preview

Why Do Pennies Don T Make Currency

Better Essays

Pennies Don’t Make Cents Anymore The U.S. penny has been a standard in our currency system for almost as long as our country has existed as a sovereign nation, but due to inflation, production costs, and the changing times we live in, it is no longer a sustainable unit of currency and only serves to increase our national deficit and waste our time. When the penny was produced for the first time in 1792 by the U.S. Mint, it was made of pure copper, featured a woman with flowing hair, and was inscribed with the words “Liberty”. Since then, the design and composition have changed numerous times to reflect our changing nation. Despite its fading glory, the penny has been kept alive by numerous false lobbying fronts and a stubborn ideology, but …show more content…

currency. From 1793-1857, there existed a coin called the half-cent ($0.005). When it was taken out of circulation in 1857, that coin had the buying power of today’s 13 cents, and an actual penny in 1857 was worth twice that (about a quarter in today’s money). The U.S. Mint did away with coin worth more than today’s dime, so why can’t we relinquish the penny? The purpose of a lower denomination of a currency is to split our money into manageable parts, so that something worth between x and y cents can be bought fairly without over or underpaying. However, nothing reasonably exists in any (U.S.) market today where the difference of +/- 4 cents makes a significant difference. Any difference greater than 4 cents can be handled by the nickel, dime, and quarter. To be fair, the penny once was a logical denomination — a 2.50$ coffee equivalent in 1900 would have cost you 0.09$, and here a penny constitutes a whole 11% of the price versus 0.4% of the price today. But when you have prices that have increased 2,568% over the past 110 years, the penny no longer proves itself a viable unit of …show more content…

The only difference between the U.S. and those countries is that they have made the progressive step to stop producing pennies. Their system is now as follows: Pennies can still be spent, but as no more production exists to balance out wear, tear, and loss, the population of pennies will gradually decrease until they become something of the equivalent of the U.S. 2 dollar bill. Values between 5 cent intervals are rounded up or down, and neither consumers nor vendors need to worry about overpaying/underearning, as the amounts rounded up and down balance each other out in the long run (.02 saved one transaction becomes .03 spent the next, and so on). Credit card transactions still go down to the cent, but as digital currency is handled by computers, it doesn’t pose any inconvenience to

Get Access