Essay On Loss Of Pennies

The U.S. Mint should cease the production of pennies due to their waste of money to make, waste of time, their uselessness, and the money that the public will save from its elimination. Firstly, let's look at the penny's waste of money, the current cost to make one penny is about 1.7 cents. This is a significant increase since a century ago, when the penny was worth what the quarter is today. In 2014, the government spent $132 million on $50 million worth of pennies. In other words, we threw about $82 million dollars in the garbage. Think of all the things that we could have used that on to improve the American quality of life. Now let's look at the penny's waste of time, or in other words, how much valuable time an American wastes at the cash register …show more content…
Many argue that getting rid of the penny would result in prices, with stores rounding up their prices up. However other nations such as Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands have done this without seeing this happening. Next we will look at the uselessness of the penny, or the fact that you can't buy anything with a penny. Have you ever tried using pennies in vending machine, parking meters, or other machines that take coins? Probably not, but if you have after the 1980's you'll know that none of these machines take pennies. This is because they are worthless. In fact the government made machines called Coin Star, which is specifically designed to turn all of your worthless pennies into useful coins like quarters. Finally, for arguments in favor of the penny's elimination, let's look at how much money the government will save from the penny's elimination. As mentioned before the government wasted $82 million on producing pennies in 2014, and it wastes a similar amount every single year since 2006. This is money that the government could have used for programs to help Americans in many different