Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Pro-Penny or Anti-Penny?

There was a post on the Freakonomics blog today that got me thinking about the anti-penny/pro-penny debate. To be honest...I'm not sure where I stand on it quite yet. Let's look at it.

Anti-Penny

• From what I understand, it costs 1.4 cents to mint a penny. So it costs more money to make money than that money is worth. That seems inefficient.



• No one likes carrying pennies around.



• Even collecting large numbers of them doesn't really make sense, because even if you take the time to collect 1000 pennies (which I imagine would take some time), you could only cash it in for $10. Not that getting $10 is a bad thing.



• Some people are really bad at math and it's hard for them to make change or count out correct values that aren't rounded to the nearest 5 cents or 10 cents. True...they are probably stupid...but still.

Pro-Penny:

• It's not that big of a deal to put your pennies in a jar and take the jar in to the bank every once in a while.



• It makes for more precise pricing



• Why not discontinue the nickel or the dime too?



• What would we put in penny loafers? More importantly...who still wears penny loafers?



• What would we call penny stocks? Really really inexpensive stocks? 1/5 of a nickel stocks? It just doesn't flow

What are your thoughts? Pro or Anti Penny?!?



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Labels: money, Social Issues

Posted by Adam Wilson :: 12:32 PM :: 1 comments

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