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Abolishing the Penny

 

             It's been our smallest-denomination coin for 150 years. However, if people are willingly dumping out their pockets to leave their pennies at the cash register, it is time to get rid of them. The United States should abolish the penny because its value has greatly diminished and it is inefficient.
             To start off, the penny should be abolished because the value of the penny has greatly diminished in the last few decades. It takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950. " (Source C). If the penny needed to be kept around, then there would be something we could buy with it. Noting that nothing can be purchased with just a penny, the need for it is lost. Also, "Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation [dropped] behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers because they are literally more trouble than they are worth. (Source C). If the penny was worth more, then we wouldn't be throwing it around like used gum wrappers. The diminishing worth of the penny clearly indicates our current currency system needs an improvement.
             Secondly, the penny should be abolished because it is very inefficient. "They cost more in employee-hours to wait for buyers to fish them out pack up and take them to the bank than it would cost to throw them out"." (Source C). If the penny was efficient, then we wouldn't have penny cups" next to every cash register. They save the seller time and the buyer the inconvenience of lugging around loose change that tears holes into pockets." (Source C). Also, The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreen's estimated that handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds to each cash transaction." (Source B). If we include the occasional customer who spends 30 seconds looking for [a] penny in his pocket, (Source B) then we can estimate you are losing a good amount of money through this inefficient process. .
             Now some may say that we need to keep the penny, but these suggestions are heavily based on the sentimental value these people hold with the shiny copper currency.


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