1 post tagged “dollar coin”
Yeah, you better be saving your pennies, especially as they now officially cost more to make than they're worth. According to data released by the US Mint, each penny now costs 1.26¢ to make.
I used to just toss them aside. Going through drive-thrus, I've been known to simply ditch the pennies out of my change, right there in the drive. Guess I won't be doing that anymore.
So, here we are, in the midst of some serious economic doldrums. People are saying "recession." People are saying, "looming depression." I personally have been saying, "great googly-moogly" and "motherfucker." Yet, we're still throwing money away to produce money that is of limited value. Oh, sure, there's something special about finding a shiny penny on the ground, or carrying an old wheat penny around in your pocket for luck, but the fact that nearly every store I go in these days has a little plastic dish for people to deposit or borrow pennies from? That's a sign.
If you don't hesitate to leave your pennies in those plastic dishes, you probably wouldn't mind not getting them back in change at all. Perhaps at last, that means we, as a society, are finally ready to say good-bye to the penny. Round up all purchases to the nearest nickel and we would simplify a lot of transactions in addition to saving a bunch of money. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $34 million a year.
A current proposal in the House would not do away with the penny, but would take us back to World War II, when pennies were made of steel, a much cheaper metal than copper. Because the nickel is also a profligate in these days of rising nickel and zinc prices, the proposal includes plans to make the nickel out of steel as well. This is considered preferable to the "politically impossible" suggestion of doing away with the penny. There seems to be some sense that people want to keep the penny and yet my brain keeps going back to all those discarded pennies. Do we really want it?
And then, look at all the things we didn't want that we got: the war in Iraq, the USA PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo, tax breaks for the super wealthy. We didn't riot over any of those and they're worried that getting rid of the penny is politically impossible?
Don't, don't even get me started on the willful failure of the dollar coins.
