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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 552327, member: 66&quot;]The cent should go.&nbsp; It serves no real purpose, and has a vanishingly small purchasing power.&nbsp; When the Mint and our coinage system was conceived it was decided to include the half cent as a way to help the poor by giving them a small denomination&nbsp; they could use.&nbsp; Todays cent has less than 1/50th the purchasing power of that original half cent.&nbsp; Are we so poor we need a coin that small?</p><p><br /></p><p>It is said that we need it to make change.&nbsp; Does that mean that if we round to five cents we can&#039;t make change?&nbsp; Can people only count by ones?</p><p><br /></p><p>People say we need it for sales tax because they will always round up.&nbsp; Strange, if you calculate the exact tax today you will find that they don&#039;t &quot;Always round up&quot;.&nbsp; If the tax come to less than an extra half cent they round DOWN because they know it will even out.&nbsp; Sometime up, sometimes down.&nbsp; And I don&#039;t see anyone calling for a return of the half cent or mils to stop that rounding problem.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes the intrinsic value of the cent has dropped and is down to .3 cents&nbsp; but the labor cost still brings it back up to just about the break even point.&nbsp; Before much longer the cost of making a cent will exceed the face value even if the materials were free.&nbsp; rather than wait for that, we are at a convenient breaking point with the 100 year mark, lets stop it now.</p><p><br /></p><p>75% of the mints output are cents.&nbsp; That is because they are NOT used, or rather used once.&nbsp; Mint to bank to store used for change and then tossed in a jar and removed from circulation.&nbsp; They have to make so many because they are not used because people don&#039;t want to use them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes the cent is traditional and many of us have a fondness for them.&nbsp; I loved my old car too, but when the driver seat started falling through the floor it was time to let it go.&nbsp; It, like the cent, had outlived its usefulness.&nbsp; Todays generations of collectors remember starting out collecting cents.&nbsp; The next can start by collecting nickels.&nbsp; &quot;But that is so much more expensive!&quot;&nbsp; Not really.&nbsp; The cents of my childhood had the purchasing power of todays dimes.&nbsp; The next generation will be start with coins worth half as much as I did, even though the face value is five times as much.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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