Penny Argumentative Essay

The one-cent coin was the first piece of currency authorized by the United States government in 1793. Also included was the half-cent, dime and quarter-dollar. Today, one will probably not recognize the name or face of the half-cent. This is because it was discontinued in 1857 due to its lack of value and failure to facilitate trade. In recent years, the penny has taken to many of the same effects the half-cent had in the mid-1800’s. The penny has lost its value in the functioning economy and should also be discontinued to to its failure to facilitate trade, cost to produce, negative effects on the opportunity cost of American citizens, and unnecessary dread to the economy. According to the U.S. Mint’s 2013 annual report, it cost 1.8 cents to mint a penny in 2013, down from 2 cents in 2012 and 2.4 cents in 2011 (United States Mint 11). This phenomenon is not strictly recent, though. The cost of manufacturing the penny has fluctuated, but the cost has been at a loss …show more content…
An opportunity cost is the value of a person’s time. If one spends their time doing one thing, they could be doing something else with that time and profiting more or less from it. To put it simply, time is money. The opportunity cost of fumbling around with pennies has become an unexpected loss for Americans. The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreens drugstores have estimated that pennies add 2-2.5 seconds to each transaction. If a citizen makes one transaction each day, they will be wasting 730 seconds a year. Based on the average worker’s pay of just about $36,000 a year (equating to about 0.5 cents per second), it will cost each citizen conforming to this $3.65 annually. This may not be much for a single person, but time is money, and this costs the overall population over a billion dollars