Should the penny be abolished?

[StateBoiler]

No.

It is ridiculous that we are at a point where getting rid of the penny would make sense.

Prices would inevitably be rounded UP to the nearest 5¢ while wages would be rounded down or remain unchanged.

I've thought about this and this is how you arrange it. Increase the price of everything by two cents and always round down to the nickel in cash transactions.

$0.96 goes to $0.98, you pay $0.95, decrease of $0.01 in cost
$0.97 goes to $0.99, you pay $0.95, decrease of $0.02 in cost
$0.98 goes to $1.00, you pay $1.00, increase of $0.02 in cost
$0.99 goes to $1.01, you pay $1.00, increase of $0.01 in cost
$1.00 goes to $1.02, you pay $1.00, no change in cost

So if you add $0.01, $0.02, -$0.01, and -$0.02 together, sometimes you get money back and sometimes you give money back. Over the long run that comes to no change in amount paid. And it'll save the country an exorbitant amount of money from manufacturing pennies. The only people that want to keep using the penny are the State of Arizona and the zinc lobbyists, cause most of the zinc mined comes from Arizona.

[StateBoiler]

I'd like to know whatever happened to 50 cent pieces.  I mean, I used to get them all the time.  Now, almost never.  I thought they were great!

http://www.coinflation.com/unitedstates/

According to the great Coinflation website, the metal in the half dollars (from 1916-1964) if melted down would be worth $7.26 due to the price of silver (so a return of 1452% from the original 50-cent face value of the coin). The 1965-1970 half dollar, which was 40% silver, would be $2.97 (594%).

So you could pay someone with a half dollar and they'd gladly take it, but would immediately take it out of circulation as the coin is worth more than 50 cents.

Here's some others:

The penny from 1909-1982 (95% copper) is worth 2.6 cents, or 260% of the face value of the money.

The penny from 1982 to current (97.5% zinc) is worth 0.73 cents, or 73% of the coin's value.

The nickel is right now worth 7.3 cents, or 146% of the face value of the money.

The dime and quarter are each made from the same material, and as the area of the quarter is 2.5 times that of the dime on purpose, they each are worth 24% of the face value of the money.

So for those of you that want to keep using the penny, maybe you should join us in calling for sounder money policy from the Treasury and the Fed such that the value of $0.01 stops becoming more and more worthless. I still use coins and paper money just cause doing so ensures that I don't just go spend carelessly if all I ever do is swipe a card. And those Visa commercials are horrible. That's why this country is in so much debt by making people's only connection to spending money is a piece of plastic.