I've been wishing for that the US would wise up and abandon the Penny. What can you buy with a penny? Not since I was 18 years old, have I gone to the store with a penny and return with a treat. That was 35 years ago, and then I bought only bubble gum.

Heck, our merchants could still charge $9.99 for a six pack of micro brew, but when I get to the store counter, I'd gladly let them round up (or down) the final payment to the nearest nickel.

It seems like such a waste of resources to produce such a worthless coin. It probably effect our global warming too. (I had to put that line in to make this topic fit the forum).

So what do you think, are you ready for the government to stop producing the penny. To allow our grocery stores and general merchants to roundup the final tally to the nearest nickel?

Keep in mind that all of us in the States have been living successfully with a rounded up transaction. In fact you let your gasoline attendant sell you a gallon of gas for $2.9799. Did you ever notice the extra little 99/100cents on the price of your gallon of gas. So, rounding up the final purchase is not a big deal, we've been doing it for years at the gas station pumps.

What do you think, can we dump the penny? Am I un-American for thinking such a thing? My friend at work accused me of that very sentiment. I disagree. I think inflation is Un-American. But we deal with inflation, and now its time to deal with the least valuable coin in our inventory.

it would be a nasty can of worms that wouldnt work to any benefit to the consumer .
so many things round of to the nearest penny as it is , take taxes interest rates and fuel , if they were to get rounded off to the nearest nickle then it would mean rediculous amounts of extra revenue for the governments , fuel companies and the banks , it would be rounded off to their benefit before ours

dertsap,
Rounded correctly, the merchant would only round the final total price. Let's say the total price of your shopping was $95.72. You would pay $95.70. Yes, rounding down is OK too.

Sometimes your bill would round up and sometimes it would round down. In the long run, you break even.

I try to think of a single item I can buy with a penny, and I can't come up with even one item. Maybe one item, a restaurants checkout counter, they sometimes have a candy bowl. Nah, even a mint costs a nickel or dime these days.

I contend that our lowest valued coin should be large enough to buy something.

Different country but same problem.

The smallest denomination coin in Australia is 5 cents. The 1 and 2 cent coins were withdrawn from circulation in the early 90s (1992 I think)
There was some initial concern about being ripped off by rounding up instead of rounding down but these days, no one gives it a thought.

Since 1982 US pennies are made of copper plated zinc.

Now, while the mint makes all other coin blanks, the zinc blanks for pennies are bought from an external supplier. I have no doudt that this external supplier would have a vested interest in keeping the penny going...

Or am I being paranoid?

Why not just do away with all currency and coin? Just convert to an electronic measure and as a side benefit we would no longer be tied to terminology like "dollar" or "Pound".
And besides, then the government wouldn't even have to actually print phony money. They could just inflate or deflate the "value" of the unit at will to the advantage of which ever group had favor at the moment.

What a wonderful social engineering tool! Why haven't we thought of this before?!

jhowelb, It won't be long, and you'll get your wish. But that's another topic. Soon your phone will buy a softdrink from the Pepsi machine. But I doubt that money will go away.

Geoff, Thanks for the info. Amazing that you it was 17 years ago that you guys got rid of the penny.

I visited Germany last year. Germans still have a penny, but I noticed that I almost never had to use one. All my purchases miraculously ended up rounding up to a nickel.

Why not just do away with all currency and coin? Just convert to an electronic measure and as a side benefit ?!

its an idea that could work but in day to day dealings such as buying used goods it may be difficult , unless cash machines could print out certificates worth x amount of dollars .
it would be one way to have a great impact against organized crime if they had to do things electronically rather than bundles of cash , in Canada the banks have to contact the police on deposits above $10000

My comments were tongue in cheek jab at the fact that the dollar is already currency based on nothing but the hot air spewed by politicians. Soon, I fear, one will need a wheelbarrow full of cash to purchase a loaf of bread.

I can foresee a future where goods and services are the coin of the realm and government is viewed as nothing more than an obstacle to commerce.

Imagine that!

think about the days when salt was currency , one hole in the roof during a rain storm would have broke down a rich man to a poor man

All very interesting. Seems like a few years back there was a call for all to turn in the pennies kept in piggy banks and change jars because it was costing more to make new ones than their value because they were "out of circulation."

Here is an interesting tidbit - on how one country deals with a similar problem.
In Cambodia - virtually every thing is marked and sold in USD. ATMs and banks dispenseUSD - not local currency. They use their local currency for only giving change on the sale.

They haven't gotten rid of the "small change" just opted for a different measurement for sales. 100 Cambodian Riels to US Dollars is 0.02437 USD . So 100 is about 2 cents! AND- they have paper notes from 1,2 , 5, 10, etc. Nice collectors item - but hardly of any value. They have some coinage - but rarely seen - the 50 - is worth about a penny, 100, etc.

Rambling on -- Wasn't there a scam of taking the last 10ths of a transaction and aggregating that into millions? So who gets the round up difference? The local government? The company?

How would you feel if the round up all went into the state sales tax "pool?" Could it/would it reduce local taxes - or be used for improved services? It could be a useful source of revenue.

Cheers - Jim

You might be a little premature. If things don't straighten out in california soon then My house might go for a few pennys and I might even have a penny sale at my shop. what about the stock market? I heard xm radio was $.08.
not much room to round up or down.


just my 2 pennys worth
billy

So, lets see, you buy stocks 1 share at a time? Hey that extra 2 cents would hammer your return on investment. Or maybe you'd by 1000 shares and spend $80.00 even. This recession has turned us into big spenders.

My favorite beef with the penny is the washer, the bolt and the nut. Every time I pass the hardware isle in my local Hardware store, I'm amazed. Why, I can't even buy a washer with a penny. I'm talking a alloy steel, zinc plated 1/4 inch plain washer. If you buy them in quantity of 100, this washer will cost you 3 cents. How is it possible that our finely engraved/stamped copper alloy plated penny can't purchase a plain washer? Yup, the penny is worthless.

If I drilled a hole in all my pennies and used them for washers, I'd be making great return on my investment.

Your not giving the lone penny enough credit. It is a VERY powerful marketing tool. The penny has made people millions. HOW? $.99 in not $1. $9.99 is not $10. In the mind of the consumer, that one penny has such an influence on sales. Its all about how the mind perceives numbers. So while standing alone by itself, its not worth much floating around in your pocket. When added or removed to a total sum, It has a great influence.

I'm not suggesting to change the price. You can still charge 9.99. i just want to round the final price to $10 even. However, i took a marketing class once too and we studied the psyco of the 99 cent and the 95 cent product. Did you know that the 95 cent item is considered a higher quality product.

Pennies aren't even any good as spacers. They're NOT uniform!!!

I've used 'em as standoffs, so I didn't have to worry about a tool running into 'em. Noticed the thickness varied so I had to screen a dozen or so to get 4 that were the same.

Why pennies? They're cheaper than washers, and I always have a pocket full of 'em.

My comments were tongue in cheek jab at the fact that the dollar is already currency based on nothing but the hot air spewed by politicians. Soon, I fear, one will need a wheelbarrow full of cash to purchase a loaf of bread.

I can foresee a future where goods and services are the coin of the realm and government is viewed as nothing more than an obstacle to commerce.

Imagine that!

How would goods and services be valued? Some form of money will arise in any barter system because straight barter is too clumsy.

Strangely enough, gold and other rare metals are a good basis for money because they cannot be counterfeited, and they are rare on a per capita basis. The physical limit on the amount keeps us honest, whether we want to be or not :D

Governments capitalize on the conservative nature of the human mind: the tendency to carry the past with us into the present. So gold serves as a logical basis for a money system, until such time as everyone is indoctrinated with the concept of its value. Like a shell game, the gold is hidden away but we are assured that it is there, and occasionally, a shell is lifted and we see the gleaming pile and are reassured that it is there. When paper becomes currency by government declaration, that is equivalent to saying "we're not going to lift the shell from here on out". In the end game, the amount that they say is under the shell literally becomes outrageous, and when we are incredulous enough, the game is over.

The game will have to restart with reference to a pile of gold, or something that is rare and cannot be counterfeited. Human greed has defeated every fiat currency. It is maybe hard to believe that it is about to happen again.

For an electronic currency to become 'real money' there would have to be a finite number established, the equivalent of a physical limit. This number could be divided into whatever size increments are needed. Since population growth requires the presence of more money, perhaps a good basis for electronic money is population: when you are born, so and so many credits are issued in your name, when you die, they are cancelled. How those credits get into circulation, I'm not sure. Maybe there could be an argument made for certain primary industries to serve as a basis for issuance of new credits, but the danger of inflation would need to be carefully considered. There is absolutely no requirement for inflation to exist, ever, if the details of the money system are correct.

Credits might also be given a half-life. That is, after a while, inactive credits are cancelled at a certain rate of decay. This encourages their reuse to keep them current, resetting their half life clock. Savings therefore do not accumulate interest when invested, but they will 'stay alive' so long as they are actively invested. This eliminates the need to inflate the credit supply in order to pay off interest, because interest is no longer related to earning additional credits, but rather serves to sustain the 'lifetime' of credits.

Sure, this would take a giant computer system to implement, but we're already in a giant computer system now, albeit, in an ad hoc manner, as much a slave to it as we are to being served by it.

Talk to me :D

....we're already in a giant computer system now, albeit, in an ad hoc manner, as much a slave to it as we are to being served by it.

Talk to me :D

That is scary; true but scary. We are like hamsters on a treadwheel; we have to keep running because if we stop the wheel keeps going and tumbles us head over heels.

HA! If you want to round the final price to $10, thats fine, but if the charge is $9.99 then I want to pay $9.99, not $10 (Or €10 to be correct at this side of the pond)! We shouldn't be naieve about this.....a merchant will NEVER round down if the penny goes, the price will always go up, because he knows that all those extra pennies will be a few hundred extra profit by the end of the year. And all those extra 1c charges will in the big picture cost me and you tens or hundreds of millions every year, we just won't notice it because its 'only' a penny at a time. The lowest whole number is 1, so the lowest monetary denomination has to be 1. I pity the countries that have done away with the penny!!! :D No doubt some fool in Brussles is thinking the same thing, and wants to impose it on the Eurozone countries, then we'll all have to pay more because of another fantastic idea (Sarcasm) from Europe, just like the Lisbon Treaty.....drifting off topic.......

"Geoff, Thanks for the info. Amazing that you it was 17 years ago that you guys got rid of the penny."
Hi Dave, (re Australia) that was the 1 and 2 cent pieces that went in 1992. The pounds shillings and pence went on 14 February 1966.
cheers
Phil

All this conspiracy chat is way beyond the penny. In fact, it doesn't even apply because a penny is actually worth more then a penny. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/business/22charts.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss That article was from 2006 too.

So by your standards, our penny actually meets your requirement for the value of the currency to be based on real metal. Sure it's not gold, but it does contain equivalent wealth.

For me to be talking this way, I must be filthy rich. But I'm not. I work for a living and my wife does too.

When I get change at the grocery story, I count the quarters and sometimes dimes. I don't count the pennies. Why bother, they just won't buy anything. I remember many years ago learning of a scam where clerks (20 years ago), would purposely short change a customer and pocket the ill gotten gains. I was appalled back then. But not so much anymore, they can have the pennies.

Walking by the bubble gum machine at the movie theater last week. Believe it or not, it costs 50 cents for a small handful of treats. I'm certainly not going to feed 50 pennies into that little machine. That's about the smallest item to be purchased at the movie theater.

Here's picture that illustrates my thinking. Here's a great picture of a gallon of gas costing $4.39 9/10th for a gallon. I wonder how many folks are demanding their 1/10th cent of change. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20080609/gas-at-4/images/1fbd7ee7-a60a-45ba-8f1a-cb3dc9645335.jpg:)

"perhaps a good basis for electronic money is population: when you are born, so and so many credits are issued in your name, when you die, they are cancelled....."

So under this scheme the family with more children would receive more money from the government and when you die your money gets taken from you. Like for example, when you die your family would have to sell your assets to pay the inheritance tax leaving just a small amount to actually be inherited? But wait, isn't that the system we've already got? (just joking!)

All this conspiracy chat is way beyond the penny. In fact, it doesn't even apply because a penny is actually worth more then a penny. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/business/22charts.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss That article was from 2006 too.

So by your standards, our penny actually meets your requirement for the value of the currency to be based on real metal. Sure it's not gold, but it does contain equivalent wealth.

For me to be talking this way, I must be filthy rich. But I'm not. I work for a living and my wife does too.

When I get change at the grocery story, I count the quarters and sometimes dimes. I don't count the pennies. Why bother, they just won't buy anything. I remember many years ago learning of a scam where clerks (20 years ago), would purposely short change a customer and pocket the ill gotten gains. I was appalled back then. But not so much anymore, they can have the pennies.

Walking by the bubble gum machine at the movie theater last week. Believe it or not, it costs 50 cents for a small handful of treats. I'm certainly not going to feed 50 pennies into that little machine. That's about the smallest item to be purchased at the movie theater.

I don't say that the penny is useful, but dropping it does not solve the fundamental problem of why it has become worthless. Inevitably, the nickel, dime, quarter...will all become relatively worthless as inflation continues over time.

I'm not saying that there need be an explicit conspiracy going on that promotes inflation, which devalues paper based currencies. However, there is a conspiracy to pass inflation off as the 'norm' of economic activity. Well, perhaps it is the norm for the systems that have been tried up to now. They all are found wanting.

All this conspiracy chat is way beyond the penny. In fact, it doesn't even apply because a penny is actually worth more then a penny. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/business/22charts.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss That article was from 2006 too.


But you have to sort out all the older copper pennies to weed out the worthless copper plated zinc ones. Any idea how to do that?

Steve

I have a retail store. I set up the electronic cash register to round to the nearest nickel. Not one person has noticed or complained in five years now.

Any merchant can do this.

Karl

Karl_T,
You are my hero. I mean it. That's just what I wanted to hear. Now tell me the whole truth. DO YOU ROUND DOWN AT 2 PENNIES?

What ever you do, it must make your end of the night counting routine a bit faster.

Steve,
You got it wrong, the zinc ones are worth 1.4 cents. Who knows how much a real penny is worth. Don't worry about collecting the real copper pennies. The coin collectors will figure that out.


But you have to sort out all the older copper pennies to weed out the worthless copper plated zinc ones. Any idea how to do that?

Steve

Karl_T,
You are my hero. I mean it. That's just what I wanted to hear. Now tell me the whole truth. DO YOU ROUND DOWN AT 2 PENNIES?
...

Certainly. You got to treat your customers better than your freinds. I can afford to lose a few freinds.

Karl

How to tell the difference between the two pennies- they weigh slightly different, but by the time you'd weighed them you'd have made them worthless since your time is money :)

Also, when you drop them on, say, a metal plate they make a slightly different sound.

Is it true that its illegal to melt down coins? PS. I know that Karl rounds up! ;)

Dear All,

Worthless small coins are great as improvised washers when you are out on site and have run out of your supply. They are really easily drilled, and if it saves you a trip to the store, they are mighty cost effective. They tend to be rust-resistant as well.

I think it is actually against the law to deface currency in the UK, but hey, who is going to knobble you?

Best wishes,

Martin

Last week I took a trip home to visit my 86 and 88 year old Mom and Dad. They still live in the same small town in which I grew up.

Back when I was 10 years old, I remember a little store, my favorite, called Ben Franklins Five and Dime. I remember, 45 years ago, actually buying something with a penny. I would leave that store with lots of items (read candy) purchased with just a penny each. That was an age when a penny could indeed purchase something. I remember that if I saved 10 pennies, I could buy a balsa wood glider. 5 pennies would buy a pack of bubble gum and a baseball card.

The Ben Franklin's are long gone, replaced with the Dollar Store, or Dollar General. So it seems our retail entrepreneurs have figured it out the smaller coins don't have any marketing power. I'm wondering why our government hasn't figured it out the penny has lost it value too. Maybe they're concerned that removing the penny would alert us that inflation has run rampant in the last 50 years. Over 1000%. I'm not ragging our leaders about inflation, I'm just proposing that we eliminate a useless coin from our daily transactions.

You see, you have to remember that while in the USA the $0.01c is worth little, and even less in Europe, in Thailand its worth 25 cent and even Russia its worth 33 cent. In Zimbabwe your 1 cent is worth $16,000. :eek: So your 1 cent coin has value, just not right now where you are! :D

You know, its tax time in the US again. I love it that the
auditor encourages you to round to the nearest
dollar.

Thats all that im really proposing, round all your
purchases to the nearest nickel. it'll all even out in the end.

Maybe they're concerned that removing the penny would alert us that inflation has run rampant in the last 50 years. Over 1000%.

It would take a 4.7% inflation rate "running rampant" over 50 years to add up to 1000% :)

Steve

I'd rather see inflation at 1%, but you got me, 4.7 is not so big a number. That's why I'm not ragging on our government for inflation. I'm just wanting to retire the penny. It served valiantly for over 200 years. But it's unit of value is so small compared to our current day earnings, that we really don't need it any longer.

You should make this a poll. I'd like to see how many other sensible people are out there who realise the penny should not go. :D

Perhaps taking this idea a bit further - we really only need 2 coins to do our transactions.

Examples
- Nickel and quarter
- Nickel and dime

The rest are not needed and only add to clutter and cost.

For the countries where the US penny still has a real need, there are plenty of them in circulation now, or they can make their own. If the EU feels the need, they can keep making all of these coins. :)

I was in Germany on the day that they switched to the Euro - pretty amazing acceptance level, and it certainly has made my life easier on business trips in Europe.

The part I just don't get - why so many coins ? 1,2,5, 20 cents, then 1 Euro and for some reason I think there was even a 5 Euro coin - cannot remember. In any event, the net result was that people stopped using "real" currency and started using this silly "money on your card" system that no one wanted until the mass of coins in their pockets became overwhelming.

Don't get me wrong, I like the concept of the Euro, just ditch 1/2 of the coins. Same advice for us.

COINS: 1c,2c,5c,10c,20c,50c,€1,€2.
NOTES: €5, €10, €20, €50 .... hummm...I never get to see higher than that! :o We poor folks need the pennies, but get rid of everything bigger than a €50/$50 note !