OK article, but hardly original... see articles with the identical sentiment every single year, and yet they're still minting pennies. Doubt the penny will continue forever, but don't see it going away anytime soon.
I don't know what others think about getting cents in their change but I look forward to it. When businesses want to round down a cent from their prices or pull one out of the little trays by the registers to keep from counting out another four coins it's like they think their doing you a favor. I would rather pay the one cent to get the four. Sure hope it is not discontinued.
Similar story on the AOL front page today. Same info dabout the cent every once in a while. Mostly the concern is the cost of the metal is greater than the cent is worth. However, the cost of all our money is greater than it's worth and has been for a long, long time. I've repeated this numerous times in the past. If you owned a factory and made shoes. You would not only have to account for the material, but you would have to include the cost of delivering the material to you, shipping the shoes to stores, utility costs of your factory such as electricity, water, gas, phones, etc. Payment to workers, thier hospitalizatioin and life insurance. Building maintenance and upkeep. Miscellaneous desks, chairs, lamps, bookcases, filing cabinets, paper, postage, envelopes, pencils and pens, paper clips, etc. After hours cleaning people, washroom facilities and products. All of the above and much more would have to go into the cost of your shoes. So think about it. If our government included similar costs to the production of our coinage and paper currency, just what do you think it would actually cost to produce a cent? Probably an awful lot more than people think. Thank goodness for taxes to pay for all that trivial unmentioned items. As to the fate of the cent. In the near future there will probably be nothing called money. Only those horrid little credit and debit cards.
Sure they run articles like this every year, but it wasn't until recently that it cost more than a penny to mint a penny. With that in mind, combined with the fact that they are basically worthless in today's economy - means that they're probably on the way out for real this time unless zinc prices drop significantly (unlikely). I doubt you'll see the end of cash all together any time soon, but there certainly the necessary amounts for circulation might drop (if they aren't dropping already). I just got back from New Zealand and they're doing just fine without a 1 cent coin. So I say lose the penny. Make more 50 cent pieces and dollar coins and then convince the population to use those... always seems to work overseas. Besides, that Brittney Spears' husband is taking up arms to save the penny should be our first clue that it's time to let it go.
There would probably be a lot less resistance to doing that than to eliminate it altogether; realistically I think that will happen long before it's eliminated entirely. There's more than just practical concerns to consider, there's political ones too, and Congress doesn't like rocking the boat if they think it will annoy too many of their constituents, who may object to change for other than logical, practical reasons. But I don't even see a metal change in the near future unless copper goes WAY up... even though pennies and nickels cost more to mint than their face value, the cost of minting all other coins are way below it and more than make up for it.
