Now, I hear you stirring. What, get rid of the one coin that looks different than the others, you say? What about Abraham Lincoln? Wouldn’t that make sellers raise prices? Don’t we need pennies? For, like, the metric system or something?
The simple answer is no, we don’t. In 1972, a penny was worth what a nickel is worth today, and yet the economy kept floating right along. In this day and age, there is no reason we need a coin worth 1/100 of a dollar. Do you get angry when gas stations round your total up from the 1/1000 of a cent they use to calculate? Probably not, because 1/1000 of a cent is not only beyond legal tender but also infinitesimal. The penny is the same.  Rounding up to the nearest nickel, or even dime, will have negligible effects on consumers.
On my desk, along with a bunch of other stuff I rarely look at, I keep a plastic container full of almost all the coins I have received from transactions since freshman year. In all that time, I have collected $1.42 in pennies, in comparison to the $26 in quarters emptying the container in preparation for this article yielded. Statistically speaking, rounding every transaction to the nearest nickel would lose me barely any of that $1.42; but even if I did somehow lose ALL of that through rounding, the loss of a Coke’s worth of money over the span of two years seems inconsequential in the face of never having to deal with those fake copper discs ever again.
There is no reason we need a coin worth 1/100 of a dollar. The cheapest burger on the Mugshots menu costs $7.59 (which brings up another point. If we get rid of pennies, merchants will no longer be able to use this condescending “nine cents look cheaper” practice). If you decided you wanted to pay for that burger with only pennies, you would have to haul around over 4 lbs. in coins. Compare that to 1.67 lbs. in nickels. (Although in a perfect upheaval of the U.S. coin system, nickels would be done away with as well, or at the very least undergo a change in composition: They cost 6 cents to make.) That is why vending machines and parking meters and waiters at fancy restaurants don’t accept pennies: they’re inefficient and have a use value of next to nothing.
Indeed, pennies are more useless now than ever before. It costs the U.S. Mint 1.6 cents to make each penny. This means the U.S. government actually LOSES money on every single penny it makes. Not only does the government directly lose money in making the penny, but several studies have shown that consumers also lose up to a billion dollars per year in efficiency as cashiers, consumers and tellers fumble over pennies. Eliminating the penny could go a long way toward lowering the national debt.
So why do we still have pennies? Because getting rid of them is a nonpartisan issue without political pull. Democrats and Republicans cannot fight over whether or not we should kill the penny because an equal number of them agree we should and many of them are afraid of their districts. While Canada quickly and efficiently revitalizes their economy, our Congress bickers over a budget and turns in their homework late. But you can do something about this. Send a note to your congressman telling him how you admire Canada’s action. We must stand together against the penny. It’s what Abraham Lincoln would do.