The nickel, originally issued in 1866, and the penny, originally issued in 1793, both were made with the intent to be used regularly as a significant value of currency. However with inflation, their utility in the economy is decreasing, and now is no longer practical to use as a denomination of currency. Both the nickel and the penny share much of the same issues. The 2015 cost of minting a penny is approximately 1.7 cents, while the cost of minting a nickel is approximately 9 cents, so the government effectively loses money each time these coins are manufactured. These costs are due to the cost of the raw metals used as well as overhead costs and manufacturing costs. The U.S. Mint loses $55 million dollars annually in printing pennies, and loses an additional $80 million dollars in printing nickels. In addition, these …show more content…
These will be redistributed to be spread among the remaining currencies that are printed. Fixed costs can actually be reduced, since the equipment and materials used to print the penny and nickel can be used for other purposes.
The effect on this coinage change on the economy is that only transactions by cash will be affected. Digital prices and transactions are unaffected. A study by Wake Forest University found that with price rounding to the nearest dime would have a nearly $600 million increase in consumer costs via cash, which tends to disproportionately affect the poor and lower-income socioeconomic bracket. While this may seem like a lot, this works out to only about $2 dollars per person per year increase in spending, which is far lower than inflation. In addition, the savings from this change could be used by the government toward social security, Medicare, and other welfare programs that can offset this change. And the additional spending would be taxed, increasing tax revenue for the
... across the country. An item costing $9.99 sounds a lot better than $10.00. Putting the price into double digits may influence the customer of declining the item that he/she wants. With the rising costs of the nickel, this could lead to rounding up prices to the nearest dime. There's so many results that could happen in our country's future. This change could lead to disastrous
Throughout the past decade, costs of everything have skyrocketed. According to Source C, America used to have “five and dime stores;” now its a dollar store. In addition, no one can buy anything with just a penny anymore. The source also made a fair observation that these worthless zinc disks are, “behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old tin-foil ball. Quarters and dimes circulated; pennies disappear because they are literally more trouble than they are worth.” According to a New York Times article, “it takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950.” The penny is still stuck in the 1950s while America just keeps moving on. As stated by Mark Lewis in his concept of establishing a bill, “the bill would not ban pennies, but merely discourage their use by establishing a system under which cash transactions would be rounded up or down.” (Source A) This motive will help keep the America exceed and
In America’s modern day economy, the penny is very useless and irrelevant in our society today. As source C states, “The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome, and wasteful penny.” There is not one item that can be purchased with a penny anymore (Source C). As source C states, “it takes nearly a dime to buy what a penny bought back in 1950.” Stores such as the Dollar Store prove how the cheapest items you can purchase are with only a dollar, not a cent. Pennies are shoved out of the economic picture by credit cards and because of the modern-day technology, there are even self-service machines that help convert coins into paper money (Source B). Furthermore, pennies are easily tossed into piggy banks or appear behind chair cushions. It is not used the same way as it was before.
As a sociologist we look at two different perspectives, there is structural functional perspective and the conflict perspective. Out of the two perspectives I agree with the conflict perspective more than I do the structural functional perspective, and I’m going to use this perspective throughout my paper. I choose this perspective because as much as we want society to be “fair” and it work smoothly, it just doesn’t. We have struggle for power and I believe there are the groups that are powerful and wealthy, and there are some groups that are the working class and struggle to make it. I also picked this perspective because in the book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich gave up the power and wealth to struggle with the working class to show us how truly difficult it sometimes can be.
They must be eliminated, but you might think. Will prices go up and charities lose money? No. New Zealand, Finland, and the Netherlands stopped using the one cent or the one cent euro and noticed no change in cost, instead they rounded to the nearest five cent. Anyways, the US has already gone through this process without trouble, like the half cent it was eliminated in 1857 because it was too little worth.
The debate of eliminating pennies or maintaining pennies is a current focus in the United States. Many people think that eliminating the penny would positively influence the United States because the government would not have to devote millions of dollars for pennies. While many other people think that eliminating the pennies would negatively influence the United States because of the rounding tax that would be introduced after the pennies are eliminated. I think that we should continue to keep on manufacturing the pennies because the penny shows how it impacted the English language, it can also help causes that can save lives, and pennies can keep the government from creating the rounding tax which can cost consumers millions of additional dollars.
Have a good look at the penny, what do you see? You probably see nothing but a copper coated circular poor valued cent. Little does everyone know pennies have been around longer than before their grandparents, even their great-grandparents! Matter of fact, it was around so long ago that Abraham Lincoln’s face was not the first design on the penny. I ask that you take the time to consider the American penny’s worth. Without the people’s belief in its value, the penny will be abolished. I see people every day throwing away a penny rather than to put it in their pocket and save it for future uses. Yes a penny is "outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and wasteful" (Safire) piece of junk, but it's has an economic, cultural, and historical significance to the United States of America. The problem is that nobody pays attention to that, and that gives pennies the image of no value. Three good solutions to show the pennies worth include: tolls and vending machines accepting the coin, more charities to keep their penny drives, and historical evidence of what the penny mean to America so that it can be passed on to the future generations.
In fact there are many people that oppose abolishing the penny. In source E it states “that 62 percent of people oppose abolishing the penny that has a income less then $25,000 a year.” If the penny was to be abolish then the nickel would be the lowest coin in amount of money. If the nickel was the lowest amount of money there was then that means the purchase prices of items sold would increase. The prices would increase on items sold because the penny would not be in circulation to allow the customer to pay with the correct amount of change. Instead of being able to pay $3.47 for a kids meal at MacDonalds the customer would have to pay $3.50 for the kids meal. With the increasing prices of merchandise sold in stores there could be a budget upset for many families that have to follow a tight budget. Many families have to follow a tight budget to be able to provide for there families. With a tight budget there is no room for the prices of merchandise to increase due to losing the penny. Every penny counts when it comes to having a tight budget and providing for your
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, published in 2001 by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book about an author who goes undercover and examines lives of the working lower class by living and working in similar conditions. Ehrenreich sets out to learn how people survive off of minimum wage. For her experiment, she applies rules including that she cannot use skills acquired from her education or work during her job search. She also must take the highest-paying job offered to her and try her best to keep it. For her search of a home, she has to take the cheapest she can find. For the experiment, Ehrenreich took on low-wage jobs in three cities: in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota.
We already have 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, and 50¢ coins! If we keep pennies it will be a lot to handle with the $1, $2, $5, $10, and $100. Not to mention how we got rid of the $500; $1,000; $5000; and $10,000 in 1969 so we could extort rid of the penny. For items that are like $1.97 we can round up to $2.00 and down to $1.95 so we can round the value. It may make things more expensive, but not too much so the trade is worth it.
There is a side to this debate where the penny could win and stay in circulation. To start, the penny has been around for years and years and it has seemed to work for this whole time. This is true, the penny has been around and can be used still in everyday life. The turn side of this, though valid, is with systems changing is is becoming more and more rare for the penny to have a true dire need. One other strong reason to keep the penny alive would be charity. Charity relies on those people who do not necessarily care enough to keep the pennies t drop them off in the donation box. That though, has a simple solution. If the penny were no longer around nickels and dimes would begin to be the change customers and users are no longer wanting. Charity then in result
A buyer brings along with him snacks that he would like to purchase in a dollar store: chocolate chip cookies, a Pepsi, gummy bears, and a bag of chips. He waits in line, eager to consume this huge delight. It is his turn, and he hurriedly placed his treats on the counter, waiting anxiously to pay immediately. The cashier replies to him, “The price will be $5.99, sir.” The buyer takes out five one-dollar bills and four quarters. Not an instance did he ever use a penny in this case, which he thought was useless and meaningless. As you can see, the penny has become quite worthless and diminished in purpose. Many citizens would prefer to round up and pay rather than spend time and look in their
“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, 2006). The U.S. Mint continues to make a coin that is costing them more to make than it is worth. Although people may be attached to the history of having a penny as part of the monetary system, it is more important to keep up with relevant costs. Even though the penny is a historical representation of our country, it would save time and money if eliminated from the U.S. monetary system.
Now a day, people do not even bother to pick them up when they see them on the street, the unit of a penny is too small to be useful. The one cent coin should be eliminated because they cost more money to produce than what they are worth, “A penny currently costs the United States government 2.4 cents to mint. Yes, that's right—the penny costs more to produce than it's worth! One-cent coins constitute a complete and utter waste of taxpayers' dollars—not to mention a waste of our time and energy,”(Prairie News Register, P.1 ). This shows that if the penny gets eliminated from the United States it will save more time and money. The Penny also means very little to society because when someone sees a penny on the ground they rarely will pick it up. “Production is up in part because of hoarding, and in part because more and more people are throwing them in jars or drawers and never taking them out again. Few people now bother to pick up a penny when they see it on the street. It's simply not worth the effort,” (John Fund, P.2). This evidence shows how picayune the penny is and how people do not really bother for pennies
My two cents Every year the United states government makes about one billion pennies to keep the spread of change even and supplied throughout the country. The only problem is that the coin is worth one cent and it costs five cents too make. So for every year that a billion pennies are made, the government is spending five billion too make the pennies. The penny’s use has now dwindled to almost nothing.