New York Times columist William Safire calls for the 'penny' to be abolished. (He means the one cent coin.)
Abolish the penny? NOT! Sure...go ahead and abolish the penny as long as I have the choice to round down to nickel, but you know that retailers and those that sell will round up to the next highest nickel. Instead, they should abolish the paper dollar for a slick Liberty designed gold colored dollar. It costs us over $500 miliion a year to make paper dollars that last only 16-18 months (tops!). It would work. People will bark at first, but the same happened in Canada and other European countries. It is very successful and now saves the government millions from printing money every year!
The odds of removing the cent are very slim. The odds of removing the dollar bill, that may work. There is new legislation each and every year to remove the dollar bill. The same process is used. The gov. calls 1000 people and asks them if they want the dollar bill eliminated. All of course say no. We are a country full of scared people. Most see everything as the sky is falling. If we eliminate the dollar bill, the public will have to carry 20 dollar coins. We all know this is a crock. If we eliminate the cent, all retailers will round up. They already do that. Nothing new. Everything is already price at .95 or .99 No way to round down from there. For those of you that want change, in any form, do you call or email your elected leaders? Do you take the fight to them? We as Americans have a bad habit of standing back and letting others make our decisions for us, and then complain about it. We need to change our tactics. The squeeky wheel gets the grease.
