Give a Penny, Take a Penny
On a typical weekday, I buy a grahn-day cup of coffee at Starbucks in the morning. Cost: $1.87. I drop the dime and three pennies into the tip jar. Then, for lunch, I usually get a Caesar salad and a roll at Soprafina. Cost: $8.08. This inevitably yields a pocketful of change, including two pennies. That's five pennies a day.
I leave the pennies on top of the pop machine in the afternoon.
I hate pennies. If I find one in my pocket, it's like a cockroach. I toss it in the street.
Our leading economists are saying we should get rid of the penny, and I wholeheartedly agree. Lincoln still has the fiver. But a commenter at Mankiw's blog asks some interesting process questions.
Does it mean that the government simply stops minting new pennies, and we are left to devise our own rules thereafter on an ad hoc basis?
Does it mean that the penny is no longer legal tender?
Does it mean that if the nickel is the smallest form of currency being minted, that people must round up or down? Or are they (merchants and/or individuals)allowed to use pennies when it is advantageous to not round off?
Can you imagine how many jars full of pennies would be cashed in during the weeks before the penny expired as legal tender? My suggestion: the government should commission an artist to make some massive copper sculpture in D.C. out of all the old pennies.
posted by Abe at 6/03/2006 01:38:00 PM
4 Comments:
Not gonna happen. The penny's here to stay. And I kinda like it. When I was a kid, we'd buy rolls of pennies and sift through them, looking for that 1947 double-struck worth about $200. Never found one, but I did fill up a couple penny books. These generally covered a couple decades -- the goal was to fill a penny pocket for each year and each mint. Don't know what happened to those books -- maybe that's how my folks financed their European vacation in 1970.
Now, I'm one of those folks who throws pennies into a jar. Every three years or so, I take all the pennies I've collected to the bank and cash 'em in. Usually get about $20. Woo hoo!
And as for that massive copper sculpture -- also not gonna happen. Since 1982, the penny is 97.5% zinc.
Not an expert like Piano (pronounced pee anno--seems tougher to me for some reason) apparently appears to be, but I read some hype on this story a year or so ago. I thought of the same questions that Abe cites. Like Abe, I have no problem leaving one, two, maybe three pennies behind for the merchant to send back home to the kiddies. But when my bill is say, $1.96, I am stuck in a quandary that usually leaves me hesitating for change but not wanting to waste the precious few seconds it takes the guy to scrape em out. If I saved up those four pennies a day and if I lived to be the average life expectancy for an American of 75, I could save $693.40. After loading this calculation into my abacus though, I realized that I only have 17,335 days left of life and I am now freaking the eff out and don't care so much of this issue anymore.
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Before I knew, thanks to John, that the penny is 97.5% zinc I was going to say that all Americans could go and trade their pennies in at a copper recycling center for cash money. Being on a construction sight with many electritions I have come to find that copper value is at an all time high here in Montana at about $2 a pound. BUT thanks to John I will not waste my time figuring out if a pound of pennies is worth more at a recycling center or a bank. I hate pennies by the way... absolutley hate them. I throw them. It's all about the Benjamins baby.
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