The Penny: The Now Unprofitable "Copper" Coin by R.T. Adams (free books to read .txt) 📕

The penny. Once, it used to actually be worth something to our economy. However, now, it has lost value. In this year, 2015, it costs about two cents just to make a single penny. In the past year, the U.S. Mint lost about $105 million producing pennies and nickels together. That’s a lot of money that could be used for a better cause. As an example for a better cause, cancer research. If someone sees a penny laying on the ground, no one really cares. Perhaps a young child will pick it up, and then it will end up staying in a jar or once again, get lost. Other from that, the penny is only worth one cent, and what will that buy with today’s prices? It cannot get gas, food, pay the bills, or really, anything. This coin is only wasting money in our economy. Maybe people thought that it was entirely made of copper, but it is not. If it was, it would cost more than three cents to produce it. Only the shell of the penny is actually copper, and the rest is zinc. Try thinking of something that can be used as a replacement for zinc or copper and costs less than it. There are not really a lot of things, are there? In the next five years, will the price of the penny raise, stay the same, or lower, or even better, will they finally abolish the penny? It is highly unlikely they will abolish the penny, because of tradition. However, can tradition not get ludicrous?

Imagine standing in line, waiting to buy something at CVS or Walgreens. Imagine someone is the second customer and there is an elderly woman in front of them. Her purchase is over $20 and she’s searching through her purse. When she finally grabs her wallet, or anything that can carry a lot of pennies, they feel extraordinary relief. But then, she pours out a bunch of pennies. They know that the cash register is going to have to count it, one-by-one. It wastes time, and sometimes, people do not even count the pennies and just take them all. It is a painful experience to feel a sudden relief, believing an old lady give the register $20, but then seeing over 2,000 pennies poured onto the counter. Even though we have pennies, what are the upper hands of them? So far, there is not one good thing, or review, about pennies. And with our tradition, it is not worth it. Take, for example, the United Kingdom. They are extremely traditional, yet they got rid of their lowest currency unit, and ended up replacing it with a coin that is worth about ten times more than it. So, why do we still hold onto such a small, useless object? We have no reason to let go of the penny “because Lincoln is on it.” It’s not like the $5 bill with Lincoln on it will disappear. If they love Lincoln so much, just as much as money, which would they rather have, a penny or a $5 bill? At least a $5 bill is made of fabric that does not cost more than it is to produce.

Go collect some pennies and count them all. Once they have been counted, try to give them to the bank. Some banks will not accept them, not unless they are neatly wrapped in groups of 50. Is it really worth the time to neatly wrap them in groups of 50? Each year, the U.S. Mint produces more than 13-14 billion pennies, which is more than $90 million. Again, more money that could be used for a better cause. In the next ten years, if it remained at a constant rate, it would then be worth over $900 million, nearly one billion dollars. While currently on this subject, we’re also in trillions of dollars in debt. If we abolish pennies, and possibly nickels, we could get, in the least, get millions of dollars back. Of course, it will not be even near how much we must pay back. Think about it, how often is a quarter on the ground for every penny on the ground? There are a lot more pennies because the people who had them find them useless, or they simply dropped them. They probably heard it, looked back, and continued to walk away. However, if they were to have dropped a quarter, they would have turned around and picked it up. The reason is because the huge difference. Four quarters is equal to one dollar. However, 100 pennies is equal to one dollar. If there was one dollar worth of quarters on one side and one dollar worth of pennies on the other, what would someone pick? They’d pick the four quarters. It’s a lot less weight. What this last statement is saying is that a lot of pennies is just dead weight. In the end, pennies turn out useless, unprofitable, and lastly, time-consuming. Will the U.S. Congress abolish the penny in the next few years? Surely, they won’t.

Text: Shikanosuke Maejima
Publication Date: 10-06-2015

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