If we eliminate the penny, we ought to go whole hog and eliminate the nickel as well. Then we’d quote prices in tenths, instead of hundredths like we do today. A gallon of milk will cost you $3.8, a loaf of bread $2.7, and a bottle of Absolut will run you $31.9.
Obligatory second-poster link because first poster forgot:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a981009a.html
I agree that it makes sense to just drop one decimal place, except that the most popular coin we have is the quarter.
Of course, we could change the coin denominations, and get sentimental about quarters like the Brits do about half-crown coins which didn’t work out to an even number of new pence when they decimalized.
After the big hoo-ha over the state quarters, you can bet that they won’t be getting rid of quarters any time soon. (Pennies, of course, are long overdue…)
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a981009a.html
Just wanted to point out that if the U.S. mint is making $0.002 on each penny, they are doing a lot better than Canada. Here the coin is still mostly copper, and each one costs the Royal Canadian Mint nearly $0.02 to make - of course thats 2 cents Canadian, which is only 1.4 cents U.S. As a result, Canada loses a penny on each one it makes.
Just to add a pedantic comment(my speciality), the US has never made “pennies.” Never has, probably never will. We make “cents.” England made pennies. Sorry. Not romantic(pennies from heaven) I know. Just the facts.
If this isn’t a classic case of “usage says you’re wrong”, I don’t know what is.
–I call it STUPID to keep minting the annoying things! For god’s sake, let’s get rid of them!
A factor The Great One didn’t mention, if it’s true (urban legend?) – I remember reading (sorry, haven’t got a cite) that a key player in the penny debate is the company (are the companies?) that sells the mint the metal to make pennies. They are said to lobby quite effectively for the retention of this coin. They commission polls that are weasle worded to get the answer they want, so as to have evidence that the public wants to keep the penny.
I agree with J Red that we may as well ditch the nickel as well.
Someone needs to take an opposing view, so I’ll stick my neck out. I have nothing against pennies. I know it says “cent” on the coin, but it’s a penny - just like we have quarters, but the coin says the technically correct “quarter dollar.” I work at a bank and we have a pretty large demand for pennies from customers and other banks. I also question whether pennies can be conveniently removed from use. Most cash registers out there can’t round out the transactions to the nearest 5 cents, bookkeepers would have balancing nightmares(they call screaming at the bank if their a cent off in their books now, what will happen when they have to balance out with everything rounded off). The cashier would have to make the call about where the round off should be (yea it’s only 2 or 3 cents but it will add up over time). The local and state governments would probably try to “help” by increasing sales tax to 10% from my area’s current 7% and ask retailers to start selling things for 1 instead of .99 (the government can be SO helpful at times, can’t they). I agree that pennies don’t have much use in the grand scheme of things, but they so still serve a purpose.
I think it should be noted that in the column Is it worth it to pick up a penny? Cecil says:
It seems odd to me to contend on the one hand that it’s worth bothering picking up pennies, and on the other hand to suggest that losing up to four cents per transaction due to rounding should be ignored. Maybe Ed needs to be docked some pay for a continuity violation.
Anyway, you guys can feel free to send me all your pennies if you don’t like them. I won’t mind.
Coupla points.
In Australia, they got rid of the 1 cent coin a few years ago, and no-one’s really missed it. Their smallest coin is now 5c, and every transaction involving cash is rounded - up to 1c and 2c amounts rounded down, 3c and 4c amounts rounded up. Products for sale are still priced in individual cents, and the total bill is then rounded. So if you go to a supermarket and spend $100 on your food, the rounding would still only involve at the most 2c. Credit and debit card transactions, bank account interest, etc, etc. are all still done to the exact cent.
Here in the UK we got rid of the half penny years ago, and though I can’t remember it, I assume there was the usual knee-jerk reaction of ‘But we’re going to get done by the retailers…’. Personally I’m all for getting rid of those annoying 1p and 2p coppers too.
Another thing that has always bothered me too - how came all US bank notes are the same size and the same colour? You guys are surely on your own with this one. Must make it very difficult for partially sighted people.
PS yabob - Half Crown coins? Eh? We went metric in 1970!
Actually, the half-crown did come out even, at 12 1/2 p. Decimalization was in 1971; the 1/2 p was used from 1971 to 1984. It was only the 3 d (1.25 p), 1 d (.416667 p) and 1/2 d (.2083333 p) (the 1/4 d [.10416667 p] having already been abolished years before) that didn’t work out.
US bills are all the same size so that they all fit in a billfold without folding. They’re all the same color scheme because everybody knows that God Himself designed them, blasphemer!
(Trivia: prior to the 1930’s, US bills were larger – punched cards were designed to be the same size, so that existing bill storage could be used for them. That’s why punched cards fit so precisely into a man’s shirt pocket.)
Exact same situation here in Holland as in Australia, kanga99. We got rid of the cent ages ago (I think somewhere halfway through the 80s), and no one has missed them I think. Not that it really matter I think, most people pay with plastic nowadays anyway, in which case you do pay the exact price.
Now, if we could only get rid of the 5 cent coin as well. The damn thing is even bigger than our 10 cent coin and costs too much to make anyway. Ofcourse, all this will disappear anyway with the coming of the euro. (Can’t wait for that to happen, although we do get the dreaded cent back again then…)
Thanks John, but what’s a billfold? And why don’t other countries have this problem?
That was my point. When you did, the old shilling came out to be 5 p, a crown came out to be 25 p, and could continue to circulate, while the half crown came out to be 12 1/2 p. I wasn’t aware that 1/2 p coins were minted - thank you, John W. Kennedy. Makes sense that they would do that for a while under the circumstances.
I was drawing an analogy to the situation we would be in with our quarters if we decided to simply lop off one decimal place - the quarter would be 2 1/2 dimes, which would then be our smallest denomination. British writers waxing nostalgic about the old system always seem to be fond of the half crown. I was suggesting that we would wind up being nostalgic about our quarters after we did away with them in favor of a “double dime” or something. We’d probably have to allow nickles to circulate for a while to be phased out later while taking the quarters out of circulation.
More trivia - the US mint DID issue a twenty cent piece in 1875. It was one of the most unpopular coins ever minted, and was discontinued in 1878. The objection - it was too easily confused with the quarter. Sound familiar?
In the US, the words “billfold” and “wallet” are used pretty much interchangably, although some companies draw a distinction.
The 20-cent coin was (I am told) issued at a time when first-class postage was 20 cents.
Part of the fun of the half-crown (12 1/2 p) was the challenge of mixing it with florins (10 p) so as to get the right amount.
I think you’re confusing the 20 and 3 cent pieces. Many sources say things like this concerning the silver 3 cent piece:
Postage rates started out very high, but rapidly plummeted as the service got established in the 19th century. First class postage didn’t hit double digits again until the last few decades.
Those same sources are silent on why somebody thought a 20 cent denomination was a good idea.
Here. The 20 cent piece was produced for a very stupid reason, apparently - there was a scarcity of small coins in the west, making it difficult to make change for quarters for many items priced at 10 cents. The Carson City and San Francisco mints were not authorized to mint small change. For political reasons, perhaps having to do with influence from the owners of silver mines, rather than authorize the SF and CC mints to make small coins, they invented the 20 cent piece:
The 3-cent postage stamp also prompted the minting of the 3$ gold coin.
Speaking of unused coins, what ever happened to the “golden dollar”? I don’t see it in use anywhere.
Up in Canada there was initial grumbling about the Loonie ($1 coin) but people soon embraced it because they stopped printing dollar bills. Same thing’s happened with the more recent Toonie ($2 coin). It helps that it’s just about the coolest coin going.
A lot of money and effort was put into advertising to get people to use the golden dollar and, well, people still haven’t. The solution is so painfully simple: just stop printing the dollar bill.
I get them in rolls from the bank—I’m on my ninth or so. The cashiers I give them to have said that they see a few a week, so I’m not the only person out there using them. 
But they’re still sufficiently new that most people, upon seeing one for the first time, will keep it as a curiosity. It’s not suprising that this would occur for the first year; I wouldn’t be surprised if it continued for another year or so.
A bigger problem is that a lot of cashiers don’t want to give them out in change, preferring to just use singles and then turn the dollar coins in to the bank. 
Toonies are cool, and I hope the US comes out with a nifty two-tone coin down the road. But your point about the loonie is well taken, and I suspect that the true driving force behind acceptance of our dollar coin will be scarcity of singles.
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If they publically announced that they were discontinuing printing of dollar bills, there’d be an uproar. As MidnightRambler said awhile back, we are a people resistant to change.
However, if they merely decreased production, they might not have to announce it anywhere, and slowly the scarcity will force people to use dollar coins more and save their singles for the vending machines (which would be forced to start accepting dollar coins, for that matter). I find it interesting that although the BEP (Bureau of Engraving and Printing, http://www.bep.treas.gov) has designed new bills for every other denomination¹—and has had those designs posted for years in advance of their circulation—they have no indication of a new $1 bill. Not that I could find, anyway. Seems like a fair indication they intend to discontinue it in the near future…
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¹ Ok, except the $2. But I really am the only person out there who spends those. 