Essay Sample: Time to Abolish The Penny

📌Category: Economics
📌Words: 775
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 19 June 2022

The penny, “It’s practically useless in everyday life” (Lewis).Why do we continue to attempt to act like the penny is actually a useful coin in our economy? I personally cannot remember the last time I actually used a penny in a daily transaction. Many Americans likely experience the same thing, throwing pennies in their piggy bank, in their coin stash in their car or even donating them immediately after completing a transaction. Pennies are not only completely useless, they also cost our country and our people a substantial amount of money that they may not realize. The citizens of the United States need to realize that the end of the penny is inevitable and we need to eliminate it sooner rather than later.

Pennies should be abolished because many Americans don’t use coinage for the reason they were created. “...27 percent of Americans who don’t even keep track of their loose change” (Kahn). What is the point of keeping pennies as a viable form of currency if this many Americans have zero care about even carrying change in general? If 27 percent of Americans don’t keep track of any loose change at all just imagine how many don’t keep track of specifically pennies. “The point of currency is to facilitate transactions,” Gore, 27, told you by phone. “People fishing in their pockets. The cashier has to open a new bag of pennies. For me, it’s the waste of time I object to” (Kahn). To put it simply, pennies are just not the same as they were before. These days they are more a hassle to people than they are a benefit. They fail to make daily transactions easier in any way. Further proving that pennies should be abolished because of how irrelevant they are in today’s society.

The benefits of using pennies do not outweigh the drawbacks as pennies cost Americans more money and time than they may realize. Estimating that pennies add over two seconds to each daily transaction and each person had three of these transaction a day The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreens analyzed “If each person’s time is worth $15/hour then we arrive at the conclusion that each person is losing $60 per year, at a cost to the nation of over $15 billion per year” (Kahn).  Pennies cost people more money than they think. The country and its people are at a loss by not abolishing in pennies.  New York Times pinpoints what really happens to most pennies by stating, “...Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation, into piggy banks or—as The Times’s John Tierney noted five years ago—behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old tin-foil ball. Quarters and dimes circulate; pennies disappear because they are literally more trouble than they are worth.” (Safire) Why the government continues to create pennies is a mystery to me, especially given this information. The majority of pennies aren’t even being carried, and I am sure the other ⅓ of pennies that stay in the “circulation” are rarely used.  Yet, the people and the government still wrongfully feel pennies should not be abolished.

Pennies can not buy what they used to, in fact they can buy almost nothing in today's world, however, we continue to create them. In his article about why the penny should be abolished, writer and author William Safire indicates “There is no escaping economic history: it takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950. Despite this, the U.S. Mint keeps churning out a billion pennies a month.” (Safire) The penny is just not the same as it used to be. In the 50s the penny could actually buy you something, however, this isn’t the 50s. We need to realize that there is no point in living in the past anymore, the truth is, pennies have to go. William Safire also notes, “...That’s because you can’t buy anything with a penny any more. Penny candy? Not for sale at the five-and-dime (which is now a “dollar store”). Penny-ante poker? Pass the buck. Any vending machine? Put a penny in and it will sound an alarm.” Safire continues to identify why pennies are so useless in today's world. Frankly, you cannot argue that pennies are even remotely useful, when a simple solution such as rounding each transaction up to the nearest five cents is so apparent.

The citizens of the United States need to realize that the end of the penny is inevitable and we need to eliminate it sooner rather than later. As previously noted, the penny doesn’t provide the same handiness or usefulness as it used to. The future is coming, the best option for our citizens, economy, and country is to leave the penny in the past. All I ask is that you realize for yourself how useless the penny truly is and start supporting to abolish the penny. Let’s make the penny a piece of our history and move towards a better future.

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