The penny is basically worthless. Actually, it’s worse than worthless. It costs the U.S. government about 2 cents to produce every penny. Pennies aren’t even worth our time. Wake Forest University economist Robert Whaples has calculated that the typical American worker earns a penny every two seconds. It takes most of us more than two seconds to fumble around with change or pick a penny off the ground, which explains why there are so many pennies on the ground. Money is supposed to be the medium of exchange, not dead weight.
I guess family traditions die hard, but since before I was born and even my Papa, his side of the family always saved change in this apple cider jug from a now defunct apply farm, and that change was used to fill plastic eggs to hid for Easter and Ostara. My kids decided this year egg hunting wasn’t happening because this year sucks so it’s the year to stop.
I did get told I can do it with grandkids whenever that happens. I think I might be funny and get some of the dinosaur egg easter plastic eggs and get little sample bottles of booze next year and do it that way. True Wisconsinites and we created the “hold my beer” dumbassery.
The only time I’ve really used change in the last decade was saving up random coins and going to coinstar. I say off with their heads. Then watch there will be a black market trade of old pennies and people will buy expensive pennies at auction.
We haven’t had 1 or 2 cent pieces for years now. Our minimum denomination in coins is 5 cents. I think prices go up for sure so you lose there but it’s nice not having all those tiny coins around.
We should get rid of pennies. The problem is that the people who make them always lobby to keep them, and they win because congress loves to get paid. The reason to be in politics is to get rich by accepting $.
I read an article tucked away in Forbes magazine that talked about “cyberlibetarians”. They wanted to conduct all business transactions in unbreakable code on the internet so the government could tax them. They hoped to choke the government out of funds in order to dismantle the welfare state. Such a prospect scares me because politicians are more subject to public scrutiny than businessmen. Politicians have more checks on their behavior. It would make the corporations too powerful, and we all know power corrupts. The system of checks and balances is what keeps us safe.