Mend It, Don't End It: Affirmative Action for The Penny
The penny is obsolete and inefficient, or so they say. What is to be done? Junking the penny has its merits. But consider these four most important items from Owen’s article:
*nickels, despite their silvery appearance, are 75% copper
*producing a penny now costs about 1.7 cents
*many people are quite attached to one-cent coins
*the nickel […] now costs almost a dime to make
The clear solution derived from these key points is not to eliminate the penny but to kill of the nickel and make pennies worth five cents. The penny is a far superior aesthetic and historical object than the nickel, which has lost even the mystique of being the only piece of American currency ever to bear a (bison’s) penis. Nickels, unlike both pennies and dimes, do not fit in glass beer bottles, making them impossible to accumulate stylishly. And the awful Ms. Skeletor portrait of Jefferson adorning the new nickels is an affront to American tradition third only to the shape of the Susan B. Anthony quarter and the peekaboo papoose of its Sacagawea replacement. Pennies, by contrast, sport Honest Abe in elegant profile. They fit in beer bottles and even out unsteady wooden furniture. And, of course, they’re far cheaper to produce than nickels. Pennies are a much more affordable currency to give your children to play with and save than nickels. And so on.
The nickel is a misshapen fraud with a beastly portrait of a godless slaveowner. The penny is a pure classic that bears around the world billions of images of the Great Emancipator in all his Christian mercy, from the filthiest whorehouse to the bedsides of tykes. After all the work it’s done for us, now it’s our turn to give the penny a leg up. Ditch the nickel. Promote the penny to five-cent status.
This would really screw up the measurements of hard drugs.
— Nicholas Beaudrot · Mar 25, 08:31 PM · #
Hahahaha “Ms. Skeletor”
— Miles · Mar 25, 08:39 PM · #
I see this as nothing more than a sneaky way of keeping a Republican in circulation at the expense of a Democrat. What’s next? Are we going to bring back the $2 bill and put Reagan on it?
— jsa · Mar 25, 08:52 PM · #
Unfortunately, the penny and dime are nearly the same size, which would leave us pocket scroungers trying to feel out 4 denominations of only 2 sizes (penny and dime + quarter and dollar) should this fiendish plan succeed. I propose, as a compromise, the nickel become copper-colored and feature a non-sucky portrait of Jefferson, while the mostly-redundant-anyway dime be phased out along with the penny, thereby eliminating 1 Republican and 1 Democrat (and FDR no less! What conservative could resist that?) simultaneously.
It should also be noted that Jefferson, ever the flip-flopper, was actually a Democratic-Republican.
— Bo · Mar 25, 09:50 PM · #
Come on – it’s clear the nickel is not the problem. The problem is that too-small, too-shiny coin, the one without a major national monument on the back – the dime.
So let’s go all the way:
1. Knock a two zeroes off the currency. The former penny is now worth a dollar, but is still called a penny.
2. Drop the nickel’s value by 90%, and rename it a ha’penny.
3. Create a new coin, worth $0.125 in the new currency ($12.50 in current money), bearing the countenance of Franklin Raines, called the “bit.”
4. Retain the current quarter, still worth two bits, only now (a) there would actually be a bit that it would be worth two of; (b) it would be the plausible price of a shave and a haircut.
— Noah Millman · Mar 26, 12:42 AM · #
“Pennies are a much more affordable currency to give your children to play with and save than nickels.”
Unless, of course, one “make[s] pennies worth five cents.”
Hello, remedial logic?
— Ivan · Mar 26, 01:04 AM · #
I am renaming my new band Ha’Penny.
— James · Mar 26, 02:08 AM · #
The penny, quaint, albeit useless save for those pesky stock purchases for which it is too large, or gasoline’s former penny days now lost to looming barrel prices.
Perhaps it should be renamed The Puny
Andre Gensburger misterwriter.com
— Andre Gensburger · Mar 26, 05:40 AM · #
For the record, Lincoln doesn’t seem to have been a Christian either. Yet another reason to keep his coin.
— chuko · Mar 26, 05:09 PM · #
You are aware that Obama’s economic advisor Austan Goolsbee floated EXACTLY this plan in the New York Times several months ago, right?
— student · Mar 27, 12:18 PM · #
There’s no reason the nickel has to be made with 75% copper. As inflation continues, it could be made of an amalgam of zinc, dryer lint, and guano.
— phil · Mar 27, 03:07 PM · #
Now that’s recycling at its finest! There’s guano in the organic soil amendment I just bought and I’m afraid I’m going to get rabies from it. I suppose that’s a bat stereotype…sigh…
Pennies are one of the inconveniences that make up the comforting fabric of life. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have to push aside the pennies in my wallet while looking for nickels, dimes and quarters. I’ve enjoyed looking for wheat pennies among my other pennies since childhood and would miss doing that if we abolished the penny.
Anyone who names their band Ha’Penny nowadays deserves at least one concert with an audience.
— Joules · Mar 27, 06:30 PM · #
Groucho: “The nickel today is not what it was fifteen years ago. Do you know what this country needs today?…A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree, we’ve been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now that’s pretty near a hundred years’ daylight saving. Now, why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!”
— LG · Mar 28, 06:26 PM · #
Wow, what a lame argument. And to finish it off by insulting the most intelligent politician we’ve ever had. Not only did he write the Declaration of Independence, set the Principle of Separation of Church and State, and purchase 1/3 of the current US, he also suggested the metric currency we have today. If anyone should be on the penny, it should be Jefferson, since he is the one who suggested that a dollar should equal 100 cents.
— AxelDC · Mar 28, 10:05 PM · #
I like this idea, or at least a close variant like making a new Jefferson nickel that’s the size and composition of the current penny. The only problem is that it still doesn’t satisfy the vending machine lobby as the new nickel/five-cent penny wouldn’t have the same mass as the old one. But I think that’s pretty much unavoidable anyway, though, since all the metals that have the right density to preserve the current nickel’s mass are no longer economical.
— Howard · Mar 29, 01:17 AM · #
Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington are already on two pieces of currency each, so it’s not too terrible if we lose them. I say ditch the penny, nickel, and dime, and put FDR on the quarter. Then introduce a bit (worth half a quarter of course) but put Groucho on that.
— Tom · Mar 29, 04:42 PM · #
Why go through this confusing, convoluted process instead of simply remedying the inflation that makes it cost more than a penny to produce a penny?
— Pieter Friedrich · Mar 30, 12:27 AM · #
I love the idea of promoting the penny to 5 cents. Get rid of the nickle, and rename the penny, the “pickle”. Jefferson’s on the 2 dollar bill, which is still in circulation by the way. He won’t mind. I’ve been hauling nickles around in my pockets for years, God forbid a cashier ever runs out of dimes (ugh). I would however, really miss my ritual of smirking at everyone standing in line while I shake my gazillion pennies, balls of pocket lint, and movie theater ticket stubs into the coinstar machine at the supermarket.
— ejo · Apr 1, 01:00 AM · #