The persistence of the penny is a symptom, in my view, of just how apathetic and dysfunction the political system is at every level. It's a small annoyance, with a small fix that has been done by other countries with good results. That it isn't done is largely just a matter of people not participating in the process at all, and congress not really doing their job.

It's a small thing, but then, so is a canary in a coal mine. This penny thing has been an irritant for years, and the things presaged by accepting that are starting to emerge... like failing infrastructure.

Yes, several countries have done away with the smallest denomination. Nothing to miss about carrying less coins around

But the $1 bill really ought to be a coin instead

At what point is the nickel not worth the effort to keep around as well? It might be easier to sell everyone on the idea of rounding to the nearest 10 cents to keep prices nice and even.

The penny lobby [1] is a front for the zinc industry. Mostly Jarden Zinc Products.

[1] http://www.pennies.org

> The reason why we have money is so that they can facilitate trade of goods and services so that we don’t have to barter like savages.

This is entirely wrong. In high school you're taught that we went from barter to money to credit, but in reality, the earliest human economies were credit based.

People sometimes say, "x society collapsed and reverted to barter," but in every case, they "revert" to the currency of trade from the previous state .. or they use something generic like "Oxen" but they never actually trade in real Oxen; they just use it as a unit of measure.

I do agree the penny should be deprecated, and I know it sounds nit-picky, but myths like this prop up a narrative that doesn't match with history, and it distorts our perception of what money and markets truly are.

I highly recommend the book Debt the First 5,000 Years, as it goes into great detail about the history of debt, money and slavery.

Not a fan of the "they cost more to make than they're worth" argument. How much does it cost to make a $100 bill?

Nevertheless, we Canadians have been without pennies for a few years now. I have no complaints, just less change, which is nice.

The flip side of US denominational conservativism that appeared starting in, oh, the 1950s or so is that $20 bills are effectively the maximum value you can depend on being routinely accepted.

I get $100 bills to travel overseas (and they're routinely accepted if I'm using US currency for something). But I'd in no way depend on getting a $50 or $100 accepted in a US store. I admit that I see fewer signs to that effect these days than I maybe did in the past but I do have to go int to a bank teller if I want to get $100 bills for travelling.

Americans are too sentimental, its why we could never switch to the metric system. And congress voting to get rid of the penny is so low on priority I wouldn't count on it happening soon.

Pennies are made because there is demand. If businesses stop requesting rolls of pennies, the mint would make less of them. If you want to get rid of pennies lobby businesses to round their after tax prices to the nearest nickel. Just McDonalds and Walmart dropping the penny might cut the amount in circulation by a significant amount.

When I visited India I found that one rupee is the smallest increment offered. It's very roughly equivalent to the American nickel. Even though cost of living there is much cheaper, the coarser grain of currency does not cause trouble.

When available currency has limited resolution merchants simply adjust their quantities to match.

Wouldn't it be nice to just pay 3.50 and get a tad more product than 3.37 and futz with the change?

The problem in the US with getting rid of pennies is that the US does not quote prices with sales tax included (unlike every other country on the planet). If you do that then you can quote prices at appropriate price points (4.25, 5.95 etc)

Of course if you get rid of the penny then rounding only occurs when you pay with cash - when you pay with a card you still get to pay to the penny

There is a basic problem with this argument.

There are lots of places in the world that accept and use the dollar as a means of trade, where the penny is still of value.

https://qz.com/260980/meet-the-countries-that-dont-use-their...

What amounts to a rounding error for most Americans would quickly add up in places that depend on the dollar for currency (official or un officially) as they typically have larger marginal populations.

Obligatory link to John Oliver discussing the same topic in his usual manner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI

Archived copy that can be read without JS enabled:

https://archive.fo/wM6HU

Do other countries have nicknames for their coins?

In Poland, if you want to talk about a particular coin, you use its denomination.