The Death Of The Penny - A Thesis

     Soon, I will be making a persuasive speech in my English class on a topic that has risen to more and more internet popularity over the past year: The question of whether or not Americans should eliminate the minting of the penny.

     Now, this is the thesis for my speech, so it's going to be structured as followed: A short introduction, my three main arguments, and a final conclusion.

     Money is a medium that facilitates the exchange for goods and services. To be sure you don't overpay, the money is divided, all the way down to a hundredth of a dollar: the penny. This penny used to have buying power, but, because of inflation, this is no longer the case... So why do we still keep them around? Honestly, there isn't much of a case for the penny. Against it however.....

• Argument #1: The penny costs more to make than it is worth.

     The penny costs 2.4 cents to make. 6'015'200'000 pennies were made in 2012. So, last year, American taxpayers payed 144'364'800$ to receive 60'152'000$ in pennies, effectively throwing away 84'212'800$. 

• Argument #2: Pennies require effort to spend.

     Payphones, vending machines, parking meters, don't accept pennies, as the opportunity cost (which I will get into later)lost spent counting, sorting, and transporting the coins far outweighs their worth. The only machine that takes the penny is coinstar, a machine that counts the amount of change you put into it, and takes 11.9% of it. Thus, the only way to rid ourselves of the coins is through exact change. This adds time to our purchases, and again makes us lose out on opportunity costs. Since spending it requires so much effort, pennies end up in jars, useless and failures at their jobs.

• Argument #3: Pennies create opportunities for Americans to lose money.

     The United States is home to 313 914 040 Americans. On average, an extra 2 seconds are added onto every cash transactions because of the fiddling with pennies. It has been calculated by Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post that if Americans makes, on average, one transaction per day, they waste approximately 730 seconds per year. Since the average salary is about 36,000$ a year, we can conclude that each American could have an extra 3.65$ in their pocket every year. It doesn't sound like much, but on the large scale, if every, single American could have that extra 3.65$, they would collectively make 1'145'786'246$. So Americans essentially pay, in taxes, 144'364'800$ to mint pennies so they can have the opportunity to lose over 1 billion dollars. 

     In the end the penny is a pointless investment, with no benefit for the taxpayers that pay for them. I think we should remove them from circulation and reep the benefits. 

A very passionate rant/essay from me,
~Kimzy