http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/07/...in3801455.shtml

There is a shorter video that was not included in the broadcast this evening that shows how pennies are made. It can be found with the same link above.


So do you want to remove the US penny and US nickel from circulation?

(A parallel topic from Hungary on the removal of their two lowest denomination coins can be found here.)

dont care, interesting story though, saw it on TV tonight. To be hoenst I am not terribly concerned either way. I see the point of the man who was saying that all business (being as they are) will round up but then again there will be no more 19.99 crap and they will just be 20 bucks. The guy who said we lose time with the penny was stretching it, like he was just trying to find a way it would be a negative to keep them. I will be honest and say that I dont think that it would be terribly bad or terribly great either way as I dont think the penny is a huge burden to produce even if it isnt that important thus the issue isnt that urgent. The new penny designs were kinda cool though

I say... don't take them out of circulation, just quit minting them (and paper money as well!) for a while. Otherwise the inflation will continue if you don't quit printing, or if you take both the nickel and penny out. The Fed has done this to themselves. If they had quit printing their own money in the first place a penny wouldn't be worth more than a penny and the nickel wouldn't be worth more than the nickel.

If the people want them, mint them. Maybe the government would not have to mint so many of them if they didn't disappear in the first place. Frankly most of them end up in jars, bags, jugs, or even the landfill. If people were more encouraged to take them back to the bank etc. this would not be a problem. I have one bank that has a no charge coin machine, but most banks don't. Furthermore if you take them to the CoinStar machines, they charge something like 9.5% to cash the coins. All my non-savable for my collection coins get turned into the bank once or twice a month.

If the cent got removed from circulation I would not miss it but I think it is true that it would hurt the poor. For that reason alone I say keep the cent, just find a cheaper way to make them.

You are missing a poll item:

Get rid of the 1 cent and replace with a 2 cent coin.

Boy would that make pricing a pain with our 7 % sales tax in florida. Wal-mart would throw a hissy fit.

Our continued and constant inflation is caused by fractional banking and not small change and low denomination banknotes....when banks can create money and does so everytime someone takes out a loan or gets a credit card...that is the real problem...this is tied to FED rules and banks. If all that was being created WAS pennies and dollar bills, there wouldnt be a problem.

Why don't they just mint them intermittently like in the early 1800s? Once every 5 years a few billion or so. I guess thats the same as minting 1/5th of that every year. Well, why don't they just do that? Would that hurt anyone or anything?

Get rid of the cent and lose the chance of getting new 11 cent double denomination errors.

Get rid of the cent and lose the chance of getting new 11 cent double denomination errors.

Get rid of the cent and lose the chance of getting new 11 cent double denomination errors.

Point well made mark, lol.

Here's something I posted elsewhere;

Everyone always understates the true cost of keeping the cent. It's not just the pollution created mining crap that should stay in the ground and processing into a worthless coin that costs more to count than its value. It's not just the huge cost to count and transport these on the rare occassion that they actually get used instead of tossed in the trash. It's not just the lesson we teach our children that money lost in small amounts doesn't count. It's not just the toxic metal that we place in the paths of innocent animals and babies. It's not even the foolishness of showing future generations how little we value our time and money. Forget the wasted effort and energy. Who cares about the truck loads of incinerated cents clogging back and forth across the country to be redeemed.

It's the fact that we're maintaining an obsolete and broken monetary system. What cost is associated with not havoing a dollar coin in circulation? We could give every damn employee of Crane paper company a million dollars a year to stay home and save money eliminating the cent and getting the dollar in circulation. Kennedy might lose some votes but everyone at Crane would be pulling for him.

I have to admit I was all for getting rid of the penny as well until they brought up the penny drives. Overall it's not much to divide among the receiving population of the charity, but it is still a lot of money. Still, who's to say the dime or nickel couldn't replace the penny's charitable function?

Wouldn't make a difference either way. I'm sure Walmart would be all for elimination of the cent. Not having to handle 1 cent coins would save both time and money.

Well if I can take everybody back to 2000, Wally World was one of the main retail distributors of the Sacajawea dollar, well for all that did. It would take more than just Wally World, but also K-Sears, Booger Fling, FatDonalds etc. to get on the bandwagon and dump the cent.

The state of Pennsylvania charges state income tax in whole dollars (not even rounded up1) because it isn't worth the cost to bother collecting the two digits after the decimal. Getting rid of the cent would be detrimental to roll searchers and error collectors, but in the end we'd all just move on to the nickel or something else. Besides, the mint can still make the one cent coin for collectors much the way the Australian mint still makes 1 and 2 cent coins for collectors.

If you all get rid of them, send them my way, I will take them all

agreed

I think we should keep them.

1) I collect both and like them.
2) There's no such thing as saving money for the Feds. They'll increase the budget by a certain percentage every year no matter what.
3) Rounding up/down is way out of the realm of real-life. Have you ever worked in retail?

As for getting rid of the dollar bill. Nah -- Dollar coins are just too heavy for everyday carrying. Right now I have 26 singles in my pocket. Wouldn't want to replace them with 26 Pres dollars. If the dollar coins were made generally available and used for tolls/vending machines and the like they'd be more than earning their keep.

Keep them.

I heard (coin age) that the mint may be trying to change cents to steel and make them look like copper. Start the horads of coppers and zinks NOW.

Just to update on the numismatic hear say.