The Importance Of Making A Penny

Should Pennies be a Valid Currency? How many people keep their pennies compared to how many people just toss them in the leave one/take one trays at the gas stations or tell a cashier to keep the change? Is the cost of making a penny worth it? According to the US Mint, it costs 2.41 cents to make a penny. It costs two and a half times more to make the penny than the coin is worth. In most cases, businesses can round up or down to the nearest five cent with it not affecting their tills drastically. From personal experience, I know this. When I was stationed in Germany in the United States Air Force, the store on base never used pennies nor gave them back as change. They rung everything up as they should, but no pennies were ever exchanged. AAFES is a big company, if they can spare a couple cents, I think most companies can. Also, the Euro has a one euro cent coin, but it also was rarely seen. “Where do they go? Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation, into piggy banks or—as The Times’s John Tierney noted five years ago—behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old tin-foil ball. Quarters and dimes circulate; pennies disappear because they are literally more trouble than they are worth” (Safire).
They use the penny to teach their children to count or they have them just sitting in a jar or car. Fifty-nine percent of American voted to keep the penny in circulation. People are afraid if we get rid of the penny (or nickels for that matter), it will create an almost uncontrollable inflation and that businesses will raise their prices to accommodate for the missing change. Another point that penny pushers like to point out is that charities function off pennies. The pennies just dropped into donation jars do go towards something and they are appreciated by