That’s my same reaction to your prior post. If we can’t drop the penny, then why not round our prices (in today’s money) to free or a billion dollars?
What?
That is only because of loss of value in the yen is even worse than the dollar. The value of one yen used to be around the same as one dollar, with the sen (1/100th of a yen) and the rin (1/1000th of a yen) also in circulation. You could probably find plenty of people willing to take 100 or 1000 of those antique coins in exchange for one yen.
Yes, antique currency would eventually gain value.
Yes, Japan used to have something equivalent to cents and dollars.
And again, if we’d like to migrate to something like the yen (dropping cents) then we can. But people should understand that, that is a meaningless stop-gap.
I think the production cost is kind of a red herring. If a penny was single use, 2 to 4 cents production cost would be insane. But since each penny can be potentially reused thousands and thousands of times that cost seems like no big deal.
Except that pennies aren’t reused “thousands and thousands of times.” I suspect they’re reused only a handful of times each before being discarded. That’s why billions of them have been produced. See this paywalled New York Times article that goes into detail about the issues.
The best anodizing won’t hold up the abuse that pennies undergo. Copper and zinc only cost a little more than aluminum. Plain aluminum would not be great for a penny, very soft, but durable alloys wouldn’t cost any more. I don’t have a problem with aluminum pennies other than I think we should stop minting 1¢ coins altogether. At least doing that will make all the old pennies sitting drawers, jars, boxes, and piggy banks slightly more valuable.
Having a rainbow currency would be very cool, but they’re still pointless. May as well just get rid.
Normally countries do this when they’ve suffered hyperinflation, and they are knocking between 3 and 6 zeros off the currency. USD hasn’t undergone nearly that much inflation yet - it’s something like $1 in 1800 is worth $25 now - and very few people are going to think it’s worth the hassle of redenominating at this point.
$1 in 1913 is worth $31 now.
That’s because the dollar suffered deflation between 1800 and 1913.
CNN reported that if getting rid of the penny results in an increase in nickel production, the cost to the government might be greater because the nickel also costs more than face value to produce.
Usually, (we might hypothesize that) people take out a payday loan because they blew their wad on the previous weekend. Let’s say that, that’s a true statement. What would that have to do with prudent and fiscally sound usage of loans?
That’s just a non-sequitor.
There’s a few reasons for that.
- Globalization causing US wages to go up but keeping prices low.
- The gold standard.
- Price controls / etc. preceding modern understanding of economics
Given recent voting results, it’s likely that we’ve about reached the limit on the first and the other two are relegated to history.
The future, so far as we know it, is targeted and intentional 2% compound inflation for the rest of time.
At some point you have to do it. Why make it a big deal, rather than something expected and normal, like mowing the lawn?
I gather that the US Government takes it as a point of pride that since federal currency was first introduced (1861, I think), it’s never been revalued or remonitized. I don’t expect that to change.
58% say get rid of it.
In 1857, the U.S. government stopped production of the half-cent coin — which at the time was worth more than what a dime is today — after determining that it was no longer useful in our economy.
Canada dumped the penny a little more than a decade ago, and everything worked out just fine.
Well, to be honest- “math is hard”- a lot of math challenged people think “rounding transactions to the nearest five cents” means rounding up. 
No one gave a crap when the half cent was discontinued- and it was worth about a dime in todays money. Canada didnt have a economic crisis when they got rid of the penny.
Slippery slope argument/fallacy.
It took America almost 100 years to dump the half cent. 168 years to dump the penny. At this rare it will take 200 years to dump the nickel.
Or hoarded. I know a few people with a five gallon jug or whatever full of pennies.
I hate to agree with the current president, but this is something past due. The main people opposing it were conservatives, who of course will go along with him, now.
I think the biggest difference is that there is no established vending machine lobby to block the change. I’m not sure when I last saw a vending machine take pennies, and that was long before they got rid of them up here.
I’m not sure what change you are talking about. Last time I checked, vending machine companies strongly supported the switch from dollar bills to dollar coins.
That was the biggest source of complaints when you guys tried to push the Susan B. Anthony dollar. Hey, I’ve got no horse in the race, not only did we drop the penny, and $1 and $2 bills up here I just don’t handle cash. The vending machines up here almost all take tap.
This proposal is going to devastate the Pressed Penny machine industry. They’re a very well funded lobby but nobody in Congress really likes them because all of their payoffs are in small change.
Stranger
I just jam my cell phone in the slot and crank it as hard as I can.
Stranger
But the Yen is only worth a penny, even less. That doesn’t help anything.