Penny foolish

The Buffalo News ^ | August 19, 2007 | By Dibya Sarkar - ASSOCIATED PRESS

[Larry R. Johnson]

I love the penny, in fact I love nickels,dimes, quarters, halves (most won't remember them) dollars: silver, Suzie B's, squawbucks and president dollars. I've loved earning them, spending them and collecting them. What kind of sense does it make to keep making pennies that cost more than a penny. The heck with some gov't paid company that sells zinc blanks to the treasury. Let them go galvanize something. The heck with these wimpy politicians, too. Either ditch the penny (round up, round down, what's the difference)or make it from steel, ceramic or cow dung, just save a few millions of the taxpayers dough. And while we're at it, let's get rid of that stupid, expensive, shortlived carrier of all kinds of germs, that filthy everybody's hankie, the paper dollar. Let's use those great metal dollars, be it the dour Susan B. Anthony, Sacejawea and her love child or the great new Presidential dollars. You say you can't tell the difference between a quarter and a dollar? Well, duh! You'll learn, just like you can tell a nickel from a penny! And while we're at it, let's get a Deuce (a $2 coin) with Ronald Reagan on it and a Fin ($5 coin) with Teddy Roosevelt. Paper money just doesn't cut it anymore, unless it's bundles of c-notes.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

My proposal to teach Americans about money is to come out with the Jefferson dollar, make it smaller than the Washington dollar, and denominate it as a $3 coin.

[eyedigress]

The auto-matic car wash at the home-depot actually gives change in bills. Not that it has anything to do with this story. LOL

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Get rid of the penny. Just get rid of it entirely. (Waiting for the “But prices will rise to the nearest nickel WAAAA!” luddite posts)

[A_Tradition_Continues]

I’ll put in my two cents....save the penny!!!

[Perdogg]

If you round numbers to the nearest 5 cents (1 and 2 go down, 3 and 4 go up), in the long run, there will be no difference in cost.

[Jaysun]

I recently took up coin collecting. I went through a jar of change we had in the bedroom and sold several of them on ebay. I sold a penny from 1995 for $50 bucks.

[Jaysun]

Technically there’s no such thing as a US penny. It’s a cent.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
She sat around and counted them all a million times

— Lyrics from Minnie the Moocher, by Cab Calloway

[tbw2]

I live in an area with sales tax of 7.25%. So if it costs a dollar, I pay 1.0725. I’ll let them get rid of the penny when they either get rid of the sales tax or make it a flat, reasonable percentage.

[ops33]

That is exactly what is done in the US military communities in Europe. I remember in the early ‘70’s when the new policy was implemented. Prices in the exchanges and commissaries are rounded at the register. Those ending in 01 or 02 are rounded down, 03 and 04 are rounded up. It was just too expensive to ship all those pennies overseas. Didn’t seem to bother too many people.

[lesser_satan]

bump

[secretagent]

“Take that, you dirty copper!”

[webboy45]

We should make cents out of air. Cheep & light weight.

[GATOR NAVY]

Get rid of the penny. The military commissary and exchange system in Japan (where I was stationed for many years) eliminated them years ago due to the cost of shipping them. I didn’t miss them a bit and found it quite annoying when I came to the States and had to deal with them again.

[cost_benefit]

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Like many other countries, we need to create a “new dollar”, i.e. the old dollar with one zero lopped off. We keep the penny, nickel, dime, quarter and dollar. Your $30,000 car will cost $3,000, the same as it did in the 1960s. Of course, your $80,000 income will become $8,000, but your purchasing power will be the same.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Weller, who has long lobbied for the penny with a group called Americans for Common Cents, argues the penny is good for the economy. Its absence, he said, would lead retailers to raise prices, influencing inflation.

Bull hockey. Everything that now costs $19.99 will suddenly cost $19.95 instead.

[GATOR NAVY]

What was special about the 1995?

[upchuck]

If they quit making the penny, Wal*Mart will go out of business. It HAS to price stuff as $4.97, etc.