There is a lingering buzz in the media about the prospect of either the United States, or Canada [hopefully both] choosing to eliminate a low value coin from regular circulation. With the dawn of the new American “golden dollar”, perhaps other coin changes are on the horizon. Now, we know the only people less inclined to accept changes than Canadians, are probably Americans (who still haven’t switched to metric), so I don’t think coin removal will really come about. But there’s a lot of money to be saved by ditching a coin like the penny, if we can’t revalue our currencies to have more purchasing power again.
They’ve switched in Australia, and Europe, and their economies are fine. Now things bought with cash are rounded to the nearest 5¢.
Another idea, would be to either revalue the penny to 2 cents, or start minting a new version of the coin to replace the old, letting us round to the nearest two cents. Then we could give exact change for any amount divisible by 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. That would possibly be cumbersome, but there would be very few cases where exact change couldn’t be delivered. However, we have to consider efficiency in this calculation, and a 2 cent coin would be neither more efficient than a penny, nor desirable as a spending tool. No vending machine or parking meter would start to take the 2¢ coin, as the much more valuable nickel is already (almost) forgotten.
We should get rid of the penny. All pennies do is make holes in my pockets.They cannot be used in vending machines. They cannot be used to buy or renew bus/el fare cards. They cannot be used in copying machines. They cannot be used at the laundromat. The only time pennies serve any purpose is when I produce one of the worthless buggers to avoid receiving four of them with my change.
Posted by: Don Dopke | Jun 5, 2006 2:30:07 PM
A less thoughtful commenter suggests:
if we get rid of the penny, what happens to “a penny for your thoughts?” and what will students collect to see how much a million really is? will we have to start putting in our 2 nickel’s worth? what will happen to penny lane? i say long live the penny!
Posted by: peter
Peter, there’s nothing to worry about. English continues to use archaic expressions and words long after the root of their formation was lost to progress. I’ve heard one theory on the root of a popular swear that it was about Fornication Under Consent of King, and now you certainly don’t have to ask Queen E. (or her representative) if you can have a roll in the hay with your life partner.
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I’ve written about ditching the Nickel before. We can add up to 5¢ with our penny. We could otherwise get rid of the dime, but since it’s twice as valuable as the Nickel, and uses less metal, it makes more sense to keep that coin.
Digg linked to this journalist’s opinion.
@hotmail.com
![[EFC Blue Ribbon - Free Speech Online]](http://www.efc.ca/images/efcfreet.gif)
Todd | 23-Feb-07 at 10:26 am | Permalink
I say ditch cash altogether. Give me a card I can swipe and reload with cash and I’d be happy to never touch another bill or coin again.
Saskboy | 23-Feb-07 at 11:34 am | Permalink
It just wouldn’t work Todd, since phone lines and electricity are not ubiquitous enough to go that route. We’d cripple farmer’s markets, and all sorts of cash-only transaction businesses. If we found a way to make cards that are always able to transfer selected levels of funds to another card without a computer/network intermediary, then we could see your dream happen. I think that card is at least 30 years away from being a reality.
Miss Cellania | 23-Feb-07 at 12:06 pm | Permalink
The government doesn’t really care that we can’t use pennies in vending machines. But it now costs more to manufacture a penny than its worth, with the price of copper rising. There’s the incentive to get rid ot it!
Saskboy | 23-Feb-07 at 12:33 pm | Permalink
A government of, by, and for the people ought to care that pennies are worthless for most real-world economic transactions, but we both know that federal governments are hardly adequate representatives of the common citizen, these days. I bet if you polled Congresscritters (gosh I love that word), the bulk of them hasn’t touched a penny in months or years let alone picked one up from the floor to help save their government money ;-).
Saskboy | 23-Feb-07 at 12:59 pm | Permalink
Oh, another American money gripe I just remembered I have (and it doesn’t even pertain to the drab antiquated green colour they all share, but are slowly moving away from), it’s the lack of $2 bills in circulation.
A mitt full of $1s is annoying I know, but even Canada had a $2 bill in circulation at late as 1997 when it was discontinued as the Toonie took its place in 1996. The US is making a mistake in its new dollar coin adoption efforts by not removing the $1 paper bill from circulation (or at least setting a Sunset Date). As a way of sticking a soother into the anti-change mouths, they could ramp up printing of $2 notes, and only have to print half as many as they did for $1 Washington notes.
Ashley | 23-Feb-07 at 1:19 pm | Permalink
I still say we get rid of the dime and replace it with 2 nickels. Prices wouldn’t have to change, new 2 cent coins wouldnt have to be made, and we still get rid of one coin in our production system.
Matt Arnold | 23-Feb-07 at 3:17 pm | Permalink
The only logical choices I see would be:
ditch the nickel, and bump the penny up to 2 cents. Then you still never need more than 5 “pennies” to make change.
ditch the penny, plain and simple.
Completely revamp the system to make an optimal greedy coin-changing system, which for 6 coins in the Canadian system would be: 1,3,8,26,64,{202 or 203 or 204}) or (1,3,10,25,79,{195 or 196 or 197}) source. What do you mean you don’t want a 79 cent coin?
Saskboy | 23-Feb-07 at 3:29 pm | Permalink
“make an optimal greedy coin-changing system”
You took computer science, or math class too seriously if you’re even half serious about your new coin model ;-)
eeid | 23-Feb-07 at 3:38 pm | Permalink
Keep the penny. It is the savings I got from the budget last year!!!
Seriously, I usually hand back the pennies I receive to pay for that damn GST in my next transaction.
Adrian MacNair | 23-Feb-07 at 7:18 pm | Permalink
I’d be fine with ditching the penny. But then what would the blood-sucking corporations do without the opportunity of chintzing us out of pennies? If the oil companies couldn’t charge 99.8 per litre on gas, how could they gouge out extra millions on percentages of PENNIES? If the banks couldn’t acrue interest rates involving pennies off dates, how could they skim millions off the top of the Canadian economy? If McDonald’s and WalMart couldn’t sucker in the lobotomized customers they usually get with ads like $0.99 hamburgers, or $1.87 made-in-China slippers? Speaking of China, if we didn’t have pennies, how could we pay our slave workers the pennies a day we give them to make our breakable, low-grade, chemically fire-retardant garbage that drives our economy?
Ah, dilemma for the capitalists. For me, I chuck pennies in the sewer with well-aimed and timed flicks.
Saskboy | 23-Feb-07 at 7:49 pm | Permalink
EEID, I think I saved less than a penny from Harper’s tax [increases] cut. Less than 0 is less than a penny right? :-)
Adrian, don’t tell me that! Now I have to go exploring your sewers for free money, and save the Canadian economy by recovering lost minted currency.
John Murney | 24-Feb-07 at 7:16 pm | Permalink
Saskboy, I’m not in favour of ditching either the penny or the nickel. Elimination of either will add to inflation.
Saskboy | 24-Feb-07 at 7:43 pm | Permalink
I think I know what you mean John, but hasn’t that ship sailed? Inflation has already grown so much that the penny and nickel are essentially meaningless for most transactions made with cash. Either we find a way to deflate prices without causing people to lose their invested money or make a fortune from cash they stockpile, or we remove coins from circulation that are nearly meaningless.
Ashley | 24-Feb-07 at 11:51 pm | Permalink
eliminate the DIME! THE DIME!
Saskboy | 25-Feb-07 at 10:33 am | Permalink
Getting rid of the dime would work too, since it’s easily made up of just two nickels. We could then resize the nickel back to about what it was a hundred years ago (smaller than a modern dime, if my memory serves correctly).
Adrian MacNair | 25-Feb-07 at 1:56 pm | Permalink
Or we could get rid of money altogether and just barcode ourselves. We could have a central database owned by the government and a tracking device which allowed them to know where we are at all times and what we are doing. This would eliminate crime and ensure we are conducting moral behaviours. On payday the company would just scan your arm and you would be credited with your money, eliminating the middle man, banks. Thus we could shut all the banks down and put our trust entirely in the authoritarian ruling government.
Saskboy | 08-Mar-07 at 8:14 am | Permalink
Wayne and Dick take issue with my guess at the future here:
http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v10n08a25.html