First question is...Should we doscontinue the PENNY? Past surveys have a gender bias...so when answering, please identify your gender....WE ONLY KNOW OF TWO!! No cheating!

quote.......
US Congress that the cost of manufacturing a penny in 2006 would be about 1.23
end quote......
http://madsci.org/posts/archives/2006-06/1149471171.Ot.r.html

This is an old article and evidently they were right on...The current cost for the US Mint to make a penny is 1.23. The COST to industry is estimated at $15 BILLION

That question posed on McLaughlin Group tonight regarding keeping of ditching the penny. I say we keep it.

Gas prices and any other commodity that is not bought in whole units can keep their current price. 90% of the time when you buy gas, the total sale price includes a fraction of a penny which is then rounded up. If pennies were eliminated, it would be rounded up to the nearest 5 cents (not a big deal if you ask me).

Though now that I think about it, would this only affect CASH transactions? In other words, could they get rid of the penny but still charge $1.73 to your credit card?

playing cards with my young grandchildren.

They will not let me take them back and give them quarters when we are finished playing---they love the pennies.

Unless it's talking about Penny Marshall.

n/t

Who are the "they" of whom you speak? I thought you started the poll?

I was only repeating what I heard on TV. My GUESS is men don't like coins...so pennies are a waste as far as they are concerned.

The average lifespan of a one dollar bill is 22-24 months. The average lifespan of a dollar coin is 20+ years.

"Many industries would stand to benefit if the golden dollar were incorporated into mainstream circulation, and the U.S. government would save an estimated $500 million a year from the cost efficiency of coin over paper."

http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2005-12-13/rabinovitch-goldendollar

When you are poor you have a few dollars....try carry coins!

Damn Denver makes me carry 6 coins the size of a dime for ONE trip on the bus. WHY can't they make ONE coin for the VALUE of a trip?

It's all the little bastards that weigh you down. (here, at least)

Are you saying the municipal bus in Denver uses a type of token the size of a dime? And it takes six tokens to pay for a trip?

If I'm understanding correctly, that's really screwed up.

I have NO idea WHY they can't have ONE token the cost of ONE trip??? So I need 12 coins ( $3.00) the size of a dime for ONE round trip...really screwie

unattractive and difficult.

There's just no other explanation possible for that.

And besides, is there any currency where there is no coin representing a unit of "one" of that currency?


Besides, I like the penny.

At least, it is in Italy. I was in the country for about two weeks and received a grand total of one one-cent and two two-cent coins. For the most part, when the total was not divisible by five, the shopkeeper would round up in his change (or on, one or two occasions, round down and just not give me the penny, which I didn't question since I'd seen so few in my time there). I was very careful about my change as well, so it wasn't a matter of me being shortchanged. I think they just pretty routinely round to the nickel. So they make a one-cent Euro, but (if Italy is any indication) they don't use it much.

Just seems that if the penny were gone, it would pull out another psychological price barrier and prices would tend to go up more.

Im against this, and yes my argument may be a pretty slippery slope, but whos to say that the next thing they want to rid of is the nickel, because its too much, then the dime... etc...

Im still VERY skeptical of E-money, and much prefer the paper and metal kind.

but thats just me

and the rarity of the farthing indicates to me that things do not remain the same forever.

before the Civil War. . .

There's a movement afoot to reintroduce it, but it's not going too well.

Coin Collectors Divided over New Bush Half-Penny

Washington, DC  |  Enthusiasm for the Thomas Jefferson buffalo tail nickel has not carried over to the George W. Bush horse's ass half-cent.

The majority of numismatists quickly gave a big thumbs up to the new five-cent piece. But the half-penny, dubbed simply "The Bush" by hobbyists, has sparked a bitter debate.

"Each half-cent will cost about 0.81 of a cent to mint, creating an unnecessary deficit every year," detractors of The Bush complain. "And it looks so much like a penny, The Bush will facilitate widespread dishonesty. The Bush is doomed to be a miserable failure."

"These will come in very handy when the President's Social Security reforms pass," insist supporters of The Bush. "Once the program is forced into bankruptcy, each retiree will get one in the mail every month. Or they can just feel around under the sofa cushion."

The traditional slogan "In God We Trust" is replaced by "Trust Me" on The Bush, which will make it highly sought after by collectors of U.S. coins with oxymorons.






Edited to add link: http://thespeciousreport.com/2005/05050307bush_penny.html

Just go through the normal pricing changes, and round the total to the nearest nickel. See my other post in this thread for an example of how that worked for us while we were in Germany.

The article speaks to the billions this is costing the corporations. What about the consumer in total? I don't want gas to go up to satisfy rounding the nickel. Sorry.

per gallon, but the total at the pump be rounded up/down. When gas goes up, it can still go up in cents and fractions, as it does now (we have no 1/10 cent coin, yet almost all gas prices in the US end in a 9/10th value). You pump to an even nickel value and you don't pay any extra. Yopu pump to $25.02 and you pay $25.00. You pump to $25.03 and you pay $25.05.

In the long run, across all of your purchases, it works out pretty darn close to breaking even (see my other post in this thread about how it worked when I was stationed in Germany and the US stopped shipping us pennies due to the cost).

If people like me didn't hoard pennies, perhaps we wouldn't have to make so many each year.

I always pick them out, but I've seen people discard pennies very often.

only reason to still have it is for criminal activities.

There are plenty of perfectly legal activities I can engage in for which I would prefer there be no bank record.

Non-cash payment methods consolidate wealth in all the wrong places.

Currency is essential for freedom.

in 2006.

bankers richer. Good for you!

They don't have enough data on individuals already. They need the ability to track every minutia of your life. That's a good recipe!

When I was stationed in Germany in the early 80's the government stopped shipping pennies over to us - the cost to fly them in was too high. Everything got rounded to the nearest nickle at the Base Exchange, Commissary, base gas station, etc. Totals ending in 0, 1, or 2 got rounded down to the 0; those ending in 3, 4, or 5 rounded up. A couple of the guys in my shop cried long and loud about how we were all going to get screwed, that the rounding would wind up way into the store's favor. So we decided to track all of our spending over a month or so.

At the end of the time, most of us were within a few cents of breaking even. One guy was ahead about 30 cents. One was behind by about a quarter.

The way the gas station worked it was to go through 'normal' price changes - by the penny. We already have gas priced in .9 cent increments. Wherever you stopped pumping you just rounded to the nearest nickle. The rest of the prices in the BX and other stores stayed where they were, and went though their normal changes. Nobody got screwed.

Over the long haul it's pretty close to a break-even, since you usually purchase several items, which winds up making the totals very wide-ranging.

instead of going up to the nearest five cents.

Just my opinion.

and when they factor in the cost of manufacturing the penny- they aren't factoring in who will lose their jobs if a penny stops being produced- and get this... they say making penny change at fast food resturants, stores etc. costs such and such .... like duh... opening a roll of pennies might take someone a minute, and counting out change is part of the cost of using pennies.

We could do without nickels or dimes, but pennies? We're looking for troubles-
If a penny doesn't matter that much, why do stamps go up by pennies?

Keep the penny-
we won't be stuck in this madness forever-
and if we are, lets die with pennies in our pockets.

female- penny saver

So they can quit making them any time they want.