Death to Pennies

Pennies. Everybody loves pennies right? They are just great, except in the fact that they’re incredibly useless in every way possible. Let me elaborate…

To understand why pennies are so incredibly useless we have to know where it began. The Penny’s story begins in 1792 with the inauguration of the first United States’ Mint. As time went on prices of copper started to rise changing the penny from its 100% copper composition to only a 5% (composing the outer ring) and the other 95% is made of zinc. Around the 1960s and the 1970s the existence of the penny was no trouble because the penny had actual buying power, more than the current day dime as a matter of fact, so that gives us at least 2 more coins to slaughter…

Getting back to the penny though, as of 2006 the price that the raw materials to make pennies raised over the 1 cent mark, so in consequence the US Mint is working on a loss of around 1.6 to 2 cents for each penny. Because of pennies being worth more melted than in actual penny form, so people started to melt them.

In a perfect world the US would have let its citizen remove the coins for circulation and tax the activity, but the world is not so perfect. The US government made melt coins of all type illegal and continues to produce 4 million pennies each year, which generates 4 million dollars is losses.

But still, if pennies were actually made out of something truly representative of their value (plastic perhaps) it doesn’t change the problem they fundamentally have, they fail as money. The main point of money is to make everyday transactions easier, which if you’ve ever tried to pay exact change with pennies, you know it’s not even worth the time.

Other countries have already abolished pennies for having no buying power, this include: New Zealand, Australia, Finland, The Netherlands, and Canada. They just rounded cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents. As a matter of fact, the US has gone through a similar process already, in 1857 they discontinued the half cent coin for being worth too little. And in the overseas US military bases pennies have already been abolished.

But, there’s one more problem, Lincoln. Everybody adores good old Abe, but let’s face it, he wouldn’t like to be on the most insignificant worthless unit of the US national coin, and he is on the five dollar bill. So it’s really not disrespectful or unpatriotic in any way.

In conclusion, it’s time to kill the penny.

Videos:

CREDITS:

Information taken from and videos property of the CGP Grey (https://www.youtube.com/CGPGrey) and VlogBrothers (https://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers)Youtube Channels.