Will congress decide to discontinue the lincoln cent any time soon? If so, will the melt ban be lifted?
I doubt it any time soon ...this has been a topic since the early 70's ..so what's the rush I always think it should be left up to individual stores to round up or down if paying with cash
They will be discontinued eventually, when is anyone's guess, but I don't expect it to happen for at least three more years. Will the melt ban be lifted? I would say yes but probably not until at least two years after the discontinuation. The fact that the cents will still be legal tender is immaterial. Silver coins are still legal tender but the lefted the melt ban on those. Once the cents effectively cease to circulate protecting them from being melted serves no purpose.
They have been discussing messing with the cent since the early 1970s, then factor in the budget mess, taxes, health care and you think they are going to get it together and eliminate the cent? Cents have been worthless since then, they have a purchasing factor of 1/10th of what a cent in the 1960s had. It is a non-partisan opinion - the current American congress is the least popular in the history of the country. But the voters, the very few that seem to give a damn, keep sending the worthless fools back to Washington.
"Electricity is the Crown Prince of false security." Sherlock Holmes and the Pearl of Death This winter at the Jersey Shore, after Hurricane Sandy, cash was King. There wasn't electric to process transfers and CCs were worthless.
And when we lose faith in the fiat currency, what will we use as a medium of exchange? Worthless cash and coins are no better than imaginary money in the form of 1s and 0s. The earliest system was barter and it's return might not be as far fetched as you might think. Water, food and protection become the most valuable products of barter when all else fails.
They make money off the fact that so many cents and other change gets lost or thrown away, never to be redeemed.
That may be true of the larger denominations, but not of the cent or five cent since they cost more to make than their face value. When they get lost, thrown away, or simply pulled from circulation and stashed in hoards, they have to be replaced because they are needed in commerce and that just means losing more money on the replacements.
