Getting rid of the penny wouldn’t change that. You just round the whole transaction (post-tax) to the nearest nickle, either up or down.
If you’re a bit baffled, just think of gasoline. Haven’t you noticed that they charge to the nine-tenths of a penny per gallon? And yet, how many tenth-of-a-penny coins are there?
How about making the coin worth more then the cost of manufacturing them?
Say, 2 or 3 cents?
Let the idiot bashing begin! 
With due respect,
I sincerely doubt more than one half of one percent of all people in the United States even know the story I told much less find it “anti-democratic” and
The idea that the government making executive decisions is something the USA does not do but Canada does is just insanely ludicrous. In addition to being total luncy it’s also indicative of a person whose civic understanding of a democracy and their place in it that is abysmally ignorant. The U.S. government does all kinds of things without consulting you, many of which are not actually things that enjoy a great deal of popular support. It’s a representative republic. It HAS to work that way. Did you get a personal call before they decided to cancel the Comanche helicopter project?
In fact, now that I think about it Singapore doesn’t have a penny either. The five-cent coin is their lowest.
How difficult is it to adjust counting and vending machines? Generally the vending industry has advocated the switch to coins, as jammed or lost dollar bills produce significant costs for them. As of 2011, at least, armored carrier Brink’s Services was reported as belonging to the Dollar Coin Alliance (Word document, unfortunately–go down to page 5). This stands to reason as they could make more money hauling dollar coins as opposed to dollar bills.
As for register trays, I don’t see the logistical problem here with respect to dollar coins, particularly if the penny could be eliminated. Whenever I have the opportunity to peek into a register tray, it looks like the cashiers have more drawers than they need. Frequently I see two drawers being used just for quarters.
It’s true that nobody wants to bear this expense, even if the result is much greater expenses that continue to be borne by the public throughout the retail sector.
IOW the reason is we’ve always done it this way, which I’m sure factors largely into the problem stated by the PO. I still don’t get why the hold of this attitude on some of the American public is so powerful. When traveling in other countries, I doubt if anyone here would want to use such a nearly worthless coin, assuming that the other country still produces them, yet the 1c coin is somehow sacrosanct.
I’m just old enough to remember 12c comic books and 5c packs of chewing gum. I think Bazooka gum used to be 2c a piece. With prices like that a penny made sense to a kid; one cent = one stick of gum, a dime and two pennies was enough for a comic book, and so on. At today’s price levels that doesn’t work.
We are probably about the same age, and this may be part of the problem: the decision-makers are our age or older, and their youthful idea that “penny = coin of some value” is received wisdom for them. Once the generation that has never been able to buy any item for less than a dime comes into power, some of these ideas may fade.
If a vending machine has a slot big enough to take a dollar coin, there is a very good chance that it already will take a dollar coin. Some machines are only set up for bills, and obviously, the older ones with smaller slots cannot take dollar coins, but the vending machine companies have been on top of this for decades, many machines can take Susan B’s, Sacajaweas and the presidents series without modification. If the dollar coin was forced on the public the way they did in Canada, everybody would be OK with it within two years time – then we could see lobbying for a $5 coin (skipping right over the “Twooney”).
On the other hand, there are machines like the one in the airport that sells cameras and iPods, or that one that rents out DVDs – the way things are going cash-wise, I could imagine seeing more card-swipe vending machines in the next few decades.
RE: Picking Up pennies - I believe Cecil did an article way back demonstrating that on a dollars-per-hour basis it was actually cost-effective.
RE: Wasteful USPS and DoD dollars - Keep in mind that virtually every dollar spent there goes to someone’s salary somewhere. (When the DoD buys a tank that money goes to the tank manufacturers and employees and the materials used to make the tank. And the dollars spent on the tank materials goes to the companies that make them and their employees and the materials they in turn buy, and so on. Granted, some fraction end ups in the pockets of stockholders who do nothing, and over-paid executives, but still most of the money goes to working people.) Maybe its socialism or subsidized ‘make work’ but its jobs.
Hell, I pick up 25-satang coins. That’s worth only 3/4 of an American penny.
I am a bit disappointed that Itself has nothing to say on this subject.