Have you ever been behind someone while at the grocery store waiting to get to the

checkout when this happens?

Thatll be 23.02 the cashier says, the person in front of you precedes by looking
through their purse or wallet for the cents needed to make the bill exact. This
process though not a big deal, can be tedious for the person searching for the
pennies and the people waiting behind them.
The penny should be discontinued.
The penny should be retired because the cost to make it exceeds its value, its a
waste of time to handle and getting rid of it will have no negative impact on the
economy.
First lets start with the history of the penny. Although the penny has been used for
centuries Im mainly going to focus on the history of the American Cent.
According to Wikipedia The U.S cent was first minted in 1793; it was made of
100% pure copper, in 1856 it went to 88% copper and 12% nickel, over the years it
has continued to lose more and more copper content. The penny has also had
several coin designs which have changed 13 times since the first penny, which was
named the Flowing Hair Chain. In 1909 the U.S decided that Lincoln would be on
the front of the penny, the face of Lincoln on the penny hasnt been removed since,
making it the longest lasting denomination in the U.S (Wikipedia.com).

In 2014 the U.S mint published that it cost 1.83 cents for every penny made
(coincollectingenterprises.com). This reason alone is enough to convince me that
we should stop manufacturing the penny, but most Americans dont agree with
me. According to a youGov poll only 34% of Americans wanted the penny gone
(youGov poll, 01/10/14). From CGP gray, one of the reasons America doesnt want
the penny gone is because they feel it is unpatriotic to retire presidential coinage.
Well we still have the five dollar bill dont we, and if you think its unpatriotic,
take a look at the U.S military, overseas they already cut out the penny; any
transaction is automatically rounded to the 5th cent. So why cant we here in the
U.S round to the nearest fifth cent? Other countries have done it and saw no
negative impact on the economy. In fact pennies are bad for the economy. Did you
ever notice how machines such as, laundry machines, vending machines, and
parking meters dont accept pennies? Thats because the time it takes to sort,
transport, and store them isnt even worth the time of the company who owns the
machine (CGPGray.com). A study by Jeff Gore showed that an average of $15
billion dollars nationwide was lost by handling pennies, that why the restaurant
chain Chipotle started cutting out the penny and rounding to the nearest fifth cent
(Jeff Gore, Citizens for Retiring the Penny). And it isnt worth your time either.
From an article from the Huffington post, you may have heard that fun fact about
bill gates that if he sees a $100 bill lying on the road, it isnt even worth his time to

pick it up, and the same goes for the penny, the average American salary is
$81,000, and in the time it takes to handle pennies it pays more to just do without
them (Nick Wing/HuffingtonPost.com). So why do we have pennies if theyre so
bad? Well its quite obvious, because when they were first manufactured they were
actually worth something. So why do we even have money? Let me quickly
explain what I mean, people have objects or services, other people want those
objects or the service so instead of bartering we use a currency that has a specific
value which can be used to trade for things we need or want. The currency is
divisible into smaller parts so we dont over pay. It doesnt devise forever because
at some time it is too small to have value to buy anything. Like I just said in past
times the penny actually had a value enough to buy something, but because of
inflation its only worth is making a price a little more specific, but most people
when they pay just give to nearest dollar and get a bunch of change back that they
never use. Ask yourself right now when the last time you paid a bill at the store
with exact change, which means all the way down to the last penny, you probably
havent recently. Like I said before, it isnt worth your time, or the people say
waiting behind you, to be fiddling around with pennies in order to be exact. It
seems like the only reason to carry pennies now is to protect yourself against
getting more of them. Nick Wing (Nick Wing, Thehuffingtonpost.com,
02/07/14).

From CGP Grey, Some people say getting rid of the penny will raise prices and
hurt charities because of their events such as penny drives, but this isnt true, as I
said several other countries have discontinued the penny and saw no spike in
prices, and charities didnt see a drop in donations either. In fact Canada stopped
manufacturing its penny in 2012 and has seen no bad impact since, it can still be
used for transactions but eventually it will die out like the American half penny.
By CGP Gray In 1853 the U.S discontinued the half penny for being worth too
little, but at the time of the half penny it had more buying power than todays dime
(CGPGrey.com). So is the there more coins we should retire, like the nickel and the
dime? I believe we should retire the nickel too, because it costs more than double
its value to make, but for now lets just take it one coin at a time.
So Ive talked about how we should get rid of the penny but I havent proposed
how we can do it. Just retiring the penny and doing nothing else would cause
problems like un-payable bills. So the solution is quite evident, round to the nearest
fifth cent, so instead of the cashier saying: Thatll be $23.59, they would say:
Thatll be $23.60.
Some people argue though that this would raise prices since most items are priced
at something plus 98 or 99 cents, so if each item is rounded to the nearest cent it
will make it rounded in the stores favor. There are a few things wrong with this

argument, first, each item wouldnt be rounded the entire total of the items would
be rounded to the nearest fifth cent making it a 50/50 chance that you will lose or
gain a few cents depending on how much you buy. But some people claim that the
store may round in their favor. Well obviously it would be illegal to intentionally
round in your favor for professional transactions and secondly if you actually care
about those few cents you should pay attention to what your total is and what their
rounding too.
Another potential problem would be tax, though not all states have an equal sales
tax. Im going to use Pennsylvanias sales tax for an example. Pennsylvania has
6% sales tax, so if an item was priced at $1, your total would be $1.06 from tax and
since it gets rounded to $1.05 who loses a penny, the store or the government? The
answer is the store; they still give six cents to the government and end up 99 cents
even though they priced the item at $1. But since the store will also gain a penny or
two from rounding on different transactions, it would offset any deficit of money
lost due to tax. You might also ask how they could get ninety nine cents if we are
ridding of the penny, well money can still be specified to the penny, so you would
have ninety nine cents, you just couldnt use it until you added another cent to
make it one dollar.
So now that you know how we can eliminate the penny, lets review my three
points. The penny should be discontinued due to the fact that it is not worth the

cost to make it, nor the time to handle it, and taking it away will have no negative
impact on the economy.
So next time youre in a situation involving pennies, dont forget this speech,
because maybe soon, pennies will be a thing of the past.