just feels so... ridiculous to keep bothering a manager for rolls of pennies because 1. pennies really don't matter, and 2. I hand out more pennies than I get because people either throw them in the trash or in a jar as soon as they get them.

Then, convert the $1, $2, and $5 to coins. As a fast food cashier, I'd rather handle a worn $5 coin than a worn $5 bill any day .

Too many coins? One really never should have more than five individual coins at a time: $5, $2, $2, 50 cent, 25 cent would be the worst change anyone would ever receive.

Ok so I will just pay with your bank card too then. Or when this comes up do you people from Canada, Australia etc, not underst6and the US doesn't require to give everyone a debit/credit card, people can't jsut charge stuff to their phone bill etc.

Banks in the US can pull any number of shenanigans as to why someone isn't allowed to use electronic banking for ANY reason based on race, creed, religion...whatever.

Banks in the US have carte blanche to do whatever they want to do. (see 2009 TARP funds)

Again much be so nice to live in places where those are not the norm. So you will be willing to share your bank card with everyone right?

Beat the system? heck it is bad enough now getting stores to charge the right tax on an item food or non-food! You think having them screw up with another method to screw people over is needed? John Malone needs more money for himself and his impoverished friends like Warren Buffet?

Again, many of you people and especially the politicians live in a fantasy world that not everyone else is privileged to live in. So when you quit riding the Disney fantasy train and come back to the real world.. then we can talk about real things.

If you want to talk about Disney fantasy worlds then... Toy Story 4 looks like it might be good even without Andy in it.

This isn't a requirement in Canada either, it seems like you have some interesting ideas about other countries.




i.e. they don't exist?

I always thought, since I first heard about it here; was that those who think about coins most outside of the mints are coin collectors. Odd that they would want to end the very thing they collect. My only thought on the why would be they want to reduce the number of items to make the ones they own more rare.

With the dollar bill it makes sense because they are not recycled and last a lot less. Also odd collectors most talk about it, because what those alive today probably started with like say wheat cents are things that people just cannot get their hands on through circulation any more to make a set or collection of.

Seems people want their own, not just coins, to be more valuable in most cases rather than collecting for the sake of personal enjoyment. It can be seen in almost everything where a $ value has to be assigned to something for it to have any worth. It just goes to show how corrupt and greedy society has become that everything has to be about money. Sure a coin is money IF you spend it, but for a collector it is just a disc with an interesting piece of art, or in the case of shield zilcolns a boring thing, or the quarter programs an annoyance.

@roller: Just really get tired of seeing comparisons to other countries and such, and wonder why anyone from say Canada should have a say in US money or why their opinions should matter. Also in these things people forget that PEOPLE are involved. As has been mentioned gas prices are 1/10th a cent, taxes are in such a way that you require cents, and everyone thinks digital transactions won't hurt anyone, but forget it will because they only think about themselves. They figure if it doesn't affect them it won't affect anyone. and the ONE SIZE FITS ALL model for anything just REALLY upsets m. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The penny still works. For those that don't want them, drop them into the local donation bucket for whatever it is available or tell the cashier to keep them.

aside: Look at the USD compared to the yen. right now it is 1:120. Sure you could say that means they have 120 cents in their dollar, but the yen is the currency, WAS their "dollar". Sen was their coinage, their "cents", and they are gone. Thus why when many people first see prices if things in Japan they freak out not understanding the abolished the "cent" and the smallest they have is the dollar. What if the US did that, how would that affect people? Culture shock? sticker shock?

Anyone here approve (US citizens only) of getting rid of ALL coins and just using the dollar, or making dollars into coins and having nothing smaller? The smallest paper money would be the current $100 bill.

Also in a world of our measurements versus "theirs" being metric, I still believe like Jefferson that you only need decimal currency. 1, 10, 100..... so half-cent...1/200th of a dollar was silly even when you could buy something with it, you could always take 2 and use a whole penny. Base 10 math and all that as well.

It would be pretty hard for the us to phase out the cent. I think the mint would make it out of plastic before doing that. The only way I see it happening is it we had rapid inflation and right now it's almost stagnation :(

No, it is called change for the sake of change. What would happen is something like a tax token, as people have mentioned plastic, would need to be made or the entire tax system changed where states are no longer allowed to set their own tax rates but the federal government would set the tax rates.

It works now because it IS a tax token effectively. MANY people use them, jsut because most here can afford not to use them or jsut throw them away does not mean the penny is not need by MANY people.

I want to see the study on how many people live payday to payday, and all I have seen so far is the hours per week needed at minimum wage to pay rent, which is 56 in one state and 170 in Hawaii. This is jsut to pay rent, no electricity, food, water, medical bills, etc. How many people are paid minimum wage in this country?

Seems enough for people to be fighting to raise it. Well those people depend on pretty much EVERY cent they get. It doesn't always go up by a nickel or dime. Even places that have raises after an initial grace period dont go up on the nickel or dime, sometimes it is 3 cents per hour after working for a full month.

So again if they are going to need to make a tax token anyway, just screw it; keep the penny and make it out of something more economic.

I can surprisingly still buy things from a few places for a single penny. The tax on it is so small it doesn't add a thing, but I have a store nearby that still says candy for a penny, and they use it as a loss leader, but still make money off it. Might just be a penny a month profit on their penny candy, but its a profit! Not to mention whatever other sales it causes just by getting people into the store for penny candies.

So if people are calling "change" and coinage nothing but tax tokens since the 80s, then why do we still have any of them? Because they have not found a way to make it work and the Japanese method of just getting rid of anything under the national currency nomenclature denomination doesn't work. People wont accept the $1 being the smallest.

The penny will die when the bills and coinage die. Then everything will be electronic ant it wont matter. The dollar bill will die first and give way to the dollar coin.

The cost spent on keeping the dollar bill is a lot more than that for keeping the penny. The BEP loses money on every dollar and the FED gains it for no reason. Then the BEP/FED has to burn them, bury them, etc when they are no longer used, but the dollar coin can be reused for anything metal can be used for. Doesn't have to be destroyed, can be recycled, lasts longer, takes less work to make each coin....

People are really fighting the wrong battle if they want to save money. The $1 bill has long outlived its usefulness due to lifespan and cost to create AND destroy it. Well the ones people using them don't already destroy.


Which would you pick up out of a pile of dog's .... an unknown coin or a $1 bill? Which can you find dropped on a beach and trodden into the sand?

US needs to follow the Euro, not Canada. 1,2,5,10,20,50 -cents, $1, $2.. and I would probably add the $5 coins as well. I mean how many $5 bills do you need to carry at one time? no more than you need nickels.

So want to fight for something that will do some good? Get rid of the dollar bill and get people more into using coins, rather than go against coins by trying to get rid of the penny. Get more people using dollar coins by having them learn that coins are needed, then they will likely pay more attention to the penny. So many times I get people saying they have never seen a $1 coin that are running cahs registers. THIS IS A PROBLEM! Our money-handlers dont even know what money is! At least they know what a penny is.