No, you don’t, and no, they weren’t. Trading stamps and local tax tokens were not money.
Why? Because we’ve always done it that way?
It’s not even true. The first U.S. coinage act actually defined the smallest subdivision of a dollar as mills (1/1000 of a dollar). Today, even though gasoline prices are still listed in mills (tenths of a cent), there are no mills in circulation. What do think happens if you purchase one gallon of gas? (Here’s a hint: they round.)
First off, a dollar is worth 20 nickels already, and 100 cents, and 1000 mills. Mills were eliminated long ago due to inflation. Pennies should be eliminated for the same reason.
Second, when have you ever spent a single cent in your life? Pennies are worthless today, and have been my whole life.
Actually, I don’t think the problem is the cost of the metal. It’s more that the dollar is becoming more worthless day by day. It seems unlikely at this point that the US economy will change so drastically as to make the dollar worth a lot more in the future. More likely, we’ll be tipping waitresses with $100 bills.
I used them to pay for things, seemed like money to me.
You are the only person other than my friends and myself I have ever heard say “Go piss up a rope.”
Why can’t the treasury do a “reverse split’-like corporations do when their stock prices get too low? Make 10 'old” dollars equal one new dollar-so the penny is now worth 10 old cents.
Thia does three things;
-makes the penny still viable
-costs zeros off prices
-restores the dollar/euro rate
of course, nothing has changes-its just that people now won’r have jillions of pennies cluttering up their dressers!
Yeah, and I don’t like it. You don’t see everything else priced as $2.000, or $3.950.
All I’m saying is if pennies are worthless, then there is no use charging $1.97 for something. Pick $1 19/20 or $2. Why are prices still posted in 1 cent increments?
Where does it stop? Is beef going to go on sale tomorrow for $2.9374328/lb? A pie for $π?
Theoretically, I want to be able to pay exact price for anything I buy. If I don’t have a coin for one cent, I don’t think prices should be in multiples of cents. Ultimately, it boils down to personal preference. I don’t think the price resolution should be higher than the resolution of the currency. I don’t like mills now and I won’t like cents when there aren’t any pennies left. I haven’t seen anything yet to convince me otherwise.
Let’s all change over to the lire. Then we can be millionaires!
ETA: Unless it’s lira.
That’s just the question: do we need pennies? What do we need them for?
It seems to me that very gradually their usefullness has petered out due to long-term inflation, to the point where they are essentially an annoyance.
How would one amoritize the cost of the production of a penny over the billions of times an individual penny is likely spent over the course of it’s life?
but I need penny’s to drop on the sidewalk in front of my neighbors house so his kids can find them.
yes I am serious, pennies are copper coated garbage as far as I am concerned, I also think we could do without the nickel. going straight to the dime leaves us with quarters and dimes for change and eventually (probably around the same time we go metric) the dollar coin. dump the friggin 50cent piece yesterday. 3 coins for all your purchases? how sweet would that be?
Or, more likely, the years it spends sitting in a spare change jar, waiting for a chance to re-enter the stream of commerce. 
So how would we derive the likelihood of the penny circulating vs having a fate in a jar or in the couch cushions?
It has got to be a function of its real value.
Put it this way: when I was a kid (many years ago), finding a quarter on the ground, or under the couch cushions, was a real find - you could buy some candy with that. Finding a penny was less exciting, but save only a few and you could at least get a piece of gum.
Nowadays, you would get hardly anything, or have to save a very large number of pennies, so even kids are more likely to leave them where they are. 
Didn’t Master C write an article saying it wasn’t worth it, caloricly, to even pick up a penny?
Making up words is fun.
What country do you live in? The SBA coin has always been abysmally unpopular. The Sackie was also unpopular, tho not to the legendary degree that the SBA was. The current gimmick is the presidential dollar coins (trying to copy the success of the state quarters) but they don’t seem to be catching on either. Basically, the Mint keeps trying, and the US public keeps responding with a dismissive eyeball roll.
As for pennies, even I can’t be bothered with them anymore. I’d say that the best, and least troublesome, way to eliminate them is to eliminate demand. Encourage stores to price things so that it works out to an even nickel. Once it gets to the point where most people don’t use them, then the penny can be eliminated with minimal fuss. Make a limited commemorative edition to mark the occasion.
And while we’re at it, can we please please PLEASE get gas stations to stop pricing gas down to tenths of a cent? It made sense when gas cost 20 cents per gallon, but these days it’s totally absurd. Tell them to go ahead and round up to the nearest cent. Gas prices routinely fluctuate by ten cents, so noone will be seriously irked that they tacked on another one-tenth of a cent.
I never noticed that Susan B. was unpopular. I mean people prefer paper money to dollar coins, but…
Since they were the same color and nearly the same size as quarters, people frequently mistook them for quarters. I liked them because my favorite pinball machines would offer more plays for an SBA than for four quarters. I also liked them because I like oddball money…half dollars, wheat cents, things like that. Not too many other people liked them, though. Cashiers especially disliked them.
I think that the gummint should simply stop producing pennies and dollar bills. Use up the ones already in circulation (and I imagine that the ones in good condition will quickly become hoarded, thus speeding up the process of elimination) and just supply dollar coins instead of bills. Supply no pennies at all, and they’ll drop out of circulation soon enough.
That’s basically what they did here. The Government said “After this date, you won’t be able to get 1 & 2c pieces/ $1 & $2 notes from the bank. As a consolation prize, you can have your prices rounded accordingly/shiny gold coins for $1 & $2 denominations instead”.
It worked just fine for us. In fact, I’d suggest you guys make your $1 coins gold coloured; then you’ll have no trouble getting people used to the idea that they’re actual money.
We tried that. Twice now. Didn’t work.
As long as we have pennies and nickels (and we use a LOT of pennies), there will be resistance to dollar coins because it simply results in too much change. Because of the enormously complex sales tax system, which comprises state, count, city, and sometimes neighborhood taxes, all of different and variable rates, it is practically impossible for stores to list prices including tax or to price things so that the after tax cost is a round number. That means we end up with more change in our pockets than most other folks, and we really don’t want any more.