Do you think pennies should go away?

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Do you think pennies should go away? Do you think they're useless and a waste? I don't want to see pennies go away. Things will be more expensive without pennies.

I pick em up when I see em on the ground & things would be 4cents more without them.

I don't mind about pennies, but in the UK there's a thing called the pound coin, and I wish THOSE were good old fashioned paper money again, like they used to be. They're a sterling pound in money but they feel like they WEIGH a literal pound in weight.

There's a $1 bill, and there used to be a £1 "note" (same as a "bill"). Whoever thought it would be a good idea to do away with paper £1 notes and replace them with heavy, fat, thick, medium sized coins that weigh down your pockets if you're a guy and your money purse and your bag if you're a woman -- I'd like to put that person in the village stocks and throw the damn things at him.

Carrying them around on my person is actually contributing to a case of chronic tendonitis I have on one entire half of my upper body. Why did they start having one pound coins?

i'd be happy to do without pennies. they mostly are just an annoyance. i do collect wheat pennies, though.

They got rid of the penny in Canada a relatively short time ago. They really should have done it decades ago. You can't buy anything for a penny any more. These days you can't buy anything for a nickel or a dime. Of course, you can if you save enough of them, but it takes forever. I think you can still get a gumball out of a machine for 25 cents, but I've seen candy dispensers asking for two quarters at least now for about four or five M&M's.

I guess you could say we can't give our two cents worth up here. Not literally, anyway.

Yep, Canada already ditched the penny. Things aren't 4 cents more. The mathematical rules of rounding up/down apply. If it's 1 or 2 cents at the end of a tax inclusive price, it's rounded down. If it's 3 or 4 cents it's rounded up. However, I've noticed that many retailers simply round down almost always just to not have to annoy customers by overcharging. I don't think there's an official rule to always round down, but there may be. Either way, it hasn't created any problems not having pennies.

I still have a bunch of pennies, though. I never turned them into the bank. I'm not a fan of Stephen Harper or our federal government and they can't have the value of the copper pennies I own. Maybe I'll just keep them forever.

Well, once upon a time, they were literally a pound of silver, weren't they?

half joking, but probably so it wouldn't flap and fly away in the wind (and it seems it worked very well!)

pennies here don't do anything but give us meticulous, repetitive tasks in stuffing the 50 cent paper rolls when we're extremely bored. i have a jug full of them under my feet right now, and i'm all out of penny rolls.

i'm in favor for now of getting rid of them for cash transaction, rounding in those situations. still using 1 cent denominations in electronic transactions.

That's true, and can you imagine having to carry around literal pound-weights of all that silver? Yikes. That's why they sensibly invented the one-pound note. A lightweight brother to the five pound note, the ten pound notes and all the family of notes.

Then someone decided lets do away with lightweight, thin paper and go back to Anglo Saxon times by making everyone lug big fat coins around again...

It's worth remembering though that an old 10 pence piece, which remained in circulation until 1992 (along with the predecimal 'Florin', which it replaced), weighed 11.3 grams, compared with 9.5 grams for the £1 coin. That puts it into perspective, I think. The modern equivalent of the £1 note is the £5 note (compared with early 1980s values), or the £20 note (compared with 1960s values). It's all about inflation, unfortunately.

But they still have the one dollar bill. If those guys see fit to keep their "1" unit as a paper note, I don't see why the UK can't.

And inflation be damned, there still IS a "1" unit of money so why can't it be paper instead of the coins?

Yes, the old 10 pence pieces were heavy too, but I seem to accumulate more of the pound coins when given change these days. They never would normally give you change in the form of a gazillion ten pences pieces. But they will give you a bunch of pound coins and together they weigh more to lug around than a scant few 10ps ever did.

Seriously the logic is clear to me -- they've replaced a piece of paper with a heavy coin.

You can argue till the cows come home, but it's still fcked up to me.

IT'S MY OPINION and my EXPERIENCE of the coin that I hate them and they are NOTICEABLY TOO HEAVY for me in carrying them around. Why are you arguing with me about SOMETHING THAT IS MY OPINION about something I DON'T LIKE?

It's not like my opinion is that the sky is plaid tartan and you must correct me that the sky is obviously never plaid tartan.

You can't talk me out of an opinion that I don't like a certain fabric because it itches me. It's HOW I feel about it.

I'm not suddenly going to turn around and say "OHHHH you're RIGHT! I don't feel the coins to be heavy at all! I'm actually loving them NOW THAT YOU TELL ME ALL THESE BITS OF INFORMATION!!

Doesn't change a THING for me.

It's a step backward and just stupid.

Replacing something light and easy to carry with something heavier and bulkier to carry.

But it's the way of the UK. Make EVERYTHING harder and crappier for people.

It's a f*****g coin when it used to be paper. STEP BACKWARD.

I wasn't trying to talk you out of your opinion, BirdInFlight, I was simply giving my own opinion in what I thought was one of the more friendly and tolerant parts of the forum.

By the way, there is a growing body of opinion amongst some influential economists that cash in all its forms should be abolished. Now that would be worrying. In my opinion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/pers ... -bust.html

I wouldn't cause an uproar if they did get rid of the penny. For one you can't buy anything with a penny anymore. * not that you can buy much for a dollar, but that's a different story * Two it costs the government more money to print it than what it is actually worth. Lastly the only people who still use coins are old people who remember buying things with a penny, or crazy people like Mark Dice. He tried to pay for a meal in Taco Bell with a gold coin. <- I'm serious this actually happened

I'm not entirely sure the sky can't be plaid tartan.

i use coins whenever i don't have enough ones. i try not to carry as much in my wallet, stuffs it up unnecessarily so. or when i'm at the car wash using the vacuums, and vending machines too.

i can understand why street performers may prefer coins, they're not as prone to fly away in the wind.



who's arguing?

My mistake, I meant to say most instead of only. My point is the majority of people I see people paying with are dollar bills or a credit card.