Death to Pennies

The following sample essay on Death to Pennies tells about America’s penny.

The widely known cent throughout the United States, is the penny, alongside the quarter, dime, and nickel. These coins were born from the first U.S. mint which was founded on April 02, 1792.

During its early usage, the one cent coin of the New Republic, were first initially produced from a hundred percent pure copper. Later during the early 1800’s, the value of copper were in high demands, causing the metal’s worth to rise up and the penny’s utility to fluctuate.

The effect of the metal’s value going up, caused mints across America to diminish the consumption of copper they put into their pennies. First, a five percent detainment caused the penny to still remain nearly pure of copper, then recently after 1982, pennies were made ninety-five percent of zinc, and only a five percent remained copper. The aftermath of the older pennies that were produced before 1982, were worth more than their usage value, which caused people to melt the hackneyed coins and sell the raw copper that they manage to make, for profit.

In a rational world, the U.S. government could have let its people continue to melt the coin and let the penny die but after finding out what its citizens were doing with the coin, the government made melting coins illicit, and continues to manufacture over 13 billion pennies per year. Which is quite ludicrous, as it cost the U.S. mint about twice as much to produce one single penny.

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However, even if the government decided to make the coin more indicative of their verifiable value; such as plastic, or aluminum, it would not fix the problem that pennies are appalling for both the economy and society.

An few prime examples of why it is a hindrance to people and the economic income is the sole purpose of substantial money is to make purchasing items an everyday easy transaction. To get the price of the item a person wants to pay for, the cash must be divided into pieces so no one will exceed the amount they have to pay for, but it cannot be split forever, because then the value of money will be worth too little to buy anything with. Unlike the other coins, too few Americans have heard of the half-cent coin that was discontinued in the year 1857 for not being worth too much.

During the 20th century when pennies were worth their value, they could actually be used to make purchases. Now, during modern times, the coin will have to be used when making an exact amount of change, otherwise it is useless to attempt to utilize. The spare change of pennies that are collected and stored in large bottled containers have no use in any type of machine because they are not worth the time to count each cent individually. Machines such as parking meters, vending machines, nor laundry machines will accept nothing more than quarters. The only machine that will accept these spare coins are the Coinstar, a device that takes ten percent of money that was already yours, while returning a slip of paper that will allow you to exchange it for dollar bills.

In other parts of the world like the Netherlands and Finland they have already ridden their currency of the one euro cent. These two countries are a few out of many others who round their change to nearest five cent to save a hassle of scurrying to collect the right amount of change after the added sales tax.

Not only does the penny have to deal with social and economic impediment, but also has to go through a political encounter as well. Just as the mint took off the Chief, and Lady Liberty from their coins, doing the same will not make people forget the famous person whose face rest on the penny. Abraham Lincoln is the face of the penny and the only president who is faced in the opposite direction of the other presidents on different coins. Getting rid of the U.S. currency will not efface Lincoln from history, he and his monument makes a home on the five dollar bill.

The only actions taken within the United States to rid its hands of the penny is the U.S. Military, whom have already abolished using the one cent by rounding to the nearest nickel.

If the penny is to be removed from the economy, there will be no difference with how American citizens uses their money, only less of a hassle to grab the few remaining change to pay for their purchases, and the government will be able to save billions annually if they no longer print the penny from its mints.

Sorry, America, but it is time to diminish the penny.