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V11 2008 INDEX
E-SYLUM ARCHIVE
DICK JOHNSON REFUTES COLUMNIST'S REASONS TO SAVE THE CENT
Dick Johnson submitted the following comments on a recent editorial in favor of keeping the lowly U.S. cent. -Editor
Peter Funt lives in Pebble Beach California and writes a column in the Monterey Herald. This week he wrote a column defending the cent. He doesn't want the government to dump the penny. He gave three reasons. (1) Merchants will always round up costing citizens $100 millions a year. Not true. A recent study mentioned here in E-Sylum previously that. at the most, it would balance out, costing an average family no more than $2 a year (saving hundreds of millions at the mint, in banking, and in retail stores). Also, as evidenced by a drug chain in Israel when the lowest coin was eliminated, they always rounded down, advertised this widely and gained a competitive advantage over their competitors.
(2) Charities would lose out from penny drives. Wrong again. Wouldn't they now have nickel drives? How much more would that net the charities! Why does the figure five come to mind?
(3) He remembered a custom from his youth when neighbors at Halloween stuck a dozen or more cents in a apple and handed these to children. You couldn't eat the apple and you had to wash the coins before you could spend them. No wonder this custom faded, not good use of either apples or cents.
Sorry, Peter your reasons are specious. Why not eliminate the lowest denomination coin in America like other counties have already, and Canada is strongly considering. Such a program would save money at every step of retail trade, not to mention the handling costs for banks, and the unwieldy cost in producing the coins at the Mint. The cent must ultimately be abolished - it is no longer viable as a circulating coin denomination.
Hundreds of billions in savings far outweigh any specious sententimentality for the old cent.
To read the complete article, see: Peter Funt: Don't dump the penny (http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_11145541?nclick_check=1)
Dick adds:
Add Mexico to the list of countries with plans to alter their current coins because of rising costs. Their plan is just to make the coins smaller.
Mexico wants to shrink coins to save a few cents (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iH_RY_jH70z1IuzKXXb-QHQdAJ5wD94SBCU80)Wayne Homren, Editor
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