I think I first heard about the cost to produce a penny about 15 years ago. Don't quote me on any of the figures I will present in this entire post, because they're all from a very shaky memory. But, it seems like 15 or so years ago, the cost to produce a penny was about .98 cents. And that cost has risen tot he point that it now costs much more than one cent to produce a penny.
Two or three years ago, I heard someone on the radio say that the cost to produce a penny is irrelevant because of the number of times an individual penny circulates through the economy. It pays for itself each time it is used, so pennies end up being very cheap. That made sense to me, so the debate was settled in my mind.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Time magazine had a story about the penny. The story was published on the eve of Canada discontinuing its 1 cent coin. According to this story in Time, the single entity lobbying for the continuation of the penny is the firm that extracts and fashions the all the zinc used in penny manufacture in the US. That firm is maybe a tad bit biased.
If the penny were discontinued, cash transactions would be rounded up or down to the nearest nickel. Electronic transactions would not. How many cash transactions do you make compared to electronic? And, for the cash transactions, wouldn't the rounding down happen about as often as the rounding up?
I dunno. I thought that the debate was very silly. Who cares how much a penny costs to produce? But, this Time article made the case for me. It's time to end the penny. What do you think?
Pennies
February 12th, 2013 at 01:28 pm
February 12th, 2013 at 01:40 pm 1360676413
February 12th, 2013 at 01:52 pm 1360677151
February 12th, 2013 at 02:07 pm 1360678066