Die, Penny, Die!

HT: Alex Tabarrok.

 

Comments

[Bill Turnier]

In the preface to Boomerang Michael Lewis recounts that Kyle Bass has stockpiled a vast amount of nickels because the melt value of the coin at the time exceeded 6 cents. All upside and no downside.

[Kim Krawiec]

You're right, Bill! I had forgotten about that -- excellent book, by the way, even though I had already read most of it in the Vanity Fair pieces prior to publication.

[Steve S]

Down here in Peru they hae a 5 centimos piece, worth a little less than 2¢. They are phasing it out as a nuisance, and lots of stores no longer accept them.

[Dobby]

Kind of ironic that the greatest and most important President, in the history of the United States, is pictured on the lowly penny. I guess Obama should be pictured on the Billion Dollar bill.

[Magruder]

Here's one more reason to abandon the penny: it will open a spot in cash register drawers for a dollar coin. The dollar coin has failed to catch on in repeated attempts, partly because there's no place to put it in the cash register.

[Mattsky]

I use to own a retail store in New Hampshire. The state has no sales tax. All prices were rounded to the nickle. Getting rid of the penny is long over due.

[John]

Maybe a better strategy would be to make the penny (along with dollars for that matter) worth something again.

[Blue]

We ought to eliminate the penny and dime and round to tenths, actually.

[William A. Taylor]

There is something the web-surfer on the street can do. When the clerk makes change for you, politely refuse the pennies. Yes, you will probably lose a few cents in the transaction. If enough people do this, pressure will grow to abandon the penny. I usually refuse pennies as change for this reason.

[Rich Anderson]

Wow, it's a relief to hear that the penny is worthless. Now I don't have to feel guilty for emptying all those "have a penny, leave a penny; need a penny, take a penny" trays into my pockets.

But hey, if we get rid of the penny, how are disgruntled taxpayers going to register their disgust? "Area Man Pays Tax Bill Entirely in Nickles" just doesn't sound right.

[Blacque Jacques Shellacque]

The first time I went to Australia for a vacation, I found out they had no penny and that the dollar denomination was in coin only. They even had a two dollar coin.

Very sensible setup.

[Korla Pundit]

If you get rid of the penny, then the smallest increment in price will be 5 cents. That has a ripple effect beyond what you might expect.

[Scott]

In my opinion, the U.S. Dollar should be revalued so that a copper penny is worth slightly less than the metal it is made with. Also the dimes, quarters, Half-dollars and dollar coins should be made of Silver, or another valuable metal, in the same ratio of metal value to face value as the new penny.

Of course the U.S. would need to change the current method by which it operates, in other words, printing worthless paper whenever it is short of cash. This could substantially curtail inflation, which has whittled away at the worth of the dollar for most of the last century, and is why the price of silver is currently hovering around $32 an ounce.

[Ruth Rose]

send me all your pennies made prior to 1982 :)

[Willys]

Wow! ! ! I stopped taking pennies in my change over ten years ago. Discovered it costs me about two and a third bucks a year to refuse the little critters. And it increases the small business owners profit line.

[Shannon Love]

"Oh, my god! They killed Penny!"

" You b*stards!"

[Numismatist]

The perfect coin values would be one cent, two cents, four cents, and seven cents, ten cents, twenty cents, forty cents, and seventy cents. Folding money would also be in these denominations. This system allows for fewer coins and easier change making.

[Rlynh]

Hey! There are still penny slot machines in Las Vegas!

[The Observer]

The Canadian Senate did a study last year on eliminating the penny (http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/403/fina/rep/rep08dec10-e.htm). Their recommendation was for elimination for cash transactions with final price rounded to the nearest nickel.

[The Observer]

Link picked up the ")." at the end. Anyway, here's the direct link to the pdf. http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/403/fina/rep/rep08dec10-e.pdf