Being the first currency in the United States, dating back to 1787, the penny has been the longest serving currency - thanks to Abe Lincoln. In recent times, the penny has become a useless piece of material due to how costly everything is, the time consumed in making change, and the true objective to facilitate transactions. This is why the penny should be abolished from our society.
Cost. It is what drives the economic market of the world today. Back in the 1950’s, the penny was used for buying an array of smaller items. Stated in Source 3, “...it takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950.” Furthermore, the world is driven by cost. As known, prices increase everywhere - making it impossible to buy anything with just a penny. Moreover, where do all of the pennies disappear to? Penny heaven? “Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation, into piggy banks… behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old tin-foil ball.” additionally stated in Source 3. Since most of the pennies in circulation cannot be found, what is the point in having them? Exactly, there not a valid reason. As stated earlier, it takes about a dime to buy
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According to Source 2, it is estimated that an additional 2 to 2.5 seconds is added to each cash transaction, not including the extra 30 to 35 seconds that someone looks for a penny in their pocket. As calculated, 40 seconds in the entire cash transaction is wasted per person. In that 40 seconds, you could have already been in the car, on your way home, instead of making exact change. Furthermore, it is such an agitation to have to go through the realms of your pockets just to find the small coin that is a possible counterfeit. Moreover, it is just amazing that only 23% of the income making households want to abolish the penny, according to Source 4. Could it be because we are in a more technical state where debit and credit
The Penny is a wonderful coin. It might only be worth one cent but that one cent can help people in all sought's of situations. The penny should kept in circulation. There are many people that use the penny still in today’s society.
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.
Throughout the past decade, costs of everything have skyrocketed. According to Source C, America used to have “five and dime stores;” now its a dollar store. In addition, no one can buy anything with just a penny anymore. The source also made a fair observation that these worthless zinc disks are, “behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old tin-foil ball. Quarters and dimes circulated; pennies disappear because they are literally more trouble than they are worth.” According to a New York Times article, “it takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950.” The penny is still stuck in the 1950s while America just keeps moving on. As stated by Mark Lewis in his concept of establishing a bill, “the bill would not ban pennies, but merely discourage their use by establishing a system under which cash transactions would be rounded up or down.” (Source A) This motive will help keep the America exceed and
Do we really need pennies? The story of the penny starts in 1792; it came with several different coins including the dime, nickel, quarter, and half penny. The pennies were first made out of 100% copper, but the price of the copper went up, because of inflation, the power of the penny went down. The cause of the mint is to reduce the amount of copper in pennies first from 100% to 95% but then to 5% copper and 95% zinc. Despite the debate in 2006, the value of metal on older pennies rose over one year.
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, giving the language more idioms to use. It is often said that pennies should not be manufactured anymore due to their excessive cost of manufacturing and distribution. Yes, numerous people do acknowledge that fact, but the government can also propose that pennies are to use inexpensive metal, like steel, which makes the entire coin industry save money and has the cost of coins to be cheaper to make.
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.
“How does anyone live on the wage available to the unskilled?” This is the question Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By In America, asked herself while discussing the topic of poverty with a friend of hers’. She believed someone needed to figure this question out on their own, but she also believed that she was not fit on taking on this experiment.
Back in the 1900’s kids all over would be so grateful to find a penny. Doing so meant they got to run to the local candy store. William Safire, author of “Abolish the Penny” agrees with the notation of abolishing the penny. In Safire's article he makes a strong claim stating that you, “can’t buy anything with a penny any more” (Safire). Expanding on that claim, there is no point in keeping something around that is taking a resource of zinc and copper, when the resource is being wasted to the garbage. Back in the day it would be absurd to throw such a useful coin away. There is no real need for the coin so keeping it around is simply
Poverty and low wages have been a problem ever since money became the only thing that people began to care about. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, she presents the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” This question is what started her experiment of living like a low wage worker in America. Ehrenreich ends up going to Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis to see how low wage work was dealt with in different states. With this experiment she developed her main argument which was that people working at low wages can’t live life in comfort because of how little they make monthly and that the economic system is to blame.
"As of 2014, the cost of making a penny was estimated at 1.7¢. So yeah, it almost costs two pennies just to make one penny- which makes no sense (pun intended)". Over time, many people have called for the U.S. to stop making pennies. Three reasons why are, we have a lot of coins and bills, not many people carry around cash, and making pennies can waste time, money, and minerals. That is why I believe the U.S. should stop making the penny.
The production of a penny costs about two cents each and the value of the penny is gradually decreasing throughout the years, however, penny production should not stop in the United States. Without the penny, all prices would be rounded up to nickel prices. Prices tend to be rounded up considering most prices end in a nine. Therefore, the tax buildup that Americans would pay throughout the next few decades would increase dramatically. The deletion of the penny from our current society will also force Americans to rely more heavily on nickels, which will end up taxing the government more money in the end. Though some believe that the penny should no longer be manufactured, there are a plethora of reasons why the penny is an essential part of the United States’ currency system.
By many aspects the one dollar note will just be a symbol of America and the American wealth, however we will see that it can convey way more than that. First and foremost, the one dollar note, is something judged to be common knowledge, everybody can approximately see what it looks like and they will not look in depth of what can be one of the most symbolic items of the United States of America. First printed in 1863, the dollar note was here to represent an abstract, yet know by everyone, money. Before then, coins were just the symbolic way of representing money.
Due to most people believing the penny is useless, they are more than happy to give them away to charities who actually need money. For example, a middle school raised over $3,000 in a week by creating a fundraiser which asks for student’s pennies. “if the United States eliminates the penny, charities will suffer because people will pay more at the store and feel they have less to give those in need.” (Source 4) People think pennies are worth little so they have no problem giving their pennies away. Also, charities who receive pennies would lose a large amount of money if pennies were no longer
Some might say that pennies are useful when it comes to dealing with small amounts of change. However, with the new technologies of credit cards, we can use that for dealing with small amounts of change instead of paying more than what is needed and carrying a bunch of useless change that you may never need. Also, if it’s costing a lot more than what it is and if people have stopped using it and stuff it in jars, then we should stop wasting money just to produce pennies. Other people also still want pennies because of traditional reasons and symbolism. The U.S. citizens have an unnecessary need to connect to president Abraham Lincoln through pennies.
First, in order to function properly, countries have to follow rules to avoid deflation or inflation. However, if a country wanted to, they could easily deflate or inflate their economy by breaking said rules. The second major flaw of the gold standard is that there is not enough gold in the world to serve as money anymore because there is too much money in circulation. The process of mining gold is dangerous, expensive and difficult as it is hard to find. The process of printing dollar bills is quick, easy and cheap. Why go through the effort to mine more gold when the fiat system has arguably done just as well? The choice is clear, the gold standard has been replaced by a new, better standard – the fiat