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.
I read once that for every tax dollar taken by our income redistibuting welfare system, only 17 cents actually lands in the hands of a recipient. In essence, welfare is 500% inefficient. Reducing it to 100% would save countless billions and balance the budget in a couple years.
I lived without pennies for many years when I was stationed in Japan. The military stopped using them in the commissary and exchange systems because of the cost involved in shipping the pennies across the ocean. All prices stayed the same. The totals were rounded up or down to the nearest nickel. Did we come out ahead or behind? I don’t know. I do know I sure as hell didn’t miss pennies and I was annoyed when I came back to the States and had to deal with them again.
I would rather that new currency were issued — the same denominations as today, but worth ten times as much. That would make the cent worth what it was 60 years ago. (This won’t happen any time soon.)
Imagine if the smallest denomination coin was a dime — that’s what a cent was worth 60 years ago. People seemed to get along just fine without a smaller unit of value.
It was time to abolish the penny long ago. They’re clutter. They can’t buy anything. I have enough of them that I think they’re a threat to the structural integrity of my house.
Will prices be rounded? Sure. They are now. Unless your produce weighs precisely one pound or your gas is precisely one gallon, the price is being rounded to the nearest cent. Actually, scratch the latter case — gasoline is already priced at, say, $3.109 a gallon. That weaselly little nine-tenths of a cent is at every gas station I’ve seen in the last 20 years. Oh, and when you add sales tax, that 5, 6, 7 10 or whatever % rarely adds up to an exact number of cents. You’re being rounded, dude.
And while we’re at it, why not get rid of the $1 bill? Dollar coins last longer and cost less to keep in circulation. But we Americans form irrational attachments to our coins and currency.
Wholeheartedly agree!