A Nickel For Your Thoughts?

Lincoln is being assassinated a second time.

The White House ordered the end of production of the penny because it literally doesn’t make a lot of cents.  It just costs more to make pennies than they’re worth.  And in Congress, there’s a bipartisan bill to eliminate the penny and have prices rounded to the nearest nickel.

I’m sorry, but I must object.  There’s no way that the private sector is going to allow the government to tell it that an item that costs $6.51 today will cost $6.50. Companies will lobby for their God-given right to, in this example, round up the price to $6.55.  Pennies should continue to be minted simply because consumers will have to pay more for goods.  Multiply a few cents by roughly three hundred million consumers, and corporations will make out like bandits.

The good news is that nobody is suggesting that pennies be demonetized.  A few weeks ago, I was in Canada, and when I tried to pay for something in cash in the amount was something like $4.22, I tried to pay exact change but the counterperson explained to me that Canada had demonetized its penny back in 2012, after Canada had stopped minting it. Prices remain in ones instead of being rounded to fives and they simply write off any extra one to four cents when the price is paid in cash.  I honestly don’t know how that could ever work here.  But there are probably so many pennies in circulation now in the U.S. that the American penny likely won’t be demonetized for a long, long time.

Personally, I’d like to see the one dollar bill replaced completely by one-dollar coins . . . but that’s another topic.