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An essay about the penny
An essay about the penny
An essay about the penny
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Trying to get the exact amount of change for a cup of water at McDonalds, What is the most common thing you use for that? Pennies. Pennies are one of the longest running pieces of American currency in history. They serve as 1/100th of a dollar and are commonly used to pay off sales tax on items you buy at stores. This essay is going to inform you the pros and cons if the United States were to exterminate the penny, and stop the manufacturing. The penny is widely loved in the community, the penny is useful in some situations, but can be a pain in others. The penny is worth 1¢, the penny is made up of Zinc, it costs exactly 1.66¢ to manufacture 1 penny. This is already reason enough to stop the penny from being produced, except for the fact …show more content…
How are you going to pay for the other 4¢ without being overcharged? This works both ways, if it was 6¢ you would be undercharged. This wouldn’t work unless all items that are sold are rounded to the nearest 5th; and it would take far too long for the penny to be decommissioned, there are 2 billion to 2.5 billion dollars worth of pennies in the world (John, Yahoo Answers).
However, if we keep the penny, the US might slowly lose money, here's why. Because of the price to make the penny, every year we lose 46 Million dollars(Irina, CBS). If we continue at this pace for many years to come, we will lose hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. With the recent conflicts with foreign countries, this can be a problem, if we get rid of the penny. We can focus the funding of that money onto the war efforts against our enemies. In the government’s eyes 46 Million dollars doesn’t seem like a lot compared to what they earn and what they have; but if we were to compare that to other countries we have a lot more money to do with ourselves, and could have even more if we stop and forget about the penny. There are a few other options like, changing the material of what the penny is made out of. Or we can change the value or characteristic of the penny completely. This is a hard decision for america considering how long the penny has been part
In fact there are many people that oppose abolishing the penny. In source E it states “that 62 percent of people oppose abolishing the penny that has a income less then $25,000 a year.” If the penny was to be abolish then the nickel would be the lowest coin in amount of money. If the nickel was the lowest amount of money there was then that means the purchase prices of items sold would increase. The prices would increase on items sold because the penny would not be in circulation to allow the customer to pay with the correct amount of change. Instead of being able to pay $3.47 for a kids meal at MacDonalds the customer would have to pay $3.50 for the kids meal. With the increasing prices of merchandise sold in stores there could be a budget upset for many families that have to follow a tight budget. Many families have to follow a tight budget to be able to provide for there families. With a tight budget there is no room for the prices of merchandise to increase due to losing the penny. Every penny counts when it comes to having a tight budget and providing for your
We should keep the penny because it has history, in fact it was “the first currency authorized by the United States” (Lewis). The penny no longer has the value that it used to have, but it is still necessary to make purchases as accurate as possible. The penny may seem like a waste of time to many Americans because it takes so long for cashiers to make change, forcing people to wait in line, but it is actually worth the time spent. The penny helps with keeping prices a cent lower, and therefore stimulating the economy. The penny is important to many people who need the money and for whom pennies still have value.
In 2001 United States Representative Jim Kolbe introduced legislation to Congress to eliminate the penny coin in most transactions. Although this legislation failed, there are still consistent calls to eliminate the penny as the smallest-denomination United States coin. Our nation is founded on passed traditions. Any American can look basically in any place to understand why America has thrived for centuries. Every tradition, sculpture, monument, or artifact gives Americans history about what has occured. The country struggles to destroy any of these long kept traditions. Although some traditions are completely relevant, the use of the penny is of little worth today. Whether the penny is rolling around in your pocket or resting at the
They must be eliminated, but you might think. Wont prices go up and charities lose money? No. new zealand , finland, and the netherlands stopped using the one cent or the one cent euro and noticed no change in cost instead they round to the nearest five cent. Anyways the US has already gone through this process without trouble like the half cent it was eliminated in 1857 because it was too little worth. Another thing is that everyone loves lincoln so they might think that his monument might be taken away but taking away the penny won't take away his memory we will still have him on our five dollar bill which won't go away. Yes you might think it is unpatriotic or disrespectful to take away lincoln but the us military is not using pennies because they have already realized that pennies are useless and not needed so they round to the nearest five cent. So basically pennies just aren't worth making, they waste people's time and they don't even work as money like they are supposed to, and because of inflammation lose more value every year making them making everything
To begin, United States should not eliminate the penny because the coin has impacted our language by giving us more phrases and words. According to source #4, it states, “The one-cent has influenced our language, giving us a number of idioms, such as ‘a penny for your thoughts’ (a way to ask what someone is thinking) and ‘not one red cent’ (meaning no money at all).” This is significant because it shows that the penny has affected the English language
Have a good look at the penny, what do you see? You probably see nothing but a copper coated circular poor valued cent. Little does everyone know pennies have been around longer than before their grandparents, even their great-grandparents! Matter of fact, it was around so long ago that Abraham Lincoln’s face was not the first design on the penny. I ask that you take the time to consider the American penny’s worth. Without the people’s belief in its value, the penny will be abolished. I see people every day throwing away a penny rather than to put it in their pocket and save it for future uses. Yes a penny is "outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and wasteful" (Safire) piece of junk, but it's has an economic, cultural, and historical significance to the United States of America. The problem is that nobody pays attention to that, and that gives pennies the image of no value. Three good solutions to show the pennies worth include: tolls and vending machines accepting the coin, more charities to keep their penny drives, and historical evidence of what the penny mean to America so that it can be passed on to the future generations.
There is a side to this debate where the penny could win and stay in circulation. To start, the penny has been around for years and years and it has seemed to work for this whole time. This is true, the penny has been around and can be used still in everyday life. The turn side of this, though valid, is with systems changing is is becoming more and more rare for the penny to have a true dire need. One other strong reason to keep the penny alive would be charity. Charity relies on those people who do not necessarily care enough to keep the pennies t drop them off in the donation box. That though, has a simple solution. If the penny were no longer around nickels and dimes would begin to be the change customers and users are no longer wanting. Charity then in result
The Pennsylvania system used to be the most commonly used system. The Pennsylvania system is also known as the separate system. It was designed to keep prisoners separate, even as they worked, as a condition of their punishment. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons originally developed the idea.
We already have 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, and 50¢ coins! If we keep pennies it will be a lot to handle with the $1, $2, $5, $10, and $100. Not to mention how we got rid of the $500; $1,000; $5000; and $10,000 in 1969 so we could extort rid of the penny. For items that are like $1.97 we can round up to $2.00 and down to $1.95 so we can round the value. It may make things more expensive, but not too much so the trade is worth it.
In America’s modern day economy, the penny is very useless and irrelevant in our society today. As source C states, “The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome, and wasteful penny.” There is not one item that can be purchased with a penny anymore (Source C). As source C states, “it takes nearly a dime to buy what a penny bought back in 1950.” Stores such as the Dollar Store prove how the cheapest items you can purchase are with only a dollar, not a cent. Pennies are shoved out of the economic picture by credit cards and because of the modern-day technology, there are even self-service machines that help convert coins into paper money (Source B). Furthermore, pennies are easily tossed into piggy banks or appear behind chair cushions. It is not used the same way as it was before.
A buyer brings along with him snacks that he would like to purchase in a dollar store: chocolate chip cookies, a Pepsi, gummy bears, and a bag of chips. He waits in line, eager to consume this huge delight. It is his turn, and he hurriedly placed his treats on the counter, waiting anxiously to pay immediately. The cashier replies to him, “The price will be $5.99, sir.” The buyer takes out five one-dollar bills and four quarters. Not an instance did he ever use a penny in this case, which he thought was useless and meaningless. As you can see, the penny has become quite worthless and diminished in purpose. Many citizens would prefer to round up and pay rather than spend time and look in their
Time is wasted, by all parties involved, in each transaction when cash, and more specifically pennies, are used. In an excerpt from a New York Times article, writer William Safire states, “They cost more in employee-hours—to wait for buyers to fish them out, then to count, pack up and take them to the bank —than it would cost to toss them out.” Getting rid of the penny would save time for not only the customers, but also for the employees and employers. If customers no longer use pennies, the transactions will go faster, allowing more transactions to take place in a given period of time. No longer using pennies can not only save time, but it can also save money. MIT graduate Jeff Gore created an equation to express the amount of money that is lost because of the copper coins, and he concluded that “‘If each person’s time is worth $15/hour then we arrive at the conclusion that each person is losing $60 per year, at a cost to the nation of over $15 billion per year….’” Gore’s equation shows how inefficient the use of the penny is, and further develops the thought that it should be abolished. The penny simply costs more money to use than it is even worth. The current lowest denomination coin has been easily proven to be a waste of time and money, and should no longer be used in the U.S. money
Evidence from a TIme magazine article about financial reform is ¨ The penny is a currency without any currency¨ (Stanburn) Currency is a word the means system of money exchange so this quote means that the penny is a coin that doesn't help us exchange value. This quote from an article by a coins expert states ¨They don't buy anything, many people just throw them away, and nobody wants to use them, so let's just get rid of them!¨ (Headley). This quote is talking about the fact that you can’t buy anything with a penny, in today's economy nothing cost one cent because of this pennies tend to collect on people's dressers, in jars, and in trashcans. Ar reason from a Money Week article is we should remove the penny from circulation because the U.S. has had to pass legislation banning the melting of pennies.(Heaton) If our coins face value is so little that people can and do melt coins down for the metals in them and make a profit and to force the U.S. to ban the procedure just shows how little the penny is truly worth. The penny should die because it is not worth any thing, in fact it wastes
The penny has been in America for centuries, it's a sentimental object for Americans everywhere. However many have debated on whether or not it should be eliminated or continue being made. The penny should be preserved because it is apart of American culture, given to charity, and keeps items cheap.
Today, the small cent is once again too expensive to produce, and too irrelevant to bother with. Eliminate the cent and round all cash purchases to the nearest nickel. There will not be a gain or a loss from two more cents on the transaction. There won't be any dwelling over the situation. It is time for the United States of America to grow up and abolish this meaningless Lincoln penny. The penny has been a complete fiasco.