US Penny

[Zephik]

Is there any real use for it?? I mean seriously, I was just thinking about that. Why do we still have pennies? Why not just stop making them?

Interesting: There are approx. 200,035,318,672 pennies in US circulation. Anyone want to take a guess at how many dollars that is? or how much that would weigh if you collected them all??? lol wow.

[blueonblack]

No, there is no use for it. It's a huge waste of money and resources. And now they're making NEW pennies! That means that someone somewhere used my tax dollars to pay someone to retool the #$@&* mint to strike new versions of useless coins that no one wants. Brilliant. Clearly there was no better use for those materials, or the man-hours involved.

[Zephik]

I vote we melt them all down and create a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln and put it next to the Statue of Liberty because she looks kind of lonely.

[blueonblack]

Right on. At least it would be used for *something*. Right now they're just an annoyance that most of the people that use them would rather do without.

[Collinstheclown]

Interesting: There are approx. 200,035,318,672 pennies in US circulation. Anyone want to take a guess at how many dollars that is? or how much that would weigh if you collected them all??? lol wow.

That would be 2,000,353,186.72 (thats 2 billion three hundred fifty three thousand one hundred eighty six dollars and sevety two cents)

It would weight approx. 5,000,882,966.80 grams if they were all made after 1982. More if made before!




-CollinstheClown

[BuzzKillington]

If we didn't have pennies they'd have to change all of the $xx.00, $xx.95 and $xx.99's to something odd like $xx.92.

I think that would be more annoying than having pennies. Designing the penny and applying it probably took less than 5 cents of our tax dollars so I don't have a problem with it. It's been a tradition, if you will, of the US to change currency design. As a collector, I feel it's somewhat cool.

5 000 882 967 grams = 11025060 pounds
~5,500 tons

[Zephik]

That's a lot of weight! Now just for comparison, how much does the Statue of Liberty weigh?

Why couldn't they just round everything off to the nearest nickle? Something costs a dollar, then pay a dollar. Tax? Round it off to the nearest nickle?

[blueonblack]

Why couldn't they just round everything off to the nearest nickle? Something costs a dollar, then pay a dollar. Tax? Round it off to the nearest nickle?

My thought exactly.

As for changing them, it took more than 5 cents. Maybe 5 cents of MY money, yes, but it was a lot more than 5 cents. How many dies did they have to cast? How much labor went into the design? It's a small number in the grand scheme of things but it's absolutely pointless and could have been better used elsewhere. Some family in Philadelphia, Denver or San Francisco would have been thrilled to have that money and you and I would never have known the difference.

Wouldn't it be just perfect if we found out that the dies were imported from China? :)

[Mach]

Because someone needs to make a case from them :). Imagine getting a bunch of pre 1982 us pennies (95% copper), soldering them end to end to make a case. I'd love to get a bunch of 2p UK coins (pre-1992) to try this...

Before you laugh too much, check this out...
http://www.littlegorgeousthings.com/cofuartofjos.html

[Zephik]

Thats awesome! Forget the melting part of my statue, just solder them all together! lol

Not too bad of a price either. Say it takes 700 pennies to create a case, that's only 7 dollars. lol

Even it took 7000 pennies, that's only 70 dollars and I have a feeling that would be enough to create multiple cases.

Why can't you buy materials that cheap? If you bought that much copper or nickle circles it would cost you way more wouldn't it?

[Oneslowz28]

A modern penny cost more to produce than its face value. They claim the cheapness of paper money makes up the difference.

[x88x]

Why couldn't they just round everything off to the nearest nickle? Something costs a dollar, then pay a dollar. Tax? Round it off to the nearest nickle?

IIRC, they did this in Japan a while ago; just got rid of the 1 yen coins and rounded everything to 5's.

Honestly, I don't really ever see it happening in the US any time soon. I think that we'll ditch physical money all together before we drop the penny.

[blueonblack]

I really don't see doing away with physical money. That's like taking away guns. Cash is a symbol to a lot of people, physical value in hand, something they can hold, or pocket, or hide in a jar somewhere.

Of course, the government can do whatever they want, really, especially when it comes to currency, but I don't see it happening.

[Zephik]

I think it may happen someday, as people get more and more used to their plastic cards and other money using alternatives. But I don't think it'll happen within the next century, not completely anyways. But it does seem like money is getting used less and less often as time goes by. But I don't think it'll noticeably begin to happen for many more years, maybe around 2050 we'll start going "hey, you know what you don't see much of these days? Physical cash". Maybe anyways, who knows really.

[billygoat333]

That's a lot of weight! Now just for comparison, how much does the Statue of Liberty weigh?

Why couldn't they just round everything off to the nearest nickle? Something costs a dollar, then pay a dollar. Tax? Round it off to the nearest nickle?

then our 6% (in Idaho) sales tax would become 10%. in a heartbeat. lol

[Collinstheclown]

then our 6% (in Idaho) sales tax would become 10%. in a heartbeat. lol

Same for us in PA.:down:




-CollinstheClown

[DonT-FeaR]

send them all to me.. i still wanna make that table.

[NightrainSrt4]

It sounds like a good idea, but when you look at it, you end up paying SO much more for things, at least if you make small purchases.

Take that king size candy bar you just bought for say $0.96. Say you normally pay 6% in tax. So your total would be $1.02.

Now round everything to the next highest $0.05, as you know they aren't going to round down. So that candy bar now costs $1.00. Your 6% tax would put it at $1.06, but you have no way to pay for 0.06, so that now gets rounded up to $1.10. You are talking an 8% increase in the cost of that candy bar just for switching to no pennies. Best case scenario, prices stay the same and they apply tax first, and then any rounding done after gets added into the tax.

Of course this will make less of an impact the higher your purchases go, but still, you are losing money. And don't think because they recovered the cost from not making pennies that you are going to get any sort of tax break because of it making up that difference; It's just not going to happen.

[SXRguyinMA]

Same for us in PA.:down:




-CollinstheClown


:stupid: for us here in MA, and on Aug 1st we went from 5% to 6.25% :facepalm:

then theres AZ, where its already 8.25% (at least it was when I lived there from 02-04, may be different by now)

[Airbozo]

:stupid: for us here in MA, and on Aug 1st we went from 5% to 6.25% :facepalm:

then theres AZ, where its already 8.25% (at least it was when I lived there from 02-04, may be different by now)

Been 8.25% here in San Jose for as long as I can remember. A couple of cities are at 8.5%... The government blames it on prop 13... I blame it on a culture of corruption, greed and ignorance.


But back to the topic, I do not think they should get rid of the penny. Hell I still get a lot of exercise bending over to pick them up. lol

I think they do serve a purpose and who would get the benefit of doing away with them. The way our society works, the extra cents would end up going to the banks or big companies. Similar to who gets the profits from all the percentages of cents generated from electronic transactions.

[nevermind1534]

Same for us in PA.:down:

and Michigan

[d_stilgar]

Yeah, rounding may suck when you buy anything under a dollar, but any big purchase and the percentage increase goes wayyyyyyyy down. If we just rounded to the nearest nickel (up or down) and the difference were taken or given to the government as tax, I think in the end the difference would be moot. We would save money anyway considering a penny costs about 1.7 cents to produce (doh!).

[nevermind1534]

I'm sure that people who work cash registers would love the idea, for work purposes, at least.

[Mark_Hardware]

:stupid: for us here in MA, and on Aug 1st we went from 5% to 6.25% :facepalm:

then theres AZ, where its already 8.25% (at least it was when I lived there from 02-04, may be different by now)

yeah it's still 8.25.......:down:
BUT, in the city of Phoenix, there is no tax on non prepared food items. So, if you buy a soda for $0.99, then you actually pay $0.99.

[nevermind1534]

BUT, in the city of Phoenix, there is no tax on non prepared food items. So, if you buy a soda for $0.99, then you actually pay $0.99.

Same thing in Michigan.

[Zephik]

Same thing with montana I believe. You pay for 99 cent fries, you get a penny back. lol

Buy 99 packs of fries and get one free! :D

[billygoat333]

Same thing with montana I believe. You pay for 99 cent fries, you get a penny back. lol

Buy 99 packs of fries and get one free! :D

yeah montana doesnt have a sales tax. either does oregon. :)

[Collinstheclown]

Nor Delaware, which I'm close enough to that I could get expensive stuff there and save. :)




-CollinstheClown

[TheGreatSatan]

From what I hear it's cheaper to make pennies than what they're worth. Plus if we get rig of the penny, inflation will just get worse.

[Zephik]

From what I hear it's cheaper to make pennies than what they're worth. Plus if we get rig of the penny, inflation will just get worse.

Nope, they're more expensive to manufacture than what they're worth.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-05-09-penny-usat_x.htm

How will inflation get worse if we discontinue pennies?

[nevermind1534]

How will inflation get worse if we discontinue pennies?

Everything would cost more

[TheGreatSatan]

Think about it. The lower the denominations that are available the better we are. Zimbabwe has 100 trillion (http://cgi.ebay.com/2-x-100-TRILLION-DOLLAR-NOTE-ZIMBABWE-UNCIRCULATED-MINT_W0QQitemZ250486770351QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_De faultDomain_15?hash=item3a522ccaaf&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14) dollar bills. Do you think they have pennies? No, because even a million dollars there is worth nothing, so why make a penny or quarter or half dollar or any kind of coin less than a dollar?

Inflation there is insane. Losing the penny will be one step closer to inflation for us.

[x88x]

....I think there are just a few more reasons for the hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe...unstable gov't, a gov't that tries to fix its financial problems by just printing more money... and the 100 trillion dollar bills are a result of the hyper-inflation, not a symptom.

[nevermind1534]

a gov't that tries to fix its financial problems by just printing more money...

hmm... where have I heard this one before?

But I'm sure that those bills didn't help the situation.

[TheGreatSatan]

The more the gov't prints money, the higher my gold is worth

[x88x]

hmm... where have I heard this one before?
Oh crap, that's right, we did just do that didn't we.... :facepalm:



The more the gov't prints money, the higher my gold is worth

Hahaha, too true..too true..