Should We Keep the Penny Essay Example

Three minutes later, you are still in line behind that one customer taking a century to count out their change in order to utilize those useless pennies weighing down their pockets.  Besides the classic “Help, my kid swallowed a penny!” story, there are several reasons why pennies should be phased out.  Pennies are bad for the environment, cost more to make then they are worth, and waste time as well as space.

To begin, one of the most important reasons pennies should be eliminated is because pennies are poor for the environment.  Since many pennies are considered with such low worth, they are often not picked up when dropped and people rarely attempt to look for them when lost.  The metals that the penny is made up of can harm the soil and water, and this will not leave humans unaffected.  In order to obtain the materials needed to produce the penny, mining is necessary which creates pollution as a result of mass-producing a coin that is not even necessary for the economy.  

Furthermore, the penny should be phased out because it is worth less than the actual cost to produce it.  After totally up all of the costs in order to produce the penny, it is quite obvious that the penny is worth less that it costs.  Once you add the mining costs, labor, and the materials, the penny does not amount for the cost.  When looking at the big picture, phasing out the penny would save money in the long run.  

Lastly, the penny is completely useless in the sense that it wastes time and space.  In store lines, many customers would rather count out exact change for the cashier, or else they may be handed a whole handful of coins as change.  For example, pennies are often vacuumed up from between the seats of cars.  Walking around, it is often to find a penny on the ground, but how often are they picked up?  However, seeing a quarter on the ground is a rare find, and would certainly be picked up.  

Some people may say that pennies are worth producing because they circulate several times through the economy, however, this is rarely true for pennies because they are so often lost, dropped, and disregarded.  

Pennies should be phased out of the American currency because the production costs weigh out the worth, the production and materials are harmful for the environment, and they are a waste of time and space.  Many other countries’ economies are thriving without the use of a penny.