An August 8 poll conducted by Coinstar revealed that “79 percent of Americans favor keeping the penny, up from 66 percent just a year ago.” I was surprised to find out anyone cared one way or the other, but it turns out to be a pretty interesting issue.
According to this Washington Post Op-Ed, it costs almost three cents to produce and distribute one penny, wasting more than a hundred million tax dollars a year.
The National Association of Convenience Stores and the Walgreens drugstore chain have estimated that handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds per cash transaction. Assume that the average citizen makes one such transaction every day, and so wastes (to be conservative) 730 seconds a year. The median worker earns just over $36,000 a year, or about 0.5 cents per second, so futzing with pennies costs him $3.65 annually.
So, $3.65 multiplied by the number of adults living in the United States gives you about $1 billion dollars in economic resources saved by getting rid of the penny.
But it’s not so simple. The penny has cultural importance beyond its monetary value. Americans for Common Cents (a group backed in part by the zinc industry (penny-makers) argues that “to date, Abraham Lincoln is the most favorite president featured on U.S. Currency, just beating George Washington 28% to 25%.”
And I think we can all agree that the “most favorite” president deserves his own U.S. Currency.
On the other hand, traditional American values like picking up pennies off the ground are losing, um, ground. From the Cointstar poll:
- While support for picking pennies up off the ground is eroding, the practice varies widely by age group (60 percent ages 18 to 34 compared to 89 percent for seniors 65+).
- 23 percent of people who pick up pennies still respect superstition (only pick up heads), and 27 percent of this group actually turn over a bad coin (tails) to benefit the next person.
Well, at least there’s some decency left in this world.
(Thanks to The MegaPenny Project for the image of two hundred billion pennies)