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Message:: [QUOTE="PaulRAnderson, post: 799383, member: 22935"]There is no need for the one-cent coin Pennies are not totally worthless, but we should stop making them. 1. It costs the government (taxypayers) more to produce and distribute them than they're worth. 2. It costs time at the cash register to hand over or receive pennies in change.  This is not a trivial amount of time.  I believe it's on the order of two seconds per cash transaction.  Multiply it out and that's a decent amount of time and money spent. 3. Most people don't use them, instead throwing them away or putting them in a big jar.  Retailers don't like them either.  Look at the mintage figures.  Do we really need 8,000,000,000 new pennies made each year for commerce?  No.  Most leave circulation quickly and are not used. 4. The coin serves no practical purpose.  Nothing costs one cent.  Rounding the total cash price to the nearest nickel would cost neither consumers nor merchants anything, but would save the time spent dealing with pennies. Other countries have eliminated their low-denomination coins and saved time and money.  I understand the emotional attachment to pennies, but in 2010 they serve no practical purpose.  Besides, with so many pennies made just in the last 30 years (the practical lifetime of a coin) there would be enough pennies to last many years even if people still wanted to use them. Paul[/QUOTE]