Comments on: The Great Penny Debate

By: balla7774

balla7774 — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:16:17 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnsvhFffgRI

By: Kadee

Kadee — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:43:04 +0000

Here in New Zealand, our lowest coin is 10c! Recently they changed all of our coins to smaller (in size) ones and did away with 5c – we hadn’t had 1c or 2c for ages.

By: Lorie

Lorie — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:34:53 +0000

In regards to Melissa’s comment – in the book of Revelations it does speak about the use of a one-world currency. Just something your comment made me think of.

And yes – I do throw away pennies b/c I think they are a waste.

By: beth

beth — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:37:57 +0000

You don’t want your pennies..give them to me! Money is money!

By: Moseph

Moseph — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:42:22 +0000

I’ve thrown away pennies. I guess that makes me a typical wasteful American… but they’re so useless. Really, if I saved up the ones that accumulate at the bottom of my baseball bag or my backpack, I could save up a couple bucks… but would it be worth the trouble to go get them changed into good money?

I also once paid for something using 100 pennies. It says something when using a piece of currency is considered an insult. The cashier was ticked!

I say get rid of the useless things.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:29:31 +0000

I lived overseas from 1990-2004, living on various military bases. On Base, the PX’s, BX’s, commissary’s, and restaurants do not used pennies for returning change. You could use them to buy products (as it is still viable cash), but you would not get the pennies back in your change. Everything was either rounded up or down. (You could use them at the post office, as the federal government wants each and every penny owed to them) I asked the bank manager why (as well as seen a few AFN commercials with the explanation). Pennies are heavy for transport, a pain the butt to count, roll and keep in the safe inventory, so it was decided that they would not be used. After the intial shock of not getting my “full” change back, eventually, I forgot they even existed until I came back to the states. Now I am overrun with pennies, in jars, piggy banks, etc. I do pick them up when I see them and add them to the jar, but I don’t “use” them a currency (i.e. count out to pay a bill). If doing away with the penny with save the government money that could be used for something else, I would not miss them….

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:28:01 +0000

I used to work on a U.S. military base and they didn’t use pennies at the BX/PX. I thought it was a wonderful thing.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:10:00 +0000

I’m not sure why we still use paper and coin money at all. I don’t see any reason we couldn’t just go to having everything being account based. Your pay could be directly credited to your account, and you could use a card (and maybe some sort of paper checks to pay for things that don’t have access to a card system). The mints wouldn’t need to pay to print money at all. Plus, I think it would help reduce crime,too. Criminals love cash transactions and hate paper trails. I’m certainly not saying people who like cash are criminals, just that it would make criminal activity harder to conduct and easier to trace. As for the identity theft issue that would be made worse, well, it’s bad already. We need to find better ways to prevent that anyhow. So much of society has gone to using cards and electronic payments to pay for things anyway, we should really go cashless completely. I would say less than a quarter of the purchases made by customers at my store are made with physical cash. Paper and metal money is outdated in our modern society.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:57:05 +0000

The New Yorker article is really good.

What’s most interesting to me, more than everything else, is the US’s resistance to change (no pun intended). So many other countries have gotten rid of the penny, nickel, or even dime, and lots of countries have gotten rid of the $1 bill, having dollar coins instead. It seems much more logical and affordable. A lot of money is spent churning out $1 year after year, when the New Yorker article mentioned that a penny stays in circulation often for more than 30 years. It doesn’t wear out.

By: Kirsten

Kirsten — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:02:19 +0000

Sadly, yes, I have thrown away pennies. I would be in favor of getting rid of them, they do weigh down a coin purse so. :o)