Think about this. The United States of America is in a 17 trillion dollar debt, yet 9,746,316,900 dollars a year go into making useless pennies. On the other hand, billions of single pennies go into charities, and people are attached to our one-cent coin. There are different opinions on keeping or not keeping the penny in circulation; it has become a large dispute throughout the country. In my view, the penny should be dropped out of circulation because it hurts the economy, it has less than no value, and ends up in a piggy bank or in your sock drawer. To illustrate the point that pennies are useless, you cannot buy anything with a penny anymore. Vending machines, washing machines, and literally all other machines of the sort only use quarters or dollars, according to William Safire, political columnist for the New York Times. Also, the penny costs 2.41 cents to produce, which is more than double it’s value, according to Nancy Smith, author of Why We Need to Keep the Penny in Circulation. Plus, if a single penny is useless, a whole bunch of pennies isn’t any better. At stores, they no longer sell anything for a penny, or two, or even …show more content…
If you try paying for something in a store with a fistful of pennies, you can expect dirty looks from both the clerk and the other customers - if the store doesn’t just refuse to take them. Pennies are so hard to spend that many people don’t even bother. They just store them all in jars, or even throw them away. Interestingly, 5% of our pennies is copper, and the remaining 95% is zinc, according to the article A Brief History Of The U.S. Cent. By using tons and tons of these materials in our pennies, we are wasting our natural materials from our Earth that aren’t going to be there