Essay On Getting Rid Of Pennies

Pennies have been around for hundreds of years, making it hard for us to imagine a life without them. We use them when we go to the store, find them in between the couch cushions, and put them in our piggy bank whenever we are trying to save up for something we want. Pennies are in our everyday lives, and getting rid of them would change so much. The U.S should not get rid of the penny because it will round everything up to a nickel, it will cost even more money to make a nickel, and it would cause difficulties to charities around the world.

If pennies are vanished, everything will be priced higher. Since pennies will be gone, everything that ends in an uneven number like $9.99 will have to be rounded up to a higher number, which will make us pay more for the same products. Therefore, everything will be rounded up to the nickel. Merchants will probably round everything up in their favor, costing us more for everything we buy (Headley 3). Since merchants will raise the prices of their products, that means that we will be wasting even more

money every day for the stuff we bought for the normal price formerly. Replacing pennies for nickels would have a lot of negative effects for our economy that creates controversy between people, and leaving the penny alone would avoid it.
The main reason the U.S wants to get rid of the penny is because the costs to make it is greater than the pennies value.

Pennies costs 1.26 cents to make, that means that the U.S mint loses about .26 of a sent every time they make a penny, leaving them with an incredible amount of money lost for coins that most people take for granted. Nickels cost 7.7 cents to make, (2.7 cents over face value, as opposed to 0.26 cents over face value to make a penny,) so making each nickel costs 1.44 cents more than making each penny (Headley 3). The thing is that getting rid of pennies will lead the U.S to make more nickels, hurting their economy even more since they would be paying more for each nickel than they did for each penny. Now, instead of only increasing the price of our products, they will also be losing a lot of money for the production of nickels which would end up negatively affecting the lives of consumers and the U.S Mint as

well.
The termination of pennies would also cause difficulties to charities around the world. Every year, charities organize penny drives to help important causes like reducing hunger, or helping animals that need a place to sleep. Whatever the reason is, pennies are essential to charities because everybody has them. People think nothing of pouring out their old penny jars to support these drives, but they won’t part with nickels so easily (Headley 3). Thousands of small charities depend on penny drives to bring in donations, and getting rid of pennies will make it harder for them to get those donations; since nickels are worth a greater value. This will negatively impact the effectiveness of the penny drives that charities organize, leaving them will one less opportunity to raise money.