the U. S. cent

I keep hearing talk of us following the lead of many other countries & doing away with the penny. With many stores having even dollar amount pricing already I think it's near, the question is how bad it will hurt the economy & consumer. The cent is no big deal until you start questioning things like sales tax, postage rates & basically everything we buy, a penny more is nothing for most but it all adds up I don't believe too many things will be rounded down.

DOWN???? silly guy, you're right, you know that never happens

I never thought I'd say this but I rarely use any money anymore. The plastic has taken its place. When I do, it's paper currency 95% of the time. Any change I get goes into the jar when I get home.
I wouldn't have any problem with the penny being eliminated. As was stated, prices would go up slightly, but that's happening anyhow.

President Obama has just recently stated that he is all for doing away with the penny, as it costs more to make than it is worth. Say goodby to them all, and likely real soon.

Next to go inevitably will be the nickel. It costs somewhere between 7 and 9 cents to make a nickel right now. I believe the nickel price disparity is actually greater than the penny price disparity.

CoaLen wrote: I rarely use any money anymore

I'm just the opposite. I use cash as much as I can....and local stores appreciate it! Every time we use plastic 2% or so goes straight to the bank. All it does is give the bank money & raise the prices on everything. I do not accept credit cards in my small upholstery & sign business. Why? Because most people that want upholstery or signs have no need to "charge it", and, most importantly, I'll be darned if I'm going to GIVE the bank ANY percentage of my hard earned money!

Many large merchants make up for the plastic charges by installing "self check out" stations. Gas stations have us paying at the pump. Eliminating the clerks we used to deal with covers the transaction charges I guess.

Yeah right, who would opt to stand in line instead of hitting the self check out...

Same here Freddy. I use cash for any non-internet purchases. Only reason I don't use cash online is because they haven't invented a way to send it down the phone lines yet.

Since this administration's goal seems to be to make life for us as difficult, and miserable as possible, I suspect the penny will probably go away as well.

plastic cards work great in power outages

Good point there!

So if the penny is not made anymore, can i scrap all the pre 1981 pennies i have been hoarding?

mozz wrote:So if the penny is not made anymore, can i scrap all the pre 1981 pennies i have been hoarding?

Since 2006 it is a Federal offense to melt down US coins for their metal content.

I thought the ban on melting of silver was lifted in 1974? You can melt gold coins because they are no longer in circulation. Just wondering if they stop minting the penny after x amount of years it will be legal to melt them?

A law enacted in 2006 would certainly supersede any law passed previous to it, no?

When your fiscal policies are a disaster, and money isn't worth the paper its not printed on, blame both the penny and the people who still use it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/1 ... 89805.html

I recall when Ben Bernanke was asked point blank if what he was doing (QE1, 2, 3 ,4 ...infinity) was "printing money", and his answer was "no!". Most money resides in cyberspace now, so technically he wasn't lying. The problem with cybermoney however is that it has become worthless to the point where no tangible representative thereof is valueless enough to be worthy of representing it.