Comments on: Should We Make Cents?

Morley Safer On The Bizarre Economics Of Producing Money

[msaccento]

I am 63 years old and have never dealt in mills. But yet today in 2008 we still pay for fuel in mills. If we must get rid on pennies should it not be after we finally get rid of the mil?

[goldenla]

Perhaps rather than all the volunteer effort required from parents and teachers to conduct penny drives to support their children''s education, the money saved from eliminating pennies (and perhaps nickels as well) could be used to do so...

[quilter157]

I enjoyed your segment on pennies and nickles, but what about 9/10''s of of a cent we deal with everyday at the gas pump? Maybe the young man that figured out all the equations regarding pennies and nickles could determine the extra ink, paper, manufacturing of 9/10''s signs, bookkeeping manhours,etc, related to the almighty 9/10''s of a cent.

[ap32801]

Morely Safer..I am not a rocket scientist, but
it doesn''t make good ''cents'' to complain about the
cost of making coins and not consider the cost of
changing the face of the coins constantly. You didn''t
mention that every time a new coin comes out, people
collect them and they aren''t in circulation.
The mint must operate like the US Postal Service.
But,what do I know? I live in Flor-ri-duh where we
still don''t know how to vote.

[darcyrene-2009]

I am 38. Twenty years ago, when I was 18, I handled a lot more cash. Even then I had a credit card, but it was not accepted many places, and to buy a hamburger or a loaf of bread, you had to have hard currency. Now I can put groceries, fast food, gasoline and even new car on a credit card. In another 20 years it seems very likely to me that there will effectively be no hard currency. Cash, will be a cash credit card, like the holiday gift cards you can already buy. Pennies will still be in existence in the decimal points, but you will never see the physical entity. These last pennies they are making today will be family heirlooms hoarded behind lock and key, and taken with us to moon colonies, Mars colonies and beyond, as memories of old earth.

Although humans, (especially politicians), find it the hardest choice, sometimes the right action is to do nothing at all, and the problem takes care of itself.

[georgio1965]

The U.S. Mint needs to learn from Corporate America. When costs go up and a company does not want to raise the price of a product, one solution is to reduce the size of the product itself. Having said that, it does not make sense that both the penny and the nickel are larger than the higher denomination dime. An easy solution to the Mint%u2019s problem, assuming they don%u2019t want to alter the metals used in production, is to reduce the diameter and thickness of these two coins.
Georgio E.

[billboylan]

Pennies have become useless. We only need them to give them back to our efficient government in sales takes, as in: 5 1/4%, 7 1/2%, etc.
Have taxes rounded off to nearest nickel and prices rounded off also. Of course, that might take some forethought and consideration for the public.
While your at it, require banks to have FREE coin counters, I''ll be happy to bring back my pennies- not the WHEAT pennies, however.
Regards,
Bill

[billboylan]

Pennies have become useless. We only need them to give them back to our efficient government in sales takes, as in: 5 1/4%, 7 1/2%, etc.
Have taxes rounded off to nearest nickel and prices rounded off also. Of course, that might take some forethought and consideration for the public.
While your at it, require banks to have FREE coin counters, I''ll be happy to bring back my pennies- not the WHEAT pennies, however.
Regards,
Bill

[sylhyntm]

newster1 posted this:
" Abe Lincoln, who, as a young store clerk, walked three miles to return six pennies "

Yeah sounds like a fireside story someone made up at election time, all Abe had to do was wait till the customer came back next time, any idiot would have thought of THAT"

Not exactly - stores were not so plentiful for one thing, secondly the average wage in West Virginia (don''t have Illinois data) in 1841 was 43 cents a DAY and a pound of bacon cost 9 cents. Any good business person would hope to make up a large difference as 6 cents or fear that word might spread that the establishment was a cheat. In other words - a cheated customer might avoid a suspect store at all costs in the future and thus Abe would never have been able to return the money. It was after all - 1/7 of a day''s wage - or about an hour of work. Maybe Abe''s patron made less than average wages...

[harvey513]

Get rid of pennies! One of my fondest memories of New Zealand is the lack of pennies, even though their New Zealand dollar system was otherwise identical to ours. For people who don''t carry purses, having to search for pennies (doesn''t every sale end in a 6 or 1?) is a total waste of time, and who wants any more pocket weight than is needed?

[nothappyatall]

" Abe Lincoln, who, as a young store clerk, walked three miles to return six pennies "

Yeah sounds like a fireside story someone made up at election time, all Abe had to do was wait till the customer came back next time, any idiot would have thought of THAT

" how much time America wastes dealing with pennies,"

Why the hel1 does anyone bother with this? cash is going away, even checks are going away in favor of electronic transfers, debit and credit cards

ordering on line, theres no way to send CASH, and hardly any merchant on line takes checks for your order from their web sites, they take PayPal, Visa, Debit
Bills? you don''t even need to write a check and throw away 41 cents on a stamped envelope any more, you do it electronically, I pay my electric/gas, credit card and almost everything else with a couple of clicks and its done, no lost late checks, no wasting 41 cents for stamps for every bill
Dont even need cash or checks at the supermarket.

Time to dump the pennies,

" but at the end, I still turn those pennies in because they%u2019re worth real money," Moy says. "

Yeah, and then figure in the time you spend counting and WRAPPING all those stupid dirty pennies for 50 cents a roll.
Melt them down and scrap them, zinc will melt on the kitchen gas stove in a heavy iron pot, dump them in the pot and let er melt, then skim the crud off the top and let it cool- youd double your money
Any scrap yard will take it

[jaykay3141]

Walt1944: "The cost of making a penny is actually two cents, the cost of making a nickel is actually 10 cents. Using that premise, it would mean that the cost of printing a dollar bill is actually $2".

No, each coin and bill has its own cost dictated by the materials that go into it, and for bills, the security features used. Generally I agree with you about Emperor Bush(**) but it''s just coincidence that metal prices have risen so that pennies and nickels both cost twice their face values to make. A dime costs about 6 cents to make, a dollar coin about 8, and a dollar bill about 6.5 (*).

But yeah, King George''s war and general economic incompetence has reduced the _buying power_ of our money, whatever it''s made of, to the point where we''re gonna end up like Mexico pretty soon.

(*) But a $1 coin lasts 25-35 times as long as a bill, so in the long run they''re a LOT cheaper to make.

(**) FWIW, the salute to our Great Leader is actually spelled "SIEG". It''s German for "victory". In King George''s case any victories are probably hidden in the same place as Saddam''s WMDs.

[exxgrunt]

Did anyone check with the Post Office on their proposed .01 per stamp increase?

[g1966k]

Why not just ask people to cash in their pennies instead of saving them in jars at home. Every now and the you hear a story about a guy who bought a new car with all the change he saved. If every family used their pennies instead of saving them it would be a start. Stop hording the pennies and use them.

[grammawhamma]

A 2 cent coin would go the way of the two dollar bill. So what if a penny costs more then a penny to make...I think they said it costs 6 cents to make a hundred dollar bill.

[elgery]

CHANGE THE ONE CENT COIN TO A TWO CENT COIN WHICH WILL
JUSTIFY PRODUCTION COSTS AND ELIMINATE THE FIVE CENT
COIN.

[rushlimpdrug]

So many people follow this story like stupid sheep.
MANY things cost more than their raw material value.

Look at everything around you, including your car and home.

The added value is one thing to take into consideration.

If you have a few cents lying around look at the DATE on them. Some are several YEARS old.

That means they have been circulating for a long time passing through MANY hands.

Some of you idiots need to wake up and not drink the kool-aid so quickly.

That''s my TWO CENTS worth.

If you don''t want your pennies send them to me.

I will gladly put them into circulation.

[kentiki4]

If they cost .02 to make why not just buy them back @.0125/.0150 for a couple of years to save $$$$ and help people to make a little getting rid of all the old pennies laying around.

[oleander8]

What about sales tax? Those pennies can add up.

[nunnjk]

My home town of Silverton, Oregon still has penny parking meters. You get 12 minutes for a penny, an hour for a nickel, and 2 hours for a dime or 10 pennies.
I save my pennies for my time in Silverton.