[LexBaird]

Eliminate the penny, and you can bet that every purchase that used to end with a .X3 will be rounded up to a .X5. Which means that the average penny will pay for itself the first time a taxpayer uses it. Every other useage over its lifetime circulation will be gravy.

[djf]

Prior to 1982 a penny weighed 3.1 grams, or about 146 to the pound.

Todays copper quote is about $3.15 per pound.

Net gain on just the value of the metal is $1.69 per pound, each cent is worth .0216 cents.

[neb52]

“This little brown item of pocket clutter”

“I suppose, as a fiscal conservative, a concerned citizen, and—at least until the cocktail hour—a decent human being, I should have been indignant.”

Sigh! Always loved P.J.’s writing.

[Drew68]

bump for later

[endthematrix]

Just have the Fed decree all pennies are now valued at .05 cents. Easy enuf.

[VOA]

“How much do you suppose it costs the U.S. Mint to produce a penny?
Let me tell you—with a deeply self-satisfied howl of execration—
almost 2 cents.”

IIRC, it took the Mint something like $44 MILLION to design,
stamp and launch the Sacajawea dollar coin.
And I saw a news report in which the Sacajawea dollars were being
handed out FREE to (dare I say it) waiting riders at one public
transportation hub in some major “inner city”.

And all the time I was in Los Angeles, would the vending machines
at UCLA or around Santa Monica take them?
NO!!!
The only place I found that actually used a Sacajawea dollar coin
was the ticket machines at the main station in downtown LA.
And even then one time the machine ate the Sacajaweas I fed it.
(The tickets machines are the “armless” bandits run by the city
of Los Angeles!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacagawea_dollar

[Waco]

Reverse split the dollar. $1 becomes 10¢ buys the same thing. Copper becomes 32¢ a lb.

[mhx]

So can I take my old pennies off to be recycled someplace for more than one cent each?

[attackcartoons]

obviously, the government needs to start printing paper pennies.

[CIB-173RDABN]

So there a penny cost 2 cents to make. If the penny was the only currency that would be a problem, but it isn’t. If you are going to use that logic then what about the dollar bill, who much does it cost procduce a “dollar”. For the sake of argument, let us say it is 5 cents, which means there is a “profit” of 95 cents per dollar bill. But wait, there is more. What abou the 5 dollar bill. It would cost the same as a one dollar bill, so the profit is now $4.95. Step it up to the ten, twenty and fifty and the profits become obscene. So they lose 1 cent for every penny but they make it up on the bills.

Of course they would say there is no “profit” but then who gets the value of the “money” when new money is created? I am sure we have more “money” in circulaton today then we had say ten years ago. So since they are not just replacing worn bills, but creating new bills, who gets the “money”?

[sergeantdave]

Raise the value of the penny to a dollar, give everyone a wheel barrow and let’s go shopping for sauerkraut and weinerschnitzel.

[Lee N. Field]

Could make them out of lead, except the price of lead is climbing too, to the point where raw wheelweights are being sold to bullet casters on Fleabay.

[neverdem]

Hollywood's Red Decade

Petraeus Helping Pick New Generals

Did Iranian Airbus Shootdown Foreshadow TWA 800?

Come Home [Yon - Do yourself a favor and read this one]

From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

[Travis McGee]

Unlike pennies, dimes, quarters etc, the nickel has not been debased yet. It still contains 75% copper and 25% nickel, same as always.

Today, a nickel is worth almost a dime in metal value. Just as the copper pennies and silver coins were debased to put their cost of manufacture below their face value, so too the nickel will be replaced with a fake no-nickel nickel in a year or three.

So for free money, ask for a $2 roll of nickels every time you go to the bank. It's already worth $4FRN fiat at current valuation, and unlike the paper dollar, it will hold its value over time.

It's no different than hording silver coins in 1963, that are now worth ten times their face value.

[Delacon]

I’d think PJ should get more exercised about the worth of the dollar before he gets mad about the injustice of what it costs to make a penny.

[Philistone]

“How come it’s ‘a penny for your thoughts’ but you have to ‘put your 2 cents in’? Someone’s making a penny...”

/Steven Wright

[SamAdams76]

As recently as 1857, the U.S. Mint was producing a half-cent coin (see above). Now when the coin was discontinued, I don't remember any caterwauling or hysteria over it. Everybody pretty much agreed it was stupid for people to carry around half-cent coins, most of which ended up between cushions on stagecoaches and mixed up with the ashes from the fireplace. You couldn't buy anything with these half-cent coins so kids would put them on railroad tracks to see what would happen and when people got them as change, they would rather throw them into a change jar at the counter than to put them in their pockets. Even the slaves wouldn't stoop to pick them up off the street.

So here we are not even 150 years later and we are still worried about the lowly penny. I say, be done with it already. Even nickels are starting to be treated like a penny. When was the last time anybody stooped to pick even a nickel off the street?