Some people argue that the penny has become obsolete and should be taken out of circulation. Do you agree?

it's classic, leave it alone.

I agree. Also, cash registers can use the space left by the empty trough to move over all other coin currencies and make space for the gold (Sacajawea) dollar.

There have to be enough of them out there by now. We could always round all purchases up to the nearest nickel and use the extra few cents to feed the poor or something.

s/feed the poor/increase our profits/g.

i disagree, it's part of american culture...

When I was last in Australia (exchange rate roughly $AUS 1.2 = $US 1) prices were quoted to the penny but rounded to the nearest 5 cents, I liked it a lot because it meant that much less change to carry around. Also, pennies are more expensive to manufacture and distribute than they're worth, so getting rid of them would save money.

I think they aren't worth circulating. However, many people are resistant to any change to the existing system. I predict that the Lincoln one cent coins will be minted until 2008, and that in 2009 (the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth) they will be phased out in favor of some new Lincoln currency, such as a $5 coin.

Interesting thought.

At least I hope that's what will happen. It would be the perfect opportunity to phase the coin out. The Lincoln head cent was introduced in 1909 for Lincoln's 100th birthday, and the Lincoln Memorial back design was introduced in 1959 for his 150th. I'd be quite surprised if they don't make some change in 2009.

I like Monkeys...I mean pennies...

money is obsolete. i want to issue jzp stock certificates, and trade myself on the open market. buy a share of me! (with shares of yourself, of course...)

That's what they've done in Israel. Everything is still calculated to hundredths of a shekel, but they don't actually have one agorah pieces (1/100 of a shekel) anymore, so they just round up or down to the nearest five. It means that sometimes you pay a bit more and sometimes you pay a bit less (usually less), but I didn't think it reduced the amount of change I was carrying with me at all. Although that may have also been because they have more coin money--five and ten shekel coins are very common.

As a retailer, I think it would be a pain in the butt. One way or another it would cause extra paperwork, and there's already too much of that. I also think I'd be hearing a lot of complaints from customers who don't think it's fair. Yes, some people will squabble over a couple of pennies, believe me.

I like the idea of the penny dish on the counter where people can leave extra pennies and other people can use them as needed.

Great survey idea, Brian!

I agree with the statement. I disagree with the explanation. Since when are Americans the only people who use pennies? It isn't even like they invented them or something.

We have pennies in the UK, but the difference is there has been no discussion here about whether to get rid of them.

I've been using the currency both before and after they got rid of the 1 and 2 cent coins, and I must say it's been a good move. I wouldn't mind if they got rid of 5c coins myself, but I can't see that happening any time soon. And incidentally the exchange rate is normally more like $AUS 1.5 = $US 1 and recently our dollar has been rather weak, so it's been even worse. Though I believe it was quite strong for a while a few years ago, so it might have been 12:10 when you were here.

Do you still have 1/2 pence coins?

Kind of like the monarchy, eh?

Oh, there's plenty of discussion about whether to get rid of them, believe me . It's just no one has the balls to do anything about it!

Right--more or less useless, but still around!

I'm going to stop right now, because with everything I can think to say about the monarchy, i'm offending myself

I use pennies all the time. I don't think it's anywhere near valueless enough to remove from circulation. I wouldn't mind it if gasoline was priced by the cent, though, instead of by the mill.

I was just wondering why they still price gasoline that way. It seems really ridiculous.

A station that charged $1.50 per gallon would lose a lot more business to one that charged $1.499 than the extra tenth of a cent per gallon would seem to justify. Most people seem to automatically ignore the fractional cents for some reason. Also, $0.009 per gallon is a considerable fraction of a station's profit margin (from what I've seen most stations make only a few cents per gallon), so it's unlikely that a station which dropped its price by $0.009 per gallon would gain enough business by doing so to make up for the lower price.

I suspect that the only way the fractional-cent per gallon pricing will end is if it is outlawed. I don't think that the issue warrants such a law, though. What difference does it make? Most people don't buy gas in exact multiples of 1 gallon anyway.

I like to save pennies.

No. Half-penny coins were phased out several years ago - I can't remember when.

It's not "half-pence", by the way - "pence" is plural for "penny", when used as a unit of money, so you can't have a half of it. "Penny" is one of those odd words that has two different plurals, depending on context:

one penny = one coin or one unit of money
twenty pence = twenty units of money (as in "this costs 20 pence")
twenty pennies = twenty coins (as in, "I have 20 pennies in my pocket")

Having said that, most Brits tend to abbreviate it to "p", anyway - so 20 pence would be 20p, pronounced "twenty-pee".

What's a quid? And what's a guinea? And a sovereign? (Does the UK even have those--the money kind, not the queen kind?)

A quid is slang for a pound (money, not weight).

A guinea is an obsolete unit of money - defined as 21 shillings (shillings were abolished in 1971), as opposed to a pound which is (or rather, was) 20 shillings. In modern UK money, a guinea would be worth £1.05 (one pound and 5 pence).

A sovereign is a gold coin that is now used for investment/speculation purposes only (like Krugerrands). It was originally worth a pound, but ceased to be legal tender some time ago, and was replaced in currency by the pound note in the 1920s. As it happens, the pound note has itself now been replaced with a pound coin, which is a gold colour, but definitely not made of gold!

British money was decimalised in 1971 - until then, the pound was divided into 20 shillings, and a shilling into 12 pence. Decimalisation abolished the shilling and revalued the penny, so that a pound is divided into 100 pence (like dollars and cents). A lot of the terminology though, particularly slang, dates to pre-decimalisation - which is why it doesn't always seem to make much sense!

The pound sign (£) is an "L" in Old English script with an added horizontal bar, and stands for "Libra", which is latin for "pound". The concept of taking an ordinary letter and adding a horizontal or vertical bar to indicate currency is quite common, and is the basis of the signs for the dollar, yen and euro, among others (although why is the dollar the odd one out? Why isn't it a "D"?)

Here's a link to a portion of a web page which describes the dollar sign's historical origin.

Apparently it originated when people wrote ``P<sup>s</sup>'' (short for ``pesos'' or ``piastres,'' two names for the Spanish dollar) sloppily, and later was adopted by the U.S. government as a symbol for its own dollar.

Thanks!

No, I most certainly do not. What would you pick up for good luck?

Yes, if only to free up room in wallets and cash registers for the new dollar coin.

I strongly agree. I never use the buggers.

Very interesting! I always wondered about that stuff.

Not yet... wait a few more years (20?), then maybe.

Well, I hate to say it, but if they dont stop putting women on dollar coins, they are never going to get circulated. I believe that a GREAT $1 coin would be , one side eagle, other side a monument. SIze of a half dolllar, but have it be octagonial. Makle it silver, and model it as NEAR the other coins as possible in terms of overall appearance, so it looks real.

They did that in France, getting rid of the penny...

I didn't stock Susan B's in my tills (back when it was my call what to stock) because singles are easier to deal with. I doubt I'd stock Sacs either as long as singles were still an option -- and I'd stock $2s instead if I could to cut down on the number of Sacs.

Then again, I didn't stock pennies either -- but that's much easier to do in a state with 5% sales tax; just make all the prices an even dollar and the tax will come to an even nickel.

I'd be worried that removing it would trigger some amount of inflation.

Oust it!

um, hi! you can buy a candy with 6 pennies you know.

Where exactly can this be done? Fairyland? A lousy tiny-ass Reese's peant butter cup, about the size of the quarter, costs me a fudging dime, PLUS TAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can buy 5 cent candies like fuzzy peaches in a store for 5 cents, but there's tax, so it costs 6 pennies.

Again where? Is this a Canadian thing or something? Cause I'd love another excuse to pack up and move there. Of course is Dubya wins this election I'm going there wether I can afford it or not.

Junk the penny. Its a waste of resources and money to mint them.

Must be a canadian thing. Where do you live that it costs 10 cents? That must suck!

I live in the once great U.S. of A.

Its the base unit of measuring American money, still need it. Try to make change without it.

I disagree -- my impression is that a lot of what is charged in the order of a few pennies is actually profit, taxes or both, especially for high-volume low-profit merchandise one gets at the supermarket, for example. I'd rather deal with the pennies than having the prices go up (my psychlim, I know... having lived with hyperinflation [of the order of 30% a month], I'm still in the mode that prices only go up, never down, despite the fact that I've seen prices go down plenty of times in the last few years).

Besides, people who actually use the pennies when they pay for things tell me they never have more than five or so in their pockets. People like me, who get tired of too many coins in their pockets, can store them in a jar instead of scattering them around their homes and offices. Last week I had a small jar of coins sorted and converted into bills, and I got US$ 115.00 back, about ten dollars were pennies (about a year worth of change that I removed from my pockets about once a week or so). A couple of years before then, I was behaving in the mode of always emptying my pockets the minute I got home, and after a year or so, I had a large jar sorted/converted and it yelded about US$ 250, I can't remember how many dollars were just in pennies -- surprised, my housemate went into her room, swept the floor to collect the loose change and was happy to find out she had about a hundred bucks. Coins are real money and all of them are useful. If you think you wouldn't throw ten or twenty bucks out the window, then you shouldn't waste the coins.

Prices don't have to change on an individual basis. When they got rid of 1 and 2 cent coins here supermarkets didn't change their pricing at all - the items are totalled up and the final price is rounded up or down a couple cents. So it shouldn't really cause any problems.

What you describe makes an *enormous* amount of sense, especially if we consider the role of electronic funds transfer. However, emotionally it doesn't work that way in US, or at least that's how if feels to me. Here manufacturers, merchants and governments are still trapped 50 years behind when it comes to banking and "cash" has an enormous power -- if 5 cents is the lowest coin, prices for each article will round up to it, especially for things like candy where the profits/taxes are on the order of a few cents. The feeling is that if you let the price round down the shareholder is screwed and all hell would break loose. Of course, that's all filtered thru my faulty perceptions so take it with a tablespoon of salt. On the other hand, remember that in lots of other countries (Brazil included) I can just walk up to an ATM, swipe my card and transfer money instantly to another person's account even if they are some other's bank client, as long as I know their account number; the most advanced banks in US are barely learning how to do that *if you go to the teller* you can't do it from an ATM, so I think they'll have a hard time with the concept that if you round the total you don't lose more than 5 cents in millions of dollars.

Here in England our penny (£0.01) is still in circulation and we have the same question about its validity. One cent must have even less use considering its lower value? We are certainly a long way from the days when a quarter-penny was a useful quantity in which to transact business!

As long as people still use them to throw at each other, and "victims" feel vindicated by profiting from their attacker's behavior, they will remain in circulation.