the shrewdness of apes

Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. Getting rid of the penny is a terrible idea. Unless of course you're focus is screwing consumers and debilitating charity groups. But if that's your thing, then, good on ya. In the meantime, everyone who wants to get rid of their pennies, please send them to my future address, which will be a huge mansion financed by all the fools who don't like their pennies.

http://www.coinstar.com/US/PressReleases/591061?OpenDocument

you're buying into the Coinstar propaganda machine? charities will be debilitated? i don't think so. pennies cost more to produce than they are worth. it's the taxpayers getting screwed. and i'm sorry, but consumers will be be just fine if everything is rounded to the nearest $.05.

All I'll think of now when I see that coin is going to be the Simpsons episode where Lisa is Sacajawea and Lenny & Carl are Lewis & Clark. "Everybody will remember the journey of Lewis and Clark and Tweedleburger!"

"Ocean in view! O! The joy!" definitely sounds like something Lenny would say!

!

Oh, and I HATE pennies. I throw them out.

I like to drop pennies for kids to find...I always that that was the coolest thing to find pennies & while I think today's kids are a little more jaded and realize the pointlessness of a penny - I still like to imagine that somewhere some little kid will think it's special.

"Consumers will be just fine if everything is rounded to the nearest $.05." this from the self proclaimed "Not-a-Rockefeller" who used stolen food stamps to buy Funyuns at a local bazaar. I'll keep my pennies, thank you very much, and my .99 cent value menu, too!

i'm just saying that the difference is minimal/trivial. my previous actions at the grocery store have nothing to do with the current topic, nor the veracity of my position. the Bush campaign would be proud of your "shift the focus" tactics.

the talk of pennies for charity also reminded me of the Simpsons epsiode where McBain (Rainier Wolfcastle) is fighting off the "Commie-Nazis":

"They won't stop me from delivering these UNICEF pennies!" (he lifts up a pallet and throws it out of the plane) "Go, pennies! Help the puny children who need you!"

The Mint makes over $40 million a year on penny production. Not sure how that's a bad thing for the government or taxpayers.

And don't marginalize Jeremy's comments, since you did take heat for claiming to be less than rich in this space not too long ago. That's not shifting focus, it's a valid point. You shifted focus by calling your brother a Bushie rather than respond to his comment.

yeah, YEAH! rebuttal, mr. apes?

if you rounded everything to the nearest .05 it would make almost no difference in the amount people spend for things. if something was $0.97, it would become $0.95. if it was $0.98, it's now $1.00. many places, including the bar i used to work at, do this anyway figuring that it all works out in the end (and it does) and reducing the hassle that dealing with pennies entails. that fact has nothing to do with how much money i have or don't have. this isn't about me, it's about whether keeping pennies around is worthwhile.

to quote from "The Straight Dope": "The issue came up most recently in 1996, when the GAO concluded that, figuring in the cost of overhead and distribution, the U.S. Mint loses $8 million a year manufacturing pennies." i recommend you read the rest of this piece @ www.straightdope.com/classics/a981009a.html

My last way of using pennies on a regular basis ended recently when Metrobuses got new fareboxes. They used to take pennies, but no longer. Now my pennies are just piling up until I can take them to the bank or to a coinstar.

If the GAO says so then it must be true! It's generally accepted that the report you link to is faulty and that the Mint indeed does make a mint from penny production.

there's been some trouble with that website today. here's the full text:

"A lot of people have been wondering about this. The mint makes something like 13 billion pennies a year, accounting for two-thirds of all U.S. coinage. Half of these pennies will disappear from circulation within a year, having been squirreled away in penny jars and who knows where else. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that of the roughly 170 billion pennies currently in existence, two-thirds have been effectively withdrawn from circulation by people who think they're too much trouble to carry around.

The penny has by far the lowest seigniorage (profit) rate of any U.S. coin. Each costs four-fifths of a cent to make, netting Uncle Sam just one-fifth of a cent, or 20 percent. The profit on a quarter, by comparison, is more than 20 cents--80 percent. Were the penny still made mostly of copper, as it was until 1982, the government would have to manufacture them at a loss. (The coins are now copper-plated zinc.) The time has come to ask--hell, it came long ago--Why are we doing this, anyway?

The issue came up most recently in 1996, when the GAO concluded that figuring in the cost of overhead and distribution, the U.S. Mint loses $8 million a year manufacturing pennies. The agency suggested eliminating the penny and rounding all cash transactions to the nearest nickel. Mint officials disputed the GAO's numbers, claiming the coin earns the government $18 million to $27 million annually. Congress held hearings, but opinion was sharply divided, not only within the government but among merchants and ordinary citizens. In the end nothing was done.

Too bad. The arguments in favor of retaining the penny are weak, arising from the same wellspring of nostalgia and we've-always-done-it-this-way inertia that's hindered conversion to the metric system. The real question is not whether the government makes money on pennies but whether the coin serves any commercial purpose. The "take a penny, leave a penny" jars that many merchants keep by their cash registers suggest strongly that it doesn't. If people don't want to make change with pennies, why bother?

Some claim that if pennies are eliminated, consumers will get screwed. In a 1989 Atlantic article one penny advocate claimed, "Get rid of [the penny] and nothing will cost less than a nickel." Baloney. No one is suggesting that all prices be rounded to the nearest nickel. Real estate tax rates have been computed in mills--a tenth of a cent--since the foundation of the republic, but no mills have ever been minted; the sums are just rounded. Others claim that merchants will use rounding as an excuse to gouge consumers, either by raising prices or by cheating. But competitive pressures are likely to keep most retailers honest, and in any case the amounts are trivial.

Many other nations cease minting low-value coins when they become irrelevant. The U.S. doesn't, feeling no doubt that we've got a big-time currency here and its value is like unto the Rock of Ages. By eliminating the penny we'd be admitting that we're just like other countries. But in the '30s a penny was worth the equivalent of today's dime; in the '50s it was worth today's nickel. Now it's not worth the trouble."

"Ocean in View!" is taken from Clark's journal. Except he wrote "Ocian in view!"

The penny exists because the dollar is worth as much as it is. When a loaf of bread costs $200, the penny will be eliminated. But as long as bread costs $2.00, the penny has value.

Regarding the GAO report, a few points:
To determine overhead, the GAO double charged labor hours, billing them to private manufacturers as well as the Mint. Double charging will make things appear more expensive then they are. Also, the GAO overstated Federal Reserve handling costs by 167%.

What you pasted in above is certainly interesting, but the writer seems to concede that although he likes the GAO's numbers better than the mint, they are likely incorrect. Hell of an argument. If you and the writer are against keeping the penny in circulation, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. But since more than 70% of Americans are in favor of keeping the penny, public opinion suggests that it should not go anywhere.

screw coinstar, take your pennies to a commerce bank, where the transaction from coin to paper is free. and they give you a red c-shaped bank to store them in!

"But since more than 70% of Americans are in favor of keeping the penny, public opinion suggests that it should not go anywhere." bad argument, Jake. What the fuck does the American public know? If it were up to them and their opinions, we'd still have slavery. I know, I know, apples and oranges :)

Pennies suck. Whenever I reach into my bag to get change for the parking meter, I mostly pull out pennies. I'll either pile them up on the base of the meter of pitch them into bushes, to put them back into my bag just means I'm going to reach for them another time, when what I really want is dimes or quarters, or even nickels. When I clean my apt, I throw out all pennies. I'm not going to go to a Coinstar any time soon, as I use all of my change, so they're worthless to me. I once had a friend who would shriek when he saw I was throwing out pennies and rescue them from the trash. I would then throw them out later once he left. NO MORE PENNIES! NO MORE ASSAULT WEAPONS!

Oh, and on the charity note, when I lived in ATL my friend worked for a non-profit. They had her go out to malls and collect all the pennies from the fountains. The malls had already collected them out of the fountains and they were in big containers. She had to get tons of these dirty, nasty heavy-as-shit containers filled with dirty, nasty pennies. They had to be brought back to the office, and an entire room was designated in which to clean them. It took days and weeks, because they had to be clean before the bank would take them. After all of that, and I don't recall exact numbers, but I remember us declaring they would have made more at a god-damned bake sale and with a lot less fucking trouble and man power.

Great story, Claire. Sounds like a great place to work.

Coistar's fine, I guess, but I don't collect change just to give someone else a cut. I roll my own, baby. Putting my own money into the coin rolls gives me a sense of satifaction, although lugging those rolls to the bank always sucks.

But when you roll all those pennies, each roll is worth only 50 cents. And I'd pay a buck to not have to roll those smelly pennies to begin with. Therefore, my "throw them the hell out" plan makes me 50 cents. Have fun rolling smelly pennies, I'll be out spending my 50 cents that cost me nothin! ;)

how does throwing money away lead to the accrual of 50 cents? any math or accoutning majors out there?

oh come on, crispin, it's the oldest platitude in the book: "time is money". math is all well and good for dealing with numbers, but it sucks with the abstract. you need to bring in a little philosophy to help put a value on time.

and didn't you ever see "Brewster's Millions"? Richard Pryor had to spend millions of dollars in a week or whatever in order to inherit an even larager sum of money. that he (and John Candy) learned a bit about love and humanity along the way shows that the value of money is relative to the person and the situation.

It sounds to me like Jamie has been reading excerpts from Harvard Business Review lately. You go, Trump Jr!

It seems to me that Jamie is taking some flak here for unfair reasons. While I'll gladly point out the inconsistencies in Jamie's comments on many topics, this time he's done nothing wrong!

People are attacking him on a personal level (in a most amusing fashion, I must admit) on a topic that has nothing to do with food stamps, registering to vote, or profitting from a lawsuit. Pennies suck! Get rid of them! The consumer will be better off because things that used to be 99 cents will now be 95 cents! That means that all the non-Rockefellers out there (like Jamie) will save 4 cents on every purchase!

dan. you're joking right? who ever heard of rounding down? especially from a 9? 99 cents would round up to 1 dollar and then the penny-hating fascists would complete their sinister takeover that they've been plotting for centuries. viva la pennie! viva la lincoln!

of course they would round down! if they charged an even dollar, everyone would be onto their evil ways! when things end in a 99, not a 00, we think it is a whole dollar cheaper! no one will add the penny, they'll take away four! brilliant!

Jamie's such a neo-capitalist, charity-hating, little-guy-hosing fascist. We've all known it. But I'm surprised to learn that Dan is his goon. Call of your dogs, Trump Jr!

jake,
i prefer the term compassionate conservative, thank you very much.

whoah, wait just a goddamned minute there "dan." are you saying that items, like those wonderfully low priced cds at borders, priced $17.99 aren't actually a dollar cheaper than the cds marked $18 sold by those price-gougers barnes & noble? doesn't 18-17=1 or am i confused? again, where are the math majors to help me out?

Jeremy, quit looking for math majors, it's all about logic. I don't understand why you don't understand my making money by throwing out pennies--it's quite a simple concept. I thought you were smart!

;)

Everyone quit railing on me, Jamie, and Dan. And I'llk quit whining about it now...