WITHER THE PENNY?

 …my two cents worth…

 

Stop the presses! The practice of minting the penny is going to be halted. Discontinued. Stopped. One of the two current Presidents of the United States has demanded it!

     Why? Because, while the little copper colored disk has a face value of one cent, the cost to manufacture one costs 3.7 cents.  It’s a money loser! It’s among the reasons the treasury of this Grand Republic is going bankrupt. It’s nothing personal; it’s strictly business. “I know, Godfather,” ~ think Abe Vigoda here ~ “Strictly business.”

 

But consider this (understanding that the pricing references in this commentary may be a bit out of date ~ like by about fifty years): On his way home from second grade, Billy drops by Harvey’s Market and, pulling a penny from his pocket, buys a hunk of Fleer Bubble Gum. Or maybe Bazooka ‘cuz their comics are better. Billy has gotten his one cent worth out of the penny and the coin goes into Harvey’s till until Mrs. Jones offers seventy-five cents in the form of three quarters for two bundles of carrots priced at twenty-nine cents a bundle. Billy’s penny leaves Harvey’s till as Harvey makes seventeen cents change. In dispensing the penny back into circulation, the one cent coin has seen two cents worth of action. Before Mrs. Jones goes home, she must go downtown to purchase some new boxers for Mr. Jones at JC ~ wait for it ~ Penney’s. But because of those damned parking meters, she must drop two pennies in the meter in return for twenty-four minutes parking. One of those pennies had belonged to Billy about an hour-and-a-half earlier. Around 6:00 PM, Rita ~ you guessed it ~ the meter maid, empties the parking meter which includes the traveling copper of this opinion piece. It has now returned three times its face value. Rolled and returned to the bank, the city receives value. Harvey, needing change for another day’s marketing shows up at the bank and buys ~ among other coinage ~ two rolls of 50 pennies each for a buck. David, the candy and tobacco wholesaler swings into Harvey’s Market to drop off several boxes of 24/fives (two dozen five-cent candy bars costing Harvey 90 cents a box) and two 10 pack cartons of White Owl cigars wholesaling for $3.18 each. The penny becomes David’s. David uses the penny when he stops by Big Al’s for a burger and fries and a low-cal Fresca at lunch and Big Al turns the penny over to a customer in change a few minutes later. In less than twenty-four hours, the Billy’s penny has changed hands eight or nine times returning eight or nine times its face value – far more than its cost of manufacture.

Coins are simply tokens ~ tokens that represent monetary value. But they are not the value itself. As the penny is exchanged its worth as a tool increases. The longer it circulates, the more worth is accrued. (The same might be said for us old people.) 

     Now, following this little diatribe ~ which I shall loftily refer to as ‘logic’ ~ it is evident that the minuscule penny holds far more worth than its face value; far more worth than its cost of manufacture.

     Truth be told, I don’t really care if the US mint quits minting pennies, but given the above scenario and related elucidation, the death of the penny might well be viewed as a little ‘non-cents-icle.’

 

Author’s Note: What if the preceding wasn’t simply about the lowly penny? What if it was about USAID? Or the National Park Service or Forest Service? Or the reduction in IRS personnel charged with both expediting tax refunds and fighting tax fraud? What if the above was a metaphor for the indiscriminate ‘cost saving’ hatchet that cripples services to all Americans and our leadership in the twenty-first century world? What if, indeed...

 

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