Should the US treasury phase out the penny?

Transactions should be rounded to the nearest multiple of a nickel.

I would not miss it a bit. I think the biggest resistance to the penny’s demise is it would be tangible evidence of the declining value of the dollar. We all know the value has dropped. I’ve heard from Grandpa enough times: “A coffee cost a nickel.”, “Gasoline cost 20 cents per gallon.”, “I worked all day for $3.00.” At that rate maybe we should phase out nickles and dimes too.

No. I’m a penny saver and they mount up. Rounding to the nickel?? How bout down to the closest buck? I save my change for 2 or 3 months and come up with 50 or so dollars. Very handy.

What about basic math we teach our young’uns…...it goes down the tubes. reprice everything…...no, State sales tax is different.

Yes! Waste of everyone’s time!

Yes. We’ve done it in Israel and it’s successful.

Many countries have gotten rid of their lowest denomination coin, it’s high time the us does the same. The five dollar bill should become a coin as well.

@worriedguy Its much more a sign of inflation as opposed to the dollar’s decline and its hardly surprising that a penny isn’t worth a lot anymore. At 6% inflation, a the price for a gum ball would jump from $0.01 to $0.04 after 24 years. But thats okay since wages would have gone up by about the same factor as well.

In fact, if the dollar appreciates in value, a penny would by less and less on the foreign markets and thus we would even more reason to discard it. So, if anything, it would be a sign of a strong dollar.

Do you mean nickle? I sentimentally like the penny, but can see the sense of losing cents.

We will be totally an electronic transaction society before that happens.

20 years ago I used nothing but cash. Today a $20 bill in my pocket ends up getting lost in the laundry and change gets tossed in a jar.

Yes, but it probably won’t. See here.

How long have we been talking about getting rid of the penny?

I can remember going back to the 70’s.

yes pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese!

Or do a revaluation with the penny becoming equal to the quarter.

Yess, don’t get rid of the penny. Just start calling it a quarter. :-)

They should melt them all together into a massive zinc ball, and then use that to plug the leak in the gulf…

No, they should simply begin issuing them in a cheaper medium such as plastic.

use peas, or peanuts for pennies

No!!! That would break my miserly heart. I make good money each time I take a walk because nowadays so many people aren’t even willing to bend down to pick a dropped penny up—and I AM!

@Dr_Lawrence Very logical response!

@worriedguy True that. You know how staunch resistance is though. Lets get these dumb antiquated pennies out of circulation first. First of all they are not even profitable to mint!.
Any bills, etc.. should be rounded down not up to the nearest nickel.

@jazmina88 Meh! No the penny still exists mathematically but in transactions it is phased out and bills are rounded down to the last nickle.

@zenele Logic at work. Thanks good buddy for the support!

@ stranger_in_a_strange_land Sweet, the momentum builds!!! And I think the US should co-embrace metric as the English system of weights and measures is too imbued in the soul of the general populace.

@gorillapaws as long as BP will do it and we all get a tax credit from them and we get to dump all the tea in China in London’s Themes then we got a solid deal.

@Kraken Still not convinced about addressing several people in the same post, are we?

@bob_ a stick figure makes a comment—-Awwwwwweeeeee how cute.

@Kraken Is it as cute as an octopuss?

It as acute as an apocalypse.

It doesn’t make much sense to make pennies anymore. HA! Zinc prices are up and even with the smaller penny being made nowadays it cost more than a penny to make one. Eliminating the penny would save the U.S.A economy a couple million dollars a year and also help teach youngsters how to round up and down when they make a purchase. By the way another great way to same many millions of dollars per year is to eliminate the paper one and five dollar bills and used 1 &5 $ coins instead. That’s not going to happen so we will just keep waisting money as our economy and the U.S. dollar tanks.

@gondwanalon I agree about the pennies, but only someone with a purse would want to replace dollars with coins.

@gondwanalon Brilliant answer.

yes and the nickle too.

In Canada we finally got rid of the penny… life is better.