Petitioning the United States Mint to Stop Producing Pennies and Nickels
-MBG--De-Sniper
Alaska
Why would I want the US mint to stop producing pennies and nickels?
Pennies and Nickels are worth less then they cost to produce.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/08/pennies-nickels-cost-more-to-produce-than-theyre-worth-should-we-keep-them/
Link to the Petition
http://www.change.org/petitions/united-states-mint-stop-producing-pennies-and-nickels
Pennies and Nickels are worth less then they cost to produce.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/08/pennies-nickels-cost-more-to-produce-than-theyre-worth-should-we-keep-them/
Link to the Petition
http://www.change.org/petitions/united-states-mint-stop-producing-pennies-and-nickels
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Comments
In fact, I'd like a world with no metal money at all, but rather than getting rid of quarters and dimes altogether, I'd like them made into small bills, perhaps a quarter and tenth the size of a regular bill, respectively.
This is odd for me, because I was once a major proponent of switching over to an all coins system. I would use only dollar coins instead of bills, if I could help it, and I would tell anyone who would listen about the advantages of switching all of our bills over to metal money. In my ideal world, people would have gone back to carrying their cash in small pouches. I no longer see that as ideal.
Even more than a world with all paper cash, I look forward to a future world in which there is no cash at all, where all transactions are completed by swipe or thumbprint or whatever standard the society settles on.
Of course, despite all these opinions, I have little faith that a petition will accomplish much. I'm sure there is a group of lobbyists somewhere with a vested interest in keeping the coins coming, and that's more powerful than any number of public voices.
Also: If one is going to start a petition, why start it on change.org instead of whitehouse.gov? Not being snarky; genuinely curious.
EDIT: Oh, and as far as it costing more than it's value to produce a penny or nickle, there was actually an author who wrote a book about living completely cashless on NPR this week. Even he admitted that's a false argument against cash as cash is spent thousands of times over, thus creating thousands of times their face value worth of economic transactions.
And that, is my 25 cents.
So basically the only people who profit are geeks who spend too much time worrying about their pocket change without doing the math of who probably actually benefits from not having it: major banks and credit card companies.
Who gets screwed? Poor people without bank accounts.
There are plenty of pennies and nickels in circulation, just because they are stopped being produced doesnt mean that they will stop being used.
In my opinion Lincolns and Jeffs aren't either. The mint has made amazing profits on selling different versions of coins in Proof. There would cutting holes in their own pockets by stopping them from minting.
Rounding occurs on cash transactions, but not by nine cents. No more than five cents, and it can work in your favour, if you cared about paying three cents less than your items are worth. Five cents and above gets rounded up, and four cents and below is rounded down. Swedish rounding or something.
Now I'm in Switzerland and everything is the opposite. Half the stores have NO method of electronic payment (and to me used to being able to buy a coffee from a van parked on the side of the road and paying with my cashflow card - this is alien). Most people walk around with ridiculous quantities of money in their pockets. Hundreds of Francs. Odd and alien to me. I am worried when I walk around with cash like that.