Big Don's Blog

At last, a place for me to ruminate and offer my own stylistic, sincere, and silly ideas.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Pennies

I am using Mona's Friday suggestion for this post.

The Penny

I remember a 'West Wing' episode about the penny, where one of the characters was researching this coin because there is a trend to eliminate it from US currency. At present, it costs the US Mint about 2.5 cents to manufacture a single penny. The reason that pennies are no longer solid copper is because of the cost of the metal. Today a new penny is made of Zinc that is clad in copper.

A fun trick for a child is to scratch a penny, then drop it into some Coke. Over a couple of days, the zinc will dissolve in the cola and all that is left will be the shell of a penny.

So, why do we hang onto this smallest-dollar unit? Our base-10 currency system almost requires that we keep the penny. To round off all financial transactions to the next nickel would put people off. Who is actually going to pick up the cost of those lost pennies: the buyer or the seller? Plus, if I don't pay cash, can I get my three cents back?

I also think that getting rid of the penny is tantamount to admitting that inflation has finally caught up with everyone. If we decide to eliminate the penny, then will the nickel be far behind? If 1/100ths of a dollar is virtually meaningless, then eliminate the nickel also. Just jump to the dime as the smallest coin (both figuratively and literally) in the realm.

Finally, I think the biggest winner in this idea is government. All that rounding and/or truncation of using pennies will allow taxes to increase a couple of percent without raising taxes. In other words, an 8% sales tax on 1 dollar will now be 10 cents (rounded up). Thankfully does not hold true for 10 or 100 dollars.

Still, a penny is a penny.

"See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you will have good luck."

1 Comments:

Blogger Chris Herbeck said...

Hey man! Be careful what you tell people. If the penny isn't heads up..its bad luck!

11:12 AM  

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