Should The U.S Get Rid Of The Penny?

[BuckSparkles]

Personally, as someone not from the USA. I almost never use cash and live in one of the most cashless places in the world. At times I get cash, but more often than not I avoid if possible.
Glory to my debit card! Cash is horrible.

Oddly enough, I loathe having cash, but would never want a cashless society.

It just means I absolutely HATE having somebody pay for something for me. Because then they are all like "Where is my $14?" And I am like "Can I just, like, buy you something worth $14 instead of having to go out of my way to find an ATM and pull a 20 which means you need to cook up $6 to give change for the payback?"

[Forgettable]

Retail people make a lot of money off of pennies, all that four dollars and ninety nine cents. If they have to cut it down to $4.95 they'll lose 4 cents every sale, or if they up to $5 people will stop buying the product as much.

They are the ones who lobby congress on the penny's behalf I think.

We got rid of the penny in Canada. The way it works is the price you pay for something is rounded to the closest 5 cent increment if you pay in cash. So if the price is $4.98, you pay $5.00. If the price is $4.97, you pay $4.95. Obviously stores can game this to their advantage for individual items, but not so much for multiple items.

If you pay via credit/debit you pay the exact price.

[Muzjhath]

Oddly enough, I loathe having cash, but would never want a cashless society.

It just means I absolutely HATE having somebody pay for something for me. Because then they are all like "Where is my $14?" And I am like "Can I just, like, buy you something worth $14 instead of having to go out of my way to find an ATM and pull a 20 which means you need to cook up $6 to give change for the payback?"

In Sweden we have an app for that. Free of charge. As safe as using your bank between accounts as regular but simply through phone. You just need a bankID (from your bank) on the phone in question.

[BuckSparkles]

In Sweden we have an app for that. Free of charge. As safe as using your bank between accounts as regular but simply through phone. You just need a bankID (from your bank) on the phone in question.

Sounds nice.

This is a real problem I am facing right now. One of my roomates bought our whole house opening night tickets for Force Unleashed.

Now I got to stop being lazy and acquire payback funds :<

[Gorgodeus]

Here in America after 1982 pennies stopped being made out of copper. Prior to that they were made out of copper and worth the current price of copper. Approx. 145 pennies is a pound. Copper is over $2.00 a pound.

They are still copper plated. Copper plated zinc iirc.

[GennGreymane]

they cost 1.7 cents I think to make

fake pennies cost more

[Nanaboostme]

Pennies are pretty worthless outside of my nieces and nephews art projects and they cost more to make then they are worth.

Discuss

Pennies are worthless??? Give me all your pennies and continues sending me all the pennies you get.

[GennGreymane]

Pennies are worthless??? Give me all your pennies and continues sending me all the pennies you get.

I dont have any at the moment.

[breadisfunny]

no we need those pennies.

[GennGreymane]

no we need those pennies.

for what purpose?

[Ivanstone]

for what purpose?

Arts and crafts for elementary school.

Srsly though, I used to glue pennies to the bottoms of plastic miniature bases. Now Games Workshop is gonna go out of business without the pennies.

[BuckSparkles]

for what purpose?

To tip waiters and waitresses of course.

[Reeve]

Yes.

/10chars

[Very Tired]

Why not just link the John Oliver we all know is starting this discussion?

[Shadowferal]

I like my pennies.

[Tyrianth]

We got rid of our penny awhile back and it's great. Nothing has changed from day to day except for the fact that I no longer have 100s of loose pennies lying around. Waste of government money they were.

[Masark]

Waste of government money they were.

And we were wasting less money than the Americans do, as our penny was made of steel at the end (all Canadian coins have been steel since 2012), rather than the zinc ones they keep churning out.

[RaoBurning]

The US Federal governments job is to insure that large corporations continue to receive increased profits.

In this case the Jarden Corporation is the company that provides the mint with the metal discs that are stamped into pennies. Yes, they actively lobby the government to keep the penny.

Their lobby expenses are minimal. Even they don't really care about the penny all that much. See: This week's Last Week Tonight.

Also relevant: CPG Grey's Penny Video, Canadian Redux, and John Green's rant.

Summary: Pennies are dumb and we should kill them just like we did the half-cent piece. The sooner the better. They're useless, do nothing to facilitate trade, and cost more to make than they're worth.

Why not just link the John Oliver we all know is starting this discussion?

^ Since Oliver did a video on it we might actually see some change happen.

Get it. Change. AH!?

[breadisfunny]

for what purpose?

THEY know why the pennies are needed.

[Flutterguy]

Nah. I like saving them up with other loose change. Besides, it'd just be an excuse to make things more expensive. If you want to cover the usefulness of cash money, dumping coins entirely makes sense.