Should pennies be removed from the currency system?

[The Funslinger]

On average, 7 billion pennies are minted in the US each year. Using the US penny as an example, it is the only unit of American currency that the materials going into making it are worth more than the coin itself. Each penny costs about 3 cents in materials. Since 70 million $ worth are produced each year, it's costing the US Government up to and around 140 million in resources.
For simplicity's sake, let's say we have pennies from the last 20 years circulating the economy. That's 1400 million $ floating around. In actual fact, the materials in that are worth 3200 million. If pennies ceased to be produced, and they were no longer legal tender and the pennies themselves were collected in, that would be a nice little cash injection for the government. Allowing for people not bothering to return pennies, and the fact that separating and refining composite metals into their individual forms isn't perfect, let's say we get a quarter of that back. That's 700 million, plus a bit more for the value of the rest of the scrap.

For a government, that's some nice short term incentive, plus the fact they'd be saving vast amounts of money in the long run. Pennies themselves are pretty damn useless. Nothing is worth a penny anymore. It only serves as change for $2.99 deals, which are bullshit in of themselves. The only use is for dumping it in charity pots. And after a few years, people would just dump the next unit of currency up in it instead of pennies, so everyone benefits.

Edit: mistyped some of the math. Fixed.

 

[bobmus]

Yeah, but then you'd have to fix whatever crappy VAT laws mean that £99.99 is cheaper than £100. So in all likelihood I don't see it happening, though they are so useless nowadays...

 

[Trivun]

No. Precisely because regardless of £0.99 or $0.99 or whatever sales, pennies are needed, purely to serve as base units. Without a base unit, mathematically speaking, you're going to be screwed when it comes to adding or subtracting values. There's no feasible way of standardising prices everywhere so that every single transaction will result in more than a single penny difference between other currency values, meaning that when dealing with multiple transactions you are pretty damn likely to need a penny somewhere down the line. This doesn't just apply to single penny difference either. In the UK the next size denomination is 2p, then 5p, then 10p. In the US, isn't it straight up to 5 cents, then 10 cents? You'll thus have the same problem when dealing with 2p, 3p, 4p, etc. differences.

Simply put, base units are essential, and thus getting rid of the penny would cause more problems than it solves.

 

[The Funslinger]

Hm...

But surely there's a way to at least cheapen penny production so it isn't the only unit of currency that's actually draining money to produce? Then retire the current penny in favour of the cheaper metal?

 

[Qitz]

I would say yes, simply because there are only two uses for a penny, no using it for money isn't one of them, and that's firing it across a room at someone or putting it in one of those Zoo Coin Presses.

Captcha agrees, Drawing Board! Back to it!

 

[Jonluw]

I'm not American, but CGPgrey says they're dumb, so I'm for dumping pennies.

Spoiler

 

[Suicidejim]

I thought this was a Canadian thread for a moment, since we're doing that right now. And it makes sense, I don't think anyone actually uses pennies.

 

[Yassen]

I think pennies are pretty damn useless and you guys have every financial incentive to abolish them. Quite simply I like what we do here in Australia, our lowest coin is 5 cents, and everything gets rounded up or down to meet the 5 cent marker. That way you still have a small coin but it's not AS small or AS useless as a single god damn cent.

Edit: Also, while you're at it, include your sales tax on the cost labels. Seriously, when I visited America this practice absolutely baffled me. The ONLY reason I can see this being done is to give the illusion I was paying less, which I'm obviously not. Not just that, but it means I couldn't prepare my change before I reached the counter. It's a stupid practice that you need to fix, less I almost pull my hair out because of your absurd business practices like I almost did last time.

 

[Lizardon]

Simply put, base units are essential, and thus getting rid of the penny would cause more problems than it solves.

I'm not sure that's true when it comes to currency. Australia removed it's 1 and 2 cent pieces from circulation in the early 1990's along with New Zealand for the same reason, production costs were higher than the coins monetary value. There was no economic issue after the coins were removed. The lowest coin is now 5 cents and there are no issues with that. All transactions are simply rounded to the nearest 5 cents. There are even plans to start phasing out the 5 cent coin in the future.

If the coins aren't worth what it takes to produce them, why not get rid of them? With inflation constantly pushing prices up, smaller denominations eventually become redundant.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Canada is in the process of removing pennies, but I'm not really sure about the details of the whole thing and since sales taxes are not included in the price on the label, even if you change something that now costs $0.99 to $1.00, you'll still need to pay an extra $0.13 in tax, meaning that you still need pennies for change.

 

[Imper1um]

We should remove both pennies and nickels, reducing prices down to .1 instead of .01. It needs to eventually just be single dollars.

The age of printed money is actually dying. Personally, I've used cash maybe...twice in the last 4 months.

 

[FilipJPhry]

They're removed from Canada. Woohoo!

 

[BringBackBuck]

Simply put, base units are essential, and thus getting rid of the penny would cause more problems than it solves.

I'm not sure that's true when it comes to currency. Australia removed it's 1 and 2 cent pieces from circulation in the early 1990's along with New Zealand for the same reason, production costs were higher than the coins monetary value. There was no economic issue after the coins were removed. The lowest coin is now 5 cents and there are no issues with that. All transactions are simply rounded to the nearest 5 cents. There are even plans to start phasing out the 5 cent coin in the future.

If the coins aren't worth what it takes to produce them, why not get rid of them? With inflation constantly pushing prices up, smaller denominations eventually become redundant.

In New Zealand, the last 1 and 2 cent coins were produced in 1987 and removed fully from circulation in 1990.

5 cent coins were removed a few years ago too. It made absolutely fuck all difference, though NZ has one of the highest rates of electronic card transactions (about 70% of retail transactions are by card). The only people I know who ever use cash for anything these days are over 60 or buying weed (or both...)

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Yes. I hate them.

 

[Kordie]

On our way in Canada, printed the last penny not too long ago!

And getting rid of the penny does not change the base price unit up. Everything still costs the same, if you use a debit/credit card there is no difference. The only difference is that the final price will be rounded to the nearest nickel, im guessing at the sellers discretion so most likely up. That being said the worst case scenario is that you can end up paying 4c more for something... wow

 

[Strazdas]

No. Precisely because regardless of £0.99 or $0.99 or whatever sales, pennies are needed, purely to serve as base units. Without a base unit, mathematically speaking, you're going to be screwed when it comes to adding or subtracting values. There's no feasible way of standardising prices everywhere so that every single transaction will result in more than a single penny difference between other currency values, meaning that when dealing with multiple transactions you are pretty damn likely to need a penny somewhere down the line. This doesn't just apply to single penny difference either. In the UK the next size denomination is 2p, then 5p, then 10p. In the US, isn't it straight up to 5 cents, then 10 cents? You'll thus have the same problem when dealing with 2p, 3p, 4p, etc. differences.

Simply put, base units are essential, and thus getting rid of the penny would cause more problems than it solves.

No. There are many countries where the money start from 100 and more. They dont have problems with that. A simple and pretty much needed solution is to remove everything bellow 10 penies to begin with. Those are quite useless due to current money value, they cost a lot of make and maintain (in my country to make 1 cent it costs around 17 cents), you cna easily find a lot of them as people jsut though them away. It would also fix the retardation of shops going 49.99 because typing 50.00 is so damn hard for them apperently.

Canada is in the process of removing pennies, but I'm not really sure about the details of the whole thing and since sales taxes are not included in the price on the label, even if you change something that now costs $0.99 to $1.00, you'll still need to pay an extra $0.13 in tax, meaning that you still need pennies for change.

i dont know canadas situation but it sounds very weird to me that sales tax would not be included on the label. Likely you got a retarded shopkeeper

 

[Total LOLige]

Without pennies we'd have nothing to put in our penny jars.

 

[Dags90]

No. Precisely because regardless of £0.99 or $0.99 or whatever sales, pennies are needed, purely to serve as base units. Without a base unit, mathematically speaking, you're going to be screwed when it comes to adding or subtracting values. There's no feasible way of standardising prices everywhere so that every single transaction will result in more than a single penny difference between other currency values, meaning that when dealing with multiple transactions you are pretty damn likely to need a penny somewhere down the line. This doesn't just apply to single penny difference either. In the UK the next size denomination is 2p, then 5p, then 10p. In the US, isn't it straight up to 5 cents, then 10 cents? You'll thus have the same problem when dealing with 2p, 3p, 4p, etc. differences.

Simply put, base units are essential, and thus getting rid of the penny would cause more problems than it solves.

Didn't the UK, along with the US (and most countries I'm sure) produce sub-penny coins at some point and then stop? It's much the same process. You round and it winds up not being a big deal to the economy or your average citizen.

 

[The Funslinger]

I think pennies are pretty damn useless and you guys have every financial incentive to abolish them. Quite simply I like what we do here in Australia, our lowest coin is 5 cents, and everything gets rounded up or down to meet the 5 cent marker. That way you still have a small coin but it's not AS small or AS useless as a single god damn cent.

Edit: Also, while you're at it, include your sales tax on the cost labels. Seriously, when I visited America this practice absolutely baffled me. The ONLY reason I can see this being done is to give the illusion I was paying less, which I'm obviously not. Not just that, but it means I couldn't prepare my change before I reached the counter. It's a stupid practice that you need to fix, less I almost pull my hair out because of your absurd business practices like I almost did last time.

I'm actually British. I just used America as my example because I had the relevant incidental knowledge, which I looked up to confirm.

Still, Britain does have a similar problem.