Here’s one reason why not.
Personally, I’d ditch pennies, nickels and dimes, and replace dollar bills (maybe even five dollar bills) with coins.
Any coin less than a quarter goes straight into the tip jar, quarters get thrown in a jar and taken to the bank eventually.
Reminds me of a counterfeiter here in Canada that made really good loonies. The only thing
is that it actually cost him a little more than a loonie to make. He got caught when he kept spending only loonies in a relatively small town.
I pull the 95% copper pennies out of circulation when I find them so I can use them as a cheap source of copper in art projects or whatever. There are still plenty of the older coins out there. Sometimes I get rolls from the bank to go through them, the only hassle is getting your money back out of the newer ones without paying fees.
The 95% copper 5% zinc metal is known as gilding metal and also sometimes red brass - but the name red brass is also used for other alloys. There is a melt ban currently in effect for US one and five cent coins, (pennies and nickels), but there are exceptions to the ban for educational and artistic purposes, etc.
Zinc itself is actually becoming a little more expensive and some of the big mines are closing down, but it should remain much cheaper than copper for the foreseeable future. Tin is one to keep your eye on, too.
I say just jump straight to the first decimal place and get rid of the nickel, too.
It will save us all from having the same discussion about the nickel a few years down the line.
I suggest wrapping the legislation in a redesign of the dime to be the 9/11 coin. Then anyone who’s against it is a terrorist.
I will now sit back and collect “likes” from those of you who are not terrorists. I’m watching you…
Ah! That’s just what I was going to ask – can I turn a profit by recycling pennies?
Sales taxes - are we to price things with tax included, so if my local sales tax is 7.5% and the price quoted is a dollar, then the item really costs $1 / 1.075 = 93.02+ cents? Now we’ve got to change inventory and other software to account for fractional cents, and to hold prices for different jurisdictions (for example in Florida the state sales tax is 6% and there’s a county can charge up to 1.5% for itself)
Really, it’s is (or should be) a simple matter for the software to round the final price to the nearest 5 (or 10) cents. The tax calculations don’t much matter, unless you have a wildly disproportionate number of sub dollar transactions.
Nice hurdle for our children and grandchildren in future ditch-the-dime efforts. What if it makes sense long before 9/11 loses its rhetorical power? We can’t just think of our own generation.
Start with the $10 or whatever being the post tax price, then the restaurant or whatever and the IRS can take the fractional amount.I’m sure neither really cares if they’re out 0.5c at worst over a year.
but if they get rid of pennies and nickels the price of thoughts is really going to go up!
I guess “penny for your thoughts” is increasingly going to mean “your thoughts are worth shit to me”. That’s a shame.
I concede your point wins the day and mine is no longer ethically defensible. But I take great solace in the fact that I will be long dead by then. Please just grant me this one peace so I may rest.
A very nice and of course biased documentary to check out is:
Century of Enslavement: The History of The Federal Reserve
After watching it I think I realize that finding a cheaper metal to make pennies from may be easier than keeping governments from the allure of allowing banks to print money from nothing with interest.
I want to see you make that transaction once the power, or just the internet connection, goes out.
I like my pennies. But why not just make the things out of plastic? Who’s going to bother counterfeiting?
They would have to replace them a lot more often if they were made of plastic. People throw their pennies in with other change and their keys, they would get chewed up pretty quick in most pockets.
Your optimism is refreshing.
Not necessarily. Just because there is no one cent coin doesn’t mean there is no monetary unit of one cent. It would make it harder when dealing with cash but many transactions these days just involve bookkeeping entries.
Not questionably legal but definitely illegal. Congress gave the executive authority to prohibit melting down of coinage. The executive in 2006 prohibited the melting down of cents and five cent pieces for most purposes.
Right, most prices are already rounded to the nearest penny anyway. If you buy something that costs a dollar in a place that has a 7.5% sales tax you’ll just pay $1.08.
