Elon's looking at the penny

Put a billionaire in charge of these things. What could possibly go wrong?

 

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I was thinking Al Bundy from Married with Children...

 

Exactly. Everything goes up, nothing comes down. Those who think otherwise have their heads buried in the sand. But with this comment I am no longer posting on this thread. Count me out of this remaining portion, please. I prefer to be non-political here.

 

With all the talk about the cent, what about dollar coins? They seem even more useless than the cent. They may cost less to make, but who uses them?

 

They cost less to make, and they last a lot longer.

Given the current valuation of the dollar, the sensible thing to do would be to get rid of the cent and nickel and dime, and replace the one, five, and ten dollar bills with coins. But it's not going to happen before we get rid of cash entirely.

 

The Lincoln cent will never go away. They have tried, time and time again, to get rid of it and it's still there. The "ABE" brigade won't let it happen. Illinois, Indiana, and one other State (Kentucky?), let alone the historians, claim Abe as one of their own. And that's enough votes to keep a Bill from ever being passed in the House, which is where it has to go because it deals with money. They will never get rid of a coin with Lincoln on it.

 

Make them out of steel again! Problem solved... kind of.

 

He's on the $5 bill, might as well put him on the $5 coin. (I'd love to see a return to Liberty on our coins, but I don't expect to see that happen, either.)

 

Dejà vu

Who or what would you put on US coinage?

 

Alternatively, we could just nuke our own country. May seem drastic, but there would be benefits too! I just worry about animals, nature, things like that.

 

I doubt down. More likely rounded up, like the gas price. I've had fast food drive throughs already do that to me. Since most transactions these days are electronic, however, even fraction of a cent transactions are possible, although not likely.

 

Shh! Don't say that where he can hear you!

 

Oh crap! Now look what I've done.

My sincerest apologies to erryone.

 

I'll confess that I don't know whether gas prices are always rounded up, because I don't really care whether I'm shorted a cent on a transaction that's tens of dollars. In fact, I didn't care when those transactions were single-digit dollars.

Similarly, I won't care if I'm shorted a nickel or a dime on my double- or triple-digit grocery purchases. Whether or not merchants always round up, they cannot round up per item, only on a total transaction. So unless you pay for every item separately, the amount of rounding is going to be truly insignificant.

 

Pricing things at $X.99 is a marketing trick to give the perception that things are “less expensive.” Same with items that are $199 or $9,999, doesn’t seem as bad as $200 or $10,000.

Adding 1¢ to the price of everything that is currently priced at $X.99 will make no difference at all.

The cent is basically worthless and is a gross waste of tax payer dollars to produce.

edited

 

Maths actually is a word…for the Britts.

 

A couple of the 2026 quarters are going to feature Lady Liberty!

 

I just don't see it happening anytime soon, because if the cost of minting the penny, and the lack of need for it, were considerations, we would have stopped years ago. But when the public objects to it, they back off. Canada got rid of their penny in 2013; I don't know if there were significant objections to it or not, but they just did it. (Different political attitudes for reasons it might be a violation to attempt to discuss here lol so I'll just say there are indeed differences without speculating as to why.) If it worked that way here there already wouldn't be a penny anymore.

Will it go away eventually? I think realistically cash will go away entirely before they single out the penny specifically. I don't have a crystal ball but that's my guess.

This is not me defending the penny; it would make practical sense to get rid of it. The nickel too for that matter. And replace $1 bills with coins. But the public resists change if they find it inconvenient, and there's not a lot of motivation to push back against the resistance.

 

It already stopped making economic sense about 50 years ago... yet it's still here (the cost of minting a penny has exceeded one cent since the 1970's). I don't expect to see them go away anytime soon.