The modern era has provided the grave for the penny to be buried in.

Once
carrying a pedigree dating back to 1787, today the penny is unfit for purchasing even
the cheapest of goods (Source B). In the past, it was a hallmark of American pride, the
face of a revolutionary and beloved president adorning the coin. But now, it is one of the
least used coins, often forgotten in couch cushions and bedside cracks, a distant
reminder of what used to be. This currency has not passed the test of time and remains
a useless burden from the past. The penny should be eliminated because it is outdated
and the resources associated with it could be put to better use than producing pennies.
Today, the penny is an outdated artifact that has not kept up with the current
economy. In the recent past, the penny was a small, but significant amount of money
used to purchase penny candy or participate in penny-ante poker. Today? Not a chance,
and on the contrary, a person who even attempts to buy anything solely with a penny
will be laughed out of the facility. It takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny
bought back in 1950 and for a person to carry around ten pennies to purchase what
could be bought with one coin is irrational, and it becomes worse and worse as we work
up the currency scale (Source C). A person would never prefer to purchase a dollar
meal with one hundred pennies over a single, lightweight, paper dollar. In fact the penny
is almost only used to give exact change, something that could easily be rectified if laws
implementing a rounding up or down of cash transaction were put into place (Source A).
The continued use of the penny is simply unfeasible, unviable because of the
overwhelming lack of worth it holds.
The idea of opportunity costs suggests that while something might not inherently
be bad, the resources used to create it could be put to better use elsewhere, causing

the original object to become bad by comparison. The penny uses time, precious
resources, and manpower that could be used elsewhere or just saved. For example, on
average, handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds to each transaction which over the
course of a year, for every person, stacks up to a loss of over $15 billion dollars per year
(Source B). A penny is simply not worth the time it takes to use when factored into the
big picture. The time spent fishing for two or three pennies out of ones pocket nearly
invalidates the point of currency which according to Jeff Gore is to facilitate
transactions as it holds up both the customer and the people behind him in line (Source
B). Another point of contention is the fact that creating currency, especially one billion
pennies, requires a large source of metals to craft the pennies (Source C). This is an
almost wasteful endeavor of the limited stores of metals we have, and, to create
something as irrelevant in our daily lives as the penny, a huge disappointment.
Furthermore, the material that the penny is made up of has changed, presumably
because of cost, and caused tension and problems between the states that supply the
metals (Source A). The penny is causing an economic conflict beyond someone being
yelled at for taking too long to dig out their pennies. The pennys massive use of semiprecious metals is wasteful, and we wont know when we need to use this metal again.
To have the majority of it trapped in sofa cushions seems like a misuse of resources.
Finally, the penny takes away from employees of the U.S. government as government
workers who could be more usefully employed tracking counterfeiters are instead
printing millions of pennies a day (Source C).
Counter arguments against the removal of the penny exist, but are overall much
weaker than the arguments for the removal of the penny. For example, one may argue

that the penny is not a waste of resources as it has the same drop off rate as the rest of
the coins in circulation at around 5.6 percent (Source D). However, just because a coin
does not disappear after being minted does not mean it is being used. The fact still
stands that, often times, a penny is not useful enough to be used on its own accord or
even as change because of the inflation caused by the economy. Today, it takes nearly
a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950, hinting at the growing
uselessness of the penny, a situation that will only be aggravated as time passes
(Source C). Another argument for the penny is that most Americans do not want it to be
removed, possibly on accord of its ceremonial value as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln.
According to Source E, fifty-nine percent of Americans do not want to remove the penny
and according to Source F, the penny is perhaps the most visible and tangible reminder
of Lincolns significance in American history. While these are valid points against the
removal of the penny, these arguments can be appeased in other ways. While a
majority of Americans did want the penny to stay, it wasnt a considerable majority.
Combine this with the fact that there was a considerable minority that wasnt sure
reveals the fact that people arent exposed to enough about the penny to create a wellinformed thought. People could be leaning towards the comfortable and not advocating
for change because they dont know the reasons and conflicts the penny brings. Also,
when addressing the fact that the penny has ceremonial value, the ceremonial value of
something is often based off of peoples perception of that item. In essence, the penny
does not give Abraham a legacy, we just represent his legacy in the penny.
Furthermore, the penny can still have a ceremonial value without bringing the harms
that it does. For example, the U.S. mint creates a host of ceremonial coins with no

currency value and the penny could transition to that kind of role, or Abraham Lincoln
could be celebrated in a different way.
Clearly, the penny is a tool of the past, and, like many tools of the past, has
become outdated by the changing times and other more efficient tools. The penny has
not caught up with inflation, its worth diminishing every year. Because of this, more
pennies are required to purchase goods, and the time spent fishing the coins out of
peoples pockets are wasted. Furthermore, the penny takes resources away, specifically
manpower and natural resources, from other more important roles. Government
workers could be better put into departments than printing 10 billion pennies a month as
well as the zinc and copper used could be simply saved for posterity. Clearly, the
modern era has brought upon the death of the penny, and it is our solemn duty to give it
a dignified funeral.