Do You Think That The US Mint Should Keep Making Pennys

Calculating the price of pennies:
$50,000,000 annual loss divided by approximately 320,000,00 people equals 15.625 cents per year for every man, woman and child in the country on an equal per capita basis.
Against the savings from not making pennies, the one time cost of the entire country converting to the revised system should be set off to determine the net benefit. The conversion obviously would be a lot easier than converting to the metric system, but it will require adjustments by all businesses (not just retail) and the government, although it shouldn't effect consumers very much.Think about the financial industry. Banks do business by the penny. Stocks and commodities are priced by the penny. Utility rates and charges are set to the penny. Also, unit priced, high volume goods such as nails, building staples, rubber gaskets, and many other such things are priced to the penny and often are worth pennies or less. I agree that there is a lot of common sense to the suggestions on this forum that it should be a simple matter to price by the penny, total the transaction up to the penny and then round to the nearest nickel. All businesses should be capable of doing this, but it will be harder for some (think stock market) and much easier for others (think retail). Making the change will certainly be an employment stimulus for all the computer programmers who will have to reprogram computerized accounting programs.
I leave you to your own opinions about whether the $0.16/person annual savings is worthwhile.

I agree that small retailers would be among the least effected. But the paperwork burden, including software programming work, could be quite significant for some businesses, although the expense may or may not be recouped over time. There never has been a free lunch, and all changes come at some cost. The costs always must be considered along with the benefits.

and no...get rid of it asap

I say get rid of it, but keep them circulating. Don't make anymore just leave the existing ones to die on their own. No government collection, just let them wear to nothing.

Conder
If we were in a totally cashless society where no one used cash in their business or needed towrite a check to someone who might want to cash it, we would have no problem. You ask what software programming I am referring to. The devil is in the details, and the smallest problems can cause unforeseen issues . Here, the small problem I see that will require software programming is the final rounding to the nearest nickel. It must be accomplished and accounted for. The business I recently retired from would have needed to hire a software expert to adjust our accounting and billing software to accomplish the final rounding. Bigger businesses could encounter more complex issues, smaller businesses are more nimble and can adjust more easily on the fly.
In the case of a mom and pop specialty shop which might have a percentage rent lease requiring audit of register tapes, the business can avoid reprogramming or replacing the registers to do the final rounding simply by entering the separately computed total rounded down to the nearest nickel. But if the business is also using its registers for inventory control, problems will arise if each item is not entered separately in the register and the register will need to do the final rounding.
In the case of banks, insurance companies, brokerages, and utilities, the problem arises when the business has to pay money to or make a refund to a customer. No one's customer agreement presently calls for the final rounding. Revision of all the agreements could be avoided by simply tendering the customer the actual amount due rounded up to the nearest nickel (the customer would have to agree to rounding down) this would result in a cost of up to 4 cents per transaction, and the accounting system would need to be reprogrammed in any event to account for the rounding. Certainly, the business could write a check for the amount due to the penny, but what happens when the customer wants to cash the check, rather than deposit it.
So, the problem I see is in making the final rounding. Except in the smallest businesses, I see this causing software programming issues that will need to be dealt with. I learned over the years that even the smallest change comes at a cost.

I am curious to know what actually happened in Canada or other countries after the smallest coin was eliminated? Did actual retail prices change up or down? Were there complaints from the public? Were people actually cheated out of their cents (or whatever)?

We have no shortage of Canadians here. The lack of complaints tells me everything worked out just fine.