I know most of you think kicking off my new blog with such a minuscule topic as pennies may seem wasteful. So let me try to make my case on why this personal and national drain must come to an end. After continued frustration and confusion has climaxed to this moment where my time and money has gone to waste long enough I must tackle the facts and make my point. Literally pennies at a time to the tune of several dollars of lost change over the course of my life has put a damper on my account as well as many others, not to mention the US government’s, and it’s about time we dive into this conundrum called the penny.
A penny: a unit of currency equaling one one-hundredth of a United States Dollar. The official term used by the US mint is a cent, but nobody calls it that. Pennies are gross when they get old and turn into a gritty brown disc of filth most likely to spend mre time discarded in streets and sidewalks compared to other monetary currency. At least a dime/nickel/quarter stays shiny over the years no matter what kind of cesspool of bacteria may be squirming around the face of a dead president.
Back when a penny was made of mostly copper it was worth more than double its face value in precious metals. I know if I found any pennies dating back before 1982 I would surely melt them down even after that lame law that was passed a few years back barring such action. Currently pennies only contain 2.5% copper and are barely even worth their weight in metal to achieve their face value. A penny costs $0.0167 to produce and has a metal value of $0.0102151. So the approximately 150 billion pennies in circulation today cost about $2.5 billion to produce and are only worth 1.5 billion dollars to those who possess them not including the billion or so that are littered in the streets or buried in a landfill. Hey any more great ideas to systematically waste money and tax dollars???? Well that’s why we have nickels, just yet another way to waste money with worthless currency.
Fast forward to today where the coin is now being created using zinc and becomes a toxic hazard to your stomach when swallowed. It has been linked to pet fatalities when swallowed by dogs and parrots among many others. So why are we producing a worthless coin for more than it is worth only to pollute our homes and streets with a toxic pill for dumb animals to swallow and die from?
So your walking down the street and you see a penny on the ground. Do you pick it up? Of course not, and those who say well what if it is facing heads up, then its a lucky penny. Well I know for a fact no penny every led to me getting lucky and getting some. If one one-hundredth of a dollar could get you laid then I’m sure you were fine without it.
Some people do carry around pennies and even spend them on items from time to time. Others collect them until they have enough and give it to a bank in exchange for currency of higher value. I chose a better path of using them as a great source of ammunition for throwing at oncoming traffic or random people in a crowd. I don’t using cents in transactions done on computers, but anytime I get pennies as change from a purchase your only frustrating me, polluting the environment, and wasting money.
I say we get rid of pennies and just start rounding numbers instead. Kind of like a virtual give a penny take a penny. Except no penny is being taken or spent, but just dropped altogether. Melt down all pennies in circulation and with our newly found revenue source go bailout some corrupted bank or financial firm since those seem to be the ones were supposed to think are most in need in America.
Instead of discontinuing this abomination of currency we have decided instead to redesign the coin and starting this year roll out a four-coin commemorative program marking the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s being placed on the cent, and the 200th anniversary of his birth. Sorry I antagonized the US government to find more ways to waste money thinking they weren’t capable of such wasteful spending.
Besides all the facts, Abraham Lincoln looks so much better on a 5 Dollar Bill anyway. See for yourself:
Penny vs. 5 Dollar Bill
Agree? Disagree? Let me know your stance on America’s money plague known as the Cent (Penny).
Filed under: economy, other Tagged: | Abraham Lincoln, cent, economy, pennies, penny, politics, ramblings, rants
Scott if you didn’t have pennies what would you use to fling and people while you lay on the couch. You would have nothing to do!
PS I read the last sentence of the first paragraph through many times and I still have no idea what you were trying to say.
Yeah I don’t understand it either. Hope its fixed now. Time to get back to “work.”
Anytime you want some pennies Dave, to throw or spend, you know who to turn to. Just as long as I never see them or feel them hitting me in the back of the head, they are all yours.