Has the venerable $.01 piece outlived its usefulness? Check out the website for some of the arguments in favor of eliminating the penny. What do you think?
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Is it time to say goodbye to the Penny?
Has the venerable $.01 piece outlived its usefulness? Check out the website for some of the arguments in favor of eliminating the penny. What do you think?
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39 comments:
If they delete pennies...how will the prices of things be affected? Instead of being $9.99 and then plus tax equals $10.81, would that mean they bump the price down to $9.98 so that after taxes it will be $10.80? I don't really know what certain things cost, but over time, that one penny taken off may amount to a loss of money for some company.
Also, what the hell are people in such a rush for? OH NO 2 EXTRA SECONDS AT THE REGISTER! That argument is ridiculous. Then they say 4 hours out of the year, yes but its at like 2 seconds at a time...its really not a big deal.
Wow $100 million just to produce pennies?! Unbelievable...
Unfortunately, i agree with micah. i really dont see the hassle of retiring the penny, and although there are some good arguments against the penny, i still enjoy whipping out my small amount of pennies to complete a transaction that has an odd number and save myself some paper bills. As Nas would say, it's all about the papers. Maybe it does cost a lot, but I'm a big lobbyist for the Zinc corporations, thus I support the production of more pennies.
We need pennies because like some others said I like to save the bills as well. I don't think it's really necessary to get rid of the penny. They are often pretty useful because i mean who doesn't have a couple of pennies lying around everywhere they go.
Honestly, I've never really liked pennies. Sure they keep everyone from having to break bills on some occasions, but wouldn't things be easier ending in 5 or 0? Instead of 9.99, it will round up to 10. Big deal. So instead of 12.82 it'll be 12.80. Boom. 3 quarters and a nickel. It's not the fact that I hate counting out pennies, it's the fact that they're really not that big of a profit for anyone unless you look at it in the long run. But anything could be seen as that. I'm all for retiring the pennies.
dont make ANY MORE pennies..KEEP the ones we have though..thats what i think..
we have an abundance of pennies..let the pennies that we have continue to circulate..
if we eliminated the penny there would be billions of dollars, over time trillions of dollars, unaccounted for. A rounding system for all goods and services is just asking for someone, probably everyone, to get ripped off.
time is money and we waste too much time to count for exact change, everything and everyone should accept cards. Get rid of pocket change by turning it into digital money.
I hate waiting for people and I also hate making people wait while I search for a few pennies.
In my opinion there is no logical reason to seriously consider deleting the penny from our system. It hasn't really produced such a ridiculous problem, and if people are tired of waiting the extra 8 seconds because of someone in front of them getting change from their purse then they should just deal with it or cry about it to themselves as there are bigger problems in life. The economy works fine with the present setup, seeing as how would you be able to pay for something that doesnt end in .05 or .10..etc. If it works, use it. Keep the dang penny.
i think that there shouldnt be anymore new pennies made but we should keep the ones that we have to not make things to complicated.
preach on, dmitriy!
The penny is the most useless piece of crap ever made by the American government. All prices should end in a five or a zero. The price point of $x.99 is complete crap. With tax it's always way more than that. Everywhere should operate like movie theaters. Next time you go to the movies, take a look at your ticket stub. The theater charges like $7.54 so the tax will make it an even $8.00.
Basically we need them unless everyone is willing to switch and monitor credit and debit cards. then we have to phase out all coins and paper and thik of the Mom and Pop stores.I guess I should stop collecting pennies. O higher being Im killing the american economy
Frankly I like pennies. I am definitely the person who tries to find the pennies in her purse (sorry for wasting 4 hours of your life!). Retiring pennies would be dumb. I agree with Micah, prices would have to change somehow.
I personally don't see any reason why we should have to wipe out the penny. If it is costing so much money, just stop producing pennies and allow the ones already made to circluate around the country. The penny helps keep everything accurate, so why get rid of it completely?
i love pennies! i think it's dumb to take out pennies, so people can save 2 seconds. Pennies are a classic part of our currency, and i would be sad if people took it out of our currency.
The penny is garbage! It is now the year 2008 and it is time to start acting like it! Screw pocket change and pull out your dang credit card and use it. What's the point of having a card if you always dig around for loose change? Whatever I wont complain. If you don't like pennies then don't use them and if you do like pennies then go pleasure yourself by spending precious time out of your short life to look for them.
no they shood not get rid of the penny, you never know when it may come in use
I don't think the whole penny thing is really going to affect the U.S. at all. We're too busy thinking about the next thing we can buy than counting pennies.
The government doesn't care if we spend however billion at the mint for pennies and obviously we don't because not that many people actually care.
Oh, and who thought of the added seconds at the registar? That's ubserd. America is in too much of a rush and I think slowing down for a penny would actually do us some good.
Although, pennies to me are annoying, it fun to take all your change you find in old purses to Coin Star. :]
actually...why waste the time and the all that money to make the pennies? i dont find it that necessary to keep it in circulation...i mean, its just a penny!
I like using pennies when purchasing something. I would rather use a penny than break a bill. Like others have said what will the long term affect be, in terms of loss of money if the penny is deleted? For those who think that time is being wasted then they probably shouldnt be purchasing the item to begin with.
what will they do once the penny is gone..... make a two cent coin instead, it just doesn't make sense to get rid of it
I don't know how things would be paid for if there were no penny. If something costs 49 cents, we need pennies for exact change!
i agree that the penny is annoying when it comes to searching around in your purse for five minutes BUT i do think it comes in handy when people just leave them in the tip jar because over time those pennys could be someones achievement for a days work! With all the pennys in the US it will be extrememly difficult just to flat out forget the penny. I think the annoyance of avoiding all the pennys isn't worth it...
that last comment was from
CHELBI
NO! the penny is very useful, whetr it be to provide veidence for a cleaning product or for paying the ice cream man in an irrational amount of penny rolls. while its a lot of money to produce them, it would be much harder to accustom to not seeing prices with any nuber thats not a 5 or a 0 at the end of a price. how would u pay tax at restaraunts, afterall, it doesn't always come out to a nice variable of 5.
keep the penny, it pretty much rules.
the penny has been in circulation for so long that i think if we take it out now everything will go crazy, people will not know what to do, they will be lost without the pennies. also, this business with all this time being wasted is all a bunch of you know what, i mean what will people be able to do with an extra 12 seconds a day, take an extra 12 second nap?? no, they will do nothing. another thing is that businesses will probably have to cut prices like other people have said, which will end up costing them a lot of money, even if it is by a few cents, as seen in superman 3
alright so...if it costs more than a penny to produce 1 cent, then id say stop producing them. However, taking away the penny could affect prices. i mean things might become more expencive. if something costs 19.99, would the bump trhe price up to 20, or decrease it tto 1995?...see, it they take away the penny, things will cost us a little bit more....becides... i save my pennies then take them to the cash converter place and get it in dollars (see, so pennies can be useful in the long run.
i think some people have too much time on their hands if they can calculate this. Though it is surprising that it costs that much to produce a penny.
I LIKE THE PENNY!
i dont really like pennies..
they dont mean ne thing to me. id rather lose a penny then store up the bunches that i get. i dont like coins in general, i always put all my coins into the tips bucket or say keep the change. theyre just too hasslesome for me. i wouldnt mind getting rid of the penny cuzz when im at a fast food drive through,it actually takes me some time. i serach my car when i get a bill of like 7.01 or something... i search the center thing, the glove compartments, the ashtray, everything until i find a darn ridiculous penny. takes me 30 seconds sumtimes and while this is happening, i keep wondering why the penny exists anyway. shuffling thru my wallet is almost as bad. alot of these pennies are like green and rusty i dont even want to touch them.
dispite the fact that it is expensive to make pennies.. and the fact that i think the deadline to comment on this was friday... i think alot of people need to reconsider the value of pennies. a few pennies here and there add up.. we had a huge jar of pennies we have kept in our living room ever since i was little and there are probably about two hundered dollards in it by now... thats like a months worth of groceries, or like 27 flip flops.. common' guys... take it to coinstar.
Well, All I have to contribute here is the rising value of copper. If the price of copper continues to soar, people will begin to melt the pennies for their copper value. Right now pennies don't have enough copper to be melted down for profit. But eventually, there will be a large demand for copper resulting in a nationwide melting of copper coins. This will lead to the end of pennies. I suppose the gov. could issue new "cheaper" coins as a replacement. But I figure all money will be digital by then.
There will be many problems associated with this. including price changes in which the whole economy would have to adjust to... expecially when determining a new price for something that was expected to have such a low value.
The stats on time or how its wasted must be similar for the nickel and the dime; I don't see any really convincing argument to get rid of the penny there, and that may have been the most prepared of them all. I don't care to see the penny go right off the back unless we totally revamp our currency, instituting a whole new system, but who knows what that could mean economically.
I think thats nonsense. People who hate taking the 2 secs. to search for a penny. Just don't use it then. You don't have to pay people 10.81. Just give them 11. And then they will give you the change. I just don't think people realize we keep the penny becasue no other country has it.
Well, personally, I find the penny to be the most obnoxious coin in my wallet. I always seem to have a ton of them and can never get rid of them! Nevertheless, what would happen to prices if companies had to round every price to the nearest 5 cents?
Large companies could earn millions more or millions less. In parallel, consumers as a whole would have to spend millions more or millions less.
We definitely need to keep the penny. Without finding them on the ground, where we find good luck?! :-)
Instead of the logical argument, I would go for the emotional one. Yes, I've been using pennies since I was born (in fact i think i ate one once). Seeing those beautiful copper works of art become obsolete would break my piggy bank and my heart. We've never retired any type of American currency, therefore we've upheld a sort of tradition that we shouldn't let go.
I am MOST definitely the person in front of you in line wasting hours of your life. Get over it. I love paying in exact change; I pretty much do it everyday, thanks to that dang penny. It's a lifesaver.
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