The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

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The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

The student newspaper of, by, and for Ames High School.

The WEB

Let’s get rid of pennies!

A couple week ago I was at Wal-Mart. I went to the self-checkout machine with a small assortment of food items, as well as a copy of the Hunger Games (my springboard onto the bandwagon). I watched with absolute horror as my purchase totalled $20.01. In my wallet, I had 2 twenty dollar bills and no coins. I hastily looked around for a penny. I asked my shopping partner if she had one, but alas, she did not. With dread, I put in my cash and watched as change that consisted of the greatest amount of coinage possible spilled out of the machine into my hands. Those 99 coins were 99 more coins than I wanted to have. The point is, I hate coins, and pennies are the worst of them all. They have virtually no value, and most people wouldn’t even bend over on the street to pick one up. In fact, according to this article in the New Yorker , if you take more than 6.15 seconds to stop on the street to grab a penny, it doesn’t even pay minimum wage. Penny are also a waste of our tax money. A penny costs 1.7 cents to make, so the Treasury to loses about fifty million dollars every year producing them. If we’re going to keep the penny, I say we should at least make it worth 2 cents, because losing money to make something so worthless seems ridiculous to me. Pennies also waste our time. According to RetirethePenny.org , we waste 2.4 hours a year handling pennies or waiting for people to handle them. Waiting for someone to dig through their purse to find exact change is a frustrating example of this that we all can relate to. Pennies are worthless, a misuse of tax money, and a waste of time. Let’s round off prices at the nickel and get rid of this stupidity forever.

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