Pennies have been part of the American currency system since 1793, thus being the oldest US coin remaining in circulation. The penny, and as supporters of the penny have pointed out, the nickel cost more money to produce than they are worth. The penny costs 1.8 cents per coin minted, and the nickel costs somewhere around 7.5 cents to make. So, in my opinion, the penny and nickel should be abolished and the dime should replace them as our lowest denomination of coin. This would be accomplished through a slow but sure reduction in the minting of both coins and allowing the coins to slowly filter out of circulation via banks. The coins should remain legal tender, so people are able to spend them if they have them, but the bank should take the coins which they receive and dispose of them by either melting them down or perhaps selling them to private collectors.
I am aware of the concerns the opposition to my belief has. The people who are in favor of keeping the penny as our lowest form of currency have many arguments against the removal of the penny from production and from circulation, including the following: prices could increase due to being forced to round all purchases to the nearest nickel, charities use penny drives to build donations, the production of nickels is even more costly, the penny has sentimental value, and 2/3rds of polled Americans support keeping it. These arguments are all well documented as being reasons for keeping the penny made by proponents. I don’t dispute that some of these arguments are valid, but I would propose that some of them are unfounded.
Many people say that they’d be disappointed to see the penny go, as they donate their change to good causes which would stop benefitting from the donations. Ot...
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...s dead coin with the worthless penny and expensive to produce nickel?
Works Cited
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Replacing Jackson from the twenty dollar bill could only benefit America 's image problem. Acknowledging the injustices of history, America would reflect intolerance for hypocrisy, and a progress from the past. The replacement would show that America promotes power in both morality and justice.
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
Ruling, What's Next? (Cover Story)." Public Budgeting & Finance 18.4 (1998): 3-21. Business Source Premier. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
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
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
McClatchy-Tribune News Service. "Editorials on the federal budget". McClatchy - Tribune News Service. 03 Feb 2010 eLibrary. Web. 18 Feb 2010.
If you check your pockets, how many of you have pennies in them? Not many people I assume, that is because most people don't carry around pennies anymore. Denver Nicks from Time.com says
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Kessler, Glenn 2001. “About That Growing Surplus…” The Washington Post National Weekly Edition 18:15 (February 5-February 11): 12
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.
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Wolman, D. (2010). Want to Help Developing Countries? Sell Them Good Stuff — Cheap. Retrieved from: http://www.wired.com/2010/09/st_essay_pennies/
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan, 2001. Print.
Ehrenreich Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Henry Holt and Company, 2010