If we get rid of pennies, how will it be possible to get the correct amount of change?

While some might be annoyed with the penny. I for one am not. Please keep it coming and people like me will happily use it!

Take away the penny and watch how inflation will jump since the currency will devlue even more. If you keep moving up the lowest denomination, soon you will have even larger inflation problems than we have now. I would hate to see inflation get worse especially with food and gas.

I visited Australia in 1999 and found that the penniless transactions functioned very well. If you went to a meat counter and the chicken was $2.87 a pound and you bought one pound that the vendor charged you $2.85 for the chicken.

People in the US argue that vendors would round up and items would cost more. Just like any good consummerist: stop shopping there. There are other argument about it, but the best argument for removal of the penny is that they cost more to produce than they are worth!

Another thing to remember when you feel the urge to say "but if the vendor or even the consumer loses the penny, then they are making less money and on million of transactions that adds up!" you have to remember that when you calculate sales tax those fractions of a penny are lost...and it adds up. Or when you compound interest over time those fractions of a penny are lost...and it adds up.

Isn't that the whole basis of that thing they did in Superman II or was it Office Space? Take a penny; leave a penny?

I say: leave the penny.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when nobody is willing to bring up scrapping the penny for fear of losing an election... Like this is what we should be most concerned about at this time?!?!?!??!?!?!?

listen, i think lincoln was a useless president as much as any other person, but come on. the whole point of the penny is to keep things easy...like the metric system. eliminate the penny & that ease goes away. might as well start calling the dollar a quid already.

This and going after Roger Clemons are surely the biggest issues this country has right now.

I kinda like pennies but then I am a penny pinching cheapass.

I wouldn't mind seeing it gone, if only because it's, well... worthless.

@laserjobs: I don't see moving it up causing a problem, because the bottom unit doesn't change (it's still $0.01), there's just nothing of value that low.

Rounding prices down should be the standard (or even better, actual even prices -- gasp!) anyway.

Uhm, a penny costs more than a penny to make. The copper in the penny is worth more than $.01. Clearly, something is broken.

Kill the bastards and give Lincoln the $1 coin. Or the $2 coin.

PS- I was in vietnam where a million dong are worth about $70. I am pretty sure that they have a currency piece (a paper bill) that is below 5000 dong. I dunno that their bottom piece is worth less than a penny (a 100 dong bill would be), but I do not believe this man's testimony on the penny as being the least valuable currency piece in the world.

If we eliminate the penny, would it be legal to still price things in factors other than 5. Could you price something for $29.99? Because then it would technically be impossible to pay with cash. You'd have to use a credit card or check. Hmmmmmmmmm.........

@PotKettleBlack: they stopped making pennies out of copper a looooong time ago. now it's zinc with copper plating.

@bohemian:
"This and going after Roger Clemons are surely the biggest issues this country has right now."

You are so right. Federal government, wake up!

Swedish Rounding resolves any rounding issues. It's been in use for years in Sweden (obviously), the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand without any problems.

I was in Australia when they eliminated the penny, it really was almost a non-issue. They simpy rounded up or down, which eliminated any inflationary pressures.

@PotKettleBlack: Dude, Zimbabwe just printed a 15 million Zimbabwe dollar note. I think it was worth $4 USD about two weeks ago.

I've said for the past few years: ditch the penny and the one and two dollar bills. Keep the one dollar coin and add a two dollar coin. For those people who bitch because getting rid of the penny is bad because Lincoln is on the penny, might I point out he is also on the $5 bill. For those that bitch because getting rid of the dollar bill is bad because Washington is on the bill, might I point out he is also on the quarter dollar.

For those who complain the vending machine industry will have to pay to rework the machines to accept one- and two-dollar coins, might I point out they didn't have a problem adding bill acceptors to take dollar bills. They can do it (and they make a shitload of money off vending machines, too).

I say get rid of the penny.

If you make a cash purchase, the final cost gets rounded off to the nearest nickel, either up or down. Isn't that the way it's done now with fractions of a cent?

If you make a non-cash purchase (check, credit card, etc) then the final cost should continue to be rounded off to the nearest cent.

For some reason I guess I just like to know my money is worth something even if it is just in melt value. The consensus says "Devalue Away!!!"

How many pennies get used just once? Factoring in the multiple times that most pennies change hands, it's not really that expensive per use...

@mac-phisto: You didn't include a smiley or lol so i'm assuming you were serious about Lincoln...

USELESS PRESIDENT? Are you insane? Child of ignorance? Who kept this country together during the Civil War? Lincoln. Who wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and freed thousands and thousands of slaves? Lincoln. If it wasn't for him, you'd need a passport to cross the Mason-Dixon line.

Please tell me you were joking when you wrote your absurd comment.

@ptkdude
There are alot of vending machines around me that take the dollar coin. I personally think though that the dollar coin sucks. Working in a retail setting, I would get the dollar coin and just throw it underneath the register money tray. My manager would come in and check the till and put them back in the change area. I asked him to take them in the back and swap them out. No one wanted them, they looked like quarters, but they seemed to fix it, just a bit. I wish they were a little more than slightly different than a quarter.

The metro train system here in Los Angeles gives out up to 19.95 in change if you put in large bills. It costs 1.25 to ride 1 way. If you put in a 20 it gives you 3 quarters and 18 dollar coins. Those were fun to spend when all I had was a 20.

More on topic, taking away the penny would force prices to be at .90 instead of .99 endings. I was told, when I worked in retail furniture, that people like prices that end in 9. So either xx.99 or xx.90. All walmart jokes aside, dont you personally feel odd when you walk into walmart and the prices are like 6.76 for something instead of like 6.99? Or like 5.87? It just seems odd. At least to me....

@stanfrombrooklyn:
price it $29.95

it will probably be deflationary since retailers would rather forego the 4¢ than lose the extra decimal price psychology.

@socalrob:
No, I think pricing at $7.00 makes more sense than $6.99.

Why not try and reduce the amount the penny is used? If the govt introduced a floating tax it could be feasible.

this is how it would work:
you buy something for $1.02
You would normally receive $.98 in change.
The new floating tax would take the 3 cents and you would get $.95.
These pennies, when added up, could go to road maintenance, education, health care, etc.
Electronic transfers (Bank transfers, ATM transactions, etc) could still deal in pennies w/o worrying about the tax.

The penny costs more to make than it's actually worth, which makes little to no sense. Either you make a cheaper penny or you ditch the penny.

I remember when 60 minutes put spare change on the street to see if anyone would bother to pick it up...if it wasn't silver, people weren't bending over for it. And that was several years ago.

Also telling...if you try to pay for something in pennies, you'll probably get refused. Or go to your bank and try to deposit pennies. I've been told there's a charge, I've been denied, and I've been forced to roll them myself (many different banks over the years). If a bank won't take them without charging you, what value is it really?

@ClayS:

I do also, but its the thing of the general public feels more comfortable with prices that end in a 9. Its something we are brought up to recognize. Why else to so many things end in 99? When I did my markup, I would have rather left it at say like $400, but I had to either round up or drop it a penny, so it became 399.99 .

Its just a psychological thing.

I was stationed in Korea when the military decided to quit messing around with pennies. Very simple... if it's 2 cents, round down, if 3, round up.

People squawked and complained for about two weeks, then we loved it... no damn pennies rattling around, if you had change in your pocket you knew it was worth something....

Get rid of the pennies already!

@r0ck: AMEN to that! Either the kid is joking, or he's gone waaaay out on a limb with a comment like that.

When a coin is valued so little that people stop bending over to pick up one seen on a parking lot, it's time to let it go.

@laserjobs: Doubtful. The inflation has already happened to the point that the penny is almost worthless. Removing the penny just recognizes this fact for practical reasons. Actually, if people round to the nearest nickel always it shouldn't affect inflation at all. It actually might be more likely to decrease prices, since stores might prefer to price things at say xx.95 instead of xx.00.

@socalrob: It's not that the public "likes" prices that end in 9. It's that people sometimes have a psychological tendency to look at 29.99 and think "29 dollars" instead of "30 dollars". So it's a way for the store to make their prices seem lower without actually losing any serious money. I'm sure the general public would actually prefer prices that were at even increments.

Here are a few better ideas than scrapping the penny

-Hard currency, not a gold standard but money that is backed by hard assets (this will also solve many other inflation problems)

-Make the pennies out of copper plated steel or aluminum. Steel prices are less than $10 per 100 pounds and steel pennies were also made during world war II due to copper shortages with no issues, aluminum has much less chance of oxidation and is still about 80 cents cheaper per pound than zinc.

@inspiron: Why are those "better" ideas? I'm not sure I understand why you think we need to keep the penny so much. The fact is, pennies are almost worthless and are not very useful as currency anymore. The whole point of coins is to be useful for commerce.

And I highly doubt we are going to change our system of money back to one backed by hard assets.

@inspiron: Back up the money with something?

What's next? Bringing Democracy or removing the illusion that we're free to choose our leaders?

The whole idea of removing the gold standard is to control the value of money, so unless we take the Federal Reserve out of the picture, money won't be backed up by anything.

They should just remove the Penny, and make all items no longer 9.99 but just $10.00 period, and if 8% sales tax makes the total amount 10.64 cents then just round it off to $10.60, stop dicking around and wasting precious metals to make pennies that get lost every damn year.

By the gods, the clueless people saying nuking the penny are only declaring their innumeracy. There's this concept called "averaging" that, paired with competitive market forces, will result in no inflation.

Besides, if those were worried about inflation, they would have mounted the barricades at the merest wisp of a notion of starting a two- (or three-) front war in the Middle East. Wanna halt inflation? End the Iraq (Afghanistan, Iran...) wars.

"Small Government" types and "fiscal discipline" types all of a sudden act contrary to their proclaimed values on this. Spending over $250 million per year for a useless coin is irrational. Money where your mouth is, people.

Finally, Lincoln gets too much coverage as it is anyway. Give him a postage stamp in recompense. Aw, hell, I'm generous: TWO stamps.

@RobinB: that just means more for me.

I pick up pennies at all times and keep them in a jar, that extra 30-50 dollars comes to be worth it at the end of the year.

Pennies are awesome precisely because so many people don't like them, and hence don't bother picking them up off the ground. Free money for me!

Dear penny-haters: please feel free to send your "worthless" currency my way and I will put them in jars and eventually buy a car in cash with them (bwahahahaha!)

It's true a penny costs more than $0.01 (point oh-one cents according to Verizon?) to make but until they actually remove it from circulation I'll keep picking them up.

Unfortunately I don't think I can fit any other Consumerist classics in this comment.

Rather than just up and eliminating it, why don't we start reducing the number of pennies that we make? We've got a ridiculous number of them in service anyway, if we make 100,000 a year instead of millions a year, who is really going to care that much? It saves money, promotes the idea of moving past the penny, and begins a gradual phase-out that can be reversed if we decide we want to keep the penny.

@ptkdude: Considering that the Republicans have done to the US economy - and the decades it will take to undo their War on America - I'd opt for a $1 and $5 coin. By the time that their inept mismanagement has been mitigated, we'll all be using the latter to buy a bar of chocolate anyway.

@r0ck: "If it wasn't for him, you'd need a passport to cross the Mason-Dixon line."

And yet, you say that as though that were a bad thing...

It wouldn't actually affect me much either way. I do my shopping with a check card and vending machines, toll booths, and parking meters don't take pennies anyway. I have a jar full of the rapidly devaluing coin I can see from here.

The only problem I see with getting rid of it is that the way consumer rights work here in the states is that I see businesses rounding up all their prices to grab as much as 4.5 cents from every customer at every cash transaction. And there's not much in the way of choice here, for example let's say you're buying gas and getting ripped off buy the major chains, what are you going to do, not go to BP and Holiday? There's pretty much no where else to go then.

@AdmiralKit: Not that good of an idea, in my opinion. If pennies started becoming scarce, then they would be even more of a pain because it would be inconsistent whether people should round up/down or not (depending on whether the merchant had enough pennies to make change). Better to just make a clean break so that everyone knows what to do. We'd get over the penny in 2 weeks, max.

I pay for nearly everything with plastic anyway, so the pennies are there.

The other thing is that we mostly pay for fuel for our cars with 10ths of a cent, and no one seems to have problems with that math. This would be similar.

Penny worthless? How about the frigging dollar and this fiat money backed by nothing.

Drop the penny? Absolutely. As has been noted, plenty of other countries have done the equivalent, and manage quite nicely with rounding up/down.

Drop the dollar bill? If the Mint ever grows a brain and designs a dollar coin you can easily distinguish from a quarter by feel, then maybe. But then what about the strippers?

@elislider: Sure does sum it up nicely. The ignorant want the penny disposed of and sadly most of our society is ignorant.