I'm with vulgarian on this one. A decimalized monetary system just doesn't work without some kind of 1 cent piece

I thought about gas prices. They also would go up in five cent increments (not like the don't already, I guess). But it's definitely a short.

On a side note, I think they should stop printing the dollar and replace it with a coin.

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Here in Boston the MBTA subway system sells its fare cards through machines that spit dollar coins out at you as change. I like the things as being more eco-friendly and durable than coins. they also kind of beef up the vacation fund because they end up in the change jar with everything else.

I could deal with losing the 1 dollar note.

I think something like what pieces of eight used to be may work better.

The Euro, and the Pound both have a coin worth 2 of them both. I found those very useful and would be pleased if the US would follow suit. Perhaps a $3 coin would be better the way the dollar is dropping in value!!!

y'all are putting too much logic and not enough selfish self-serving politics in. It's an election year, no one's gonna rock the boat.

Short

ejcassel

Well................. Getting rid of the penny would cost $$$ plus, the US mint has enough pennies to last until 2011, so this is stupid!

ejcassel has a point, nobody is going to try and change what the U.S monetary system is already, but as soon as the elections are over I can see some politicians waking up and saying "we're losing money with the penny...", then doing something about it.

While I'm definitely short on this (it won't happen this year), I do believe that we should ditch the penny. The argument against is that then we would have to round purchases to the nearest 5 cent. That is no problem. We already round sales taxes and gasoline purchases to the nearest cent and no-one complains. Rounding to the nearest 5 cent is no harder. There is no real need to recall pennies. Just stop production and let the market decide how to live without them.
I'm also a fan of stopping production of the dollar bill. The dollar coin is an adequate replacement and costs less in the long run (it lasts much longer than the bill).

BTW, what happened when they eliminated the half cent piece?

The last sentence of this spells January wrong...