below is the essay
Explanation:
The penny has been in circulation as a type of U.S. currency for over a hundred years. Still, the costs and benefits of the penny have been contested for decades. In fact, the time has come to discontinue this piece of history. The penny is a burden to produce, carry, and count, and concerns about its elimination are unfounded. Without a doubt, the penny is a useless piece of currency and should not be preserved.
Simply put, producing the penny causes the government to lose money. In his letter to the editor, David Carroll explains that “a penny currently costs the United States government 2.4 cents to mint” (Carroll). Obviously, the penny costs more than twice as much to manufacture as it is actually worth. It is absurd to continue minting a coin that results in so much loss! In fact, according to “Penny Anti” by John Fund, the U.S. Treasury loses $100 million a year by continuing to produce the penny. Despite this great cost, the Treasury must continue to produce more and more pennies each year to keep them in circulation. The government loses money on every penny it produces, when it could be spending this taxpayer funding on building and maintaining schools, roads, or national parks. Clearly, our resources should be used wisely and carefully, not squandered on useless, costly coins.
In addition to being a waste of taxpayer money, using the penny for transactions is also a waste of consumers’ time. Every day, people go through the hassle of reaching into their pockets or digging into their purses, hoping to pull out the correct change for a purchase. Jeff Gore, a scientist from MIT, calculated that employees and consumers waste an average of “2.4 hours per year” counting out pennies for transactions (Fund). This means that employees stand idly while customers shuffle through coins to pay for something, and then they juggle coins as they recount the total and sort out change. This time builds up, costing their employers money in wages and frustrating people waiting in line for their turn. According to Carroll, getting rid of the penny would make it “considerably easier to count change.” Instead of having to sort through four different coins to find the correct amount of change, it would simplify the process. People just want the hassle of hunting for change to end. Getting rid of the penny in consumer transactions would save shoppers and businesses time and money.
Some people may worry that eliminating the penny would lead to confusion (Fund), but eliminating a unit of currency has been done before without causing problems. In 1857, for example, the half-cent was abolished across the United States but “people afterward had no problem living and conducting business” (Fund). Even though the economy at the time relied heavily on coins as currency, no banks or businesses collapsed, and there were no major customer protests. All the confusion that people anticipated was minor. Some people suggested that businesses might round up against the consumer if the penny were eliminated, but that did not happen (Fund and Carroll). Again, just thirty years ago, the Department of Defense eliminated the penny on overseas military bases, and no serious problems occurred as a result (Carroll). At present, the economy relies even more on debit and credit cards than it did in the past, so eliminating a form of currency would be even easier. Clearly, the transition to a world without the penny would be easy.
From all angles, the penny should be eliminated as a form of U.S. currency. Americans’ tax dollar should not be spent in manufacturing this coin each year, especially when consumers do not value it enough to pick it up off the ground. Beyond that, shoppers and shop owners alike all waste time counting pennies each year, and time adds up to more money wasted on this useless coin. With all the available evidence considered, the United States should definitely eliminate this useless coin.
