Should the US retire the penny ?

[Mediaeval]

If the government had refrained from printing/creating paper money by fiat, the penny would still be worth something.

 

[Jeffwhosoever]

Let's drop all coins and use dollars only.

 

[Adaephon]

Let's drop all coins and use dollars only.

That sounds silly. Why would we do that? Coins are much more durable than paper bills. It would be more sensible to eliminate low value bills and replace them with coinage that holds up better under frequent usage.

 

[dgiharris]

That sounds silly. Why would we do that? Coins are much more durable than paper bills. It would be more sensible to eliminate low value bills and replace them with coinage that holds up better under frequent usage.

I agree, but for some reason, as a country we just don't like $1 coins...

They have been trying to switch us to $1 coins for the longest time and we just keep rejecting them.

 

[[serious]]

I love dollar coins. I take them and use them at every opportunity.

 

[Adaephon]

I love dollar coins. I take them and use them at every opportunity.

Ditto. It's one of the ways the EU is more sensible than the USA.

 

[EdwinWillers]

Canada is working on retiring the penny.

Should the US do the same?

Absolutely. Replace it with, oh I don't know... a platinum coin?

 

[EdwinWillers]

...it'd be worth about as much

 

[Pommer]

In business, you never ever EVER round down. 99.9999999% of the time it would be rounded up to the next 5 cent increment.

If companies try to spur a penny-less economy by ceasing to deal with the piddling small change they might go with always rounding DOWN until the customers got used to the idea of not getting pennies.

After a year or so, they could begin to round up as well.
It would be considered an investment in that just not having to deal with pennies already saves them money.

Yeah, axe Abe!

 

[jgarden]

As of 2012, it costs the U.S. Mint 2.00 cents to make a cent because of the cost of materials and production. This figure includes the Mint’s fixed components for distribution and fabrication, estimated at $13 million in FY 2011. It also includes Mint overhead allocated to the penny, which was $17.7 million for 2011. Fixed costs and overhead would have to be absorbed by other circulating coins without the penny. The loss in profitability due to producing the one cent coin in the United States for the year of 2012 was $58,000,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)

Currency is supposed to be a symbol of value, but when the cost to produce a unit of currency becomes double its actual value, perhaps its time to re-evaluate its usefulness. I'm sure there are better ways to spend the $58 million.

The Canadians estimate that it costs them 1.6 cents to mint a penny and they produced their last one as of May 4, 2012.

 

[DrkSdBls]

The reason that we will never accept Dollar coins is because most people like to carry cash on them and that amount is usually somewhere between $5 and $20 plus some odd bills. Since people continuously deal in small purchases, the Coinage that gets left over from cash purchases tend to rack up very quickly resulting in fistfuls of coins. Most people already hate having to deal is small change as it is (which is why people often toss pennies anyway) and adding yet another coin (possible a coin larger then the Quarter) to the mix every time they they have to break a $20 would be irritating to them. Couple that with Paper bills can fold up nice and neat in wallets while Coins do not means that those who like to carry cash with them (I'm one) means that either I won't be carrying less then a $5 bill or I'll have a Pocket full of coins.

Not to mention that coin/dollor Operated Machines would likely be required to accommodate the new coin, so that's another burden that people just don't find it too appealing.