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What we have here is a failure to communicate


jsharr

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Cool Hand Luke..

I believe that is a technical violation of the counterfeiting law. Technical because pennies aren't actually worth anything.

Money is a medium of transaction, and you can't buy anything with a penny. It's not money, it exists solely  because business wants it.

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32 minutes ago, late said:

It's not money, it exists solely  because business wants it.

Actually more like people and politicians want it. Businesses would like them to go away and round up to the next nickel.

The dollar coins make a lot of sense; however, people don't like change. Change - get it!

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6 hours ago, JerrySTL said:

Actually more like people and politicians want it. Businesses would like them to go away and round up to the next nickel.

The dollar coins make a lot of sense; however, people don't like change. Change - get it!

Politicians don't care about pennies, that's silly.

Businesses like it. It's an advertising gimmick, they aren't selling something useless for 10 bucks, oh no, it's $9.99

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12 hours ago, late said:

Politicians don't care about pennies, that's silly.

Businesses like it. It's an advertising gimmick, they aren't selling something useless for 10 bucks, oh no, it's $9.99

Actually politicians have blocked attempts to do away with pennies. There's even lobbyists hired to keep politicians 'informed' probably with more than a few pennies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_States#cite_note-28

That wouldn't stop businesses. Remember that a gallon of gasoline is marketed like $2.99. That's not even a full penny!

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26 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

Actually politicians have blocked attempts to do away with pennies. There's even lobbyists hired to keep politicians 'informed' probably with more than a few pennies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_States#cite_note-28

That wouldn't stop businesses. Remember that a gallon of gasoline is marketed like $2.99. That's not even a full penny!

Amazing!  Maybe the government could just buy the same amount of zinc as usual, find a way to use it somewhere else, but get rid of the penny as well?

Lobbying:

- The sole provider of zinc "penny blanks", Jarden Zinc Products of Greeneville, Tennessee, has hired lobbyists to make the case for preserving the penny and their sales.[28] Jarden Zinc Products is located within the First United States Congressional District of Tennesee, currently represented within the United States House of Representatives by U.S. Rep. Phil Roe.

- The coin lobby Citizens to Retire the Penny support the elimination of the United States one-cent coin.[29]

- In a 2015 survey regarding US currency, fifty-six percent of coin and numismatic experts declared that they on average believe that the penny will be phased out by around the year 2026

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30 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

Actually politicians have blocked attempts to do away with pennies. There's even lobbyists hired to keep politicians 'informed' probably with more than a few pennies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_States#cite_note-28

That wouldn't stop businesses. Remember that a gallon of gasoline is marketed like $2.99. That's not even a full penny!

Retailers, and miners, lobby politicians to keep the penny.

 

 

 

http://fortune.com/2012/04/11/dont-mess-with-the-penny-lobby/

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The real U.S. pennies made before 1982 were in big demand by high school chemistry teachers, who would have paid a bounty for them, because we used to do a lab where you cleaned then coated the 95% copper pennies with zinc, held them above a bunsen burner's flame, and watched them turn into brass.

But, during 1982 they began making today's pennies that are 97.5% zinc with a thin layer of copper covering it.  You could still potentially make brass pennies, but when you held the newer pennies in the flame, the zinc would soften and the penny would become crushed by the tongs you held it with.

The problem was that the 95% copper pennies were worth a lot more than a penny and people were collecting, melting them down, and selling the copper.

As other nations have done, we should have a newly designed dollar - perhaps with lots of colors like other nations do, with a different design, worth perhaps 10-20 of the old dollars.  There would have to be new coins to easily distinguish them.  The fact that most money exchanges are done electronically would make it work.

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6 minutes ago, jsharr said:

I hope a math teacher did not pay $3.50 for 100 fake pennies.....

Can’t use the real thing with special education students who suck on their fingers all the time, or hoard. 

And #2 never really learned to count money in spite of all efforts made. 

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1 minute ago, roadsue said:

Can’t use the real thing with special education students who suck on their fingers all the time, or hoard. 

And #2 never really learned to count money in spite of all efforts made. 

all the stuff in plastic can't be any better than real pennies.  You could boil them first to sterilize them.

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4 minutes ago, jsharr said:

all the stuff in plastic can't be any better than real pennies.  You could boil them first to sterilize them.

But it’s consistent. And easy to clean. Real coins look different from each other. And when you get into quarters, it’s costly to supply the classes with 100 quarters. 

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1 minute ago, roadsue said:

But it’s consistent. And easy to clean. Real coins look different from each other. And when you get into quarters, it’s costly to supply the classes with 100 quarters. 

Hey @jsharr, how much for 100 plastic quarters?  That's got to be 'spensive, but worth it.

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When I was stationed on Okinawa there were no pennies.  Everything was rounded to the nearest .05 cents.  It was not cost effective to ship pennies over there.  This was when debit cards were just starting to become a thing.  Nobody took them yet.  They were still really just like ATM cards. 

When I got gas I would always get 15.02 so that I would get an extra .02 cents worth of gas and not have to pay for it. 

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