I was brought up in Australia, where we got rid of 1¢ and 2¢ coins in my childhood. Nobody missed them, at least as I recall. I certainly didn't: they were useless, even at the age when I might by lollies (candy) for 2¢ apiece. But then again, I'd never buy one, and with the new changes if I bought six of them, I'd get them for a discount as the price would be rounded down to 10¢. Besides, petrol (gas) was priced including fractions of a cent per litre, and nobody worried we didn't have 0.1¢ coins. So why worry about those little copper coins? Besides, few transactions are done with cash these days anyway, and with debit cards and bank transfers you can still account for the pennies, even if you can't count them using metal tokens.
I guess things are different here in the States where there's some passionate clinging to those little copper coins that serve only to be collected in random jars and drawers around my house after I dump them from my pockets. But this guy has the most passionate argument I've seen for getting rid of pennies:
I agree: down with pennies!
They got rid of pennies in Oz 'cos the currency was so useless they really were worth nothing. But in the good ole US of A that's not so much the case.
Posted by: David Heffernan | October 01, 2010 at 14:01