There are lots of people who want to eliminate the penny, but everyone who argues for the elimination of the penny speaks from a position of wealth and privilege.
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Some of the arguments against the penny include:
Pennies are worthless. Apparently, according to this argument, no one uses pennies any more. They don't buy anything.
Pennies waste time. Pennies take too much time to make, too much time to pick up off the ground, too much time waiting for cashiers to give pennies as change, too much time waiting for people to dig extra pennies out of pockets, wallets, and bottoms of purses.
Pennies are expensive. It costs too much to make pennies.
It doesn't matter if prices go up. They're going to go up anyway, so what?
Let me address these arguments.
Pennies are valuable. Pennies have fed my family in hard times. Pennies have paid my mortgage at times - as recently as last month. Penny drives fund many charities, especially the small ones. Pennies for Wildflowers is a popular charity in Oklahoma that provides funds to keep our highways beautiful and to feed wildlife. It's such a small charity that it doesn't even have a web presence, but most Okies (at least in the OKC area) know about it and pitch their pennies into the collection jars. Many Camp Fire and Scout troops are supported by penny drives.
Our society feels wealthy enough that many people are comfortable tossing pennies away - and that is great news for people who are poor or living on the edge of poverty.
If I'm desperate for money, a walk through a mall parking lot can often bring enough pennies (and the occasional dime) to help me get what I need. Last month, the hotel where I did some volunteer work billed me for the use of the room instead of the organization sponsoring the event. That put me critically short of making my mortgage. I'm in the habit of picking up parking lot pennies (not just from parking lots, but that's where I mostly find them), so I had a jar full, and I went out to pick up pennies at the local mall parking lot and found enough pennies to pay my mortgage payment. Not just a portion of it, but the entire mortgage - from pennies.
When I was homeless, living out of my ex's car with our children, pennies found in parking lots and parks kept gas in the car and kept the children fed.
Pennies have often been the one thing I could always count on being there for me when I was in need. When I die, my children will probably find a hoard of pennies I've been saving just because I might need them one day. No matter how wealthy I might ever become, the penny is always going to be my standard. Without the penny, I and many, many other people wouldn't be able to survive.
Pennies are the urban gleanings of wealth. Where once the wealthy left the dribs and drabs of the the harvested fields for the poor to come along and collect for food, so the wealthy should consider the pennies in their pockets the gleanings for the poor to come after and collect for food.
Pennies build I left that incomplete because there are so many things pennies build - character, math skills, compassion, economic understanding, art appreciation, history, futures. How can those benefits ever be a waste of time? I think the penny-haters are whiners who don't understand the true value of a penny. Without the penny, an understanding of math would be more difficult for young children. Saving pennies in their little piggy banks teaches children valuable lessons in budgeting, financial planning, charity, anticipation, and priceless lessons in spending habits - all excellent character building activities. One could argue that a nickel will do as well as a penny, but the lesson is sharper and more complete with pennies.
Pennies are expensive This is, as far as I'm concerned, an invalid argument. Ways can be found to make the physical penny less expensive. A wealthy society can afford to continue to produce the penny to benefit its poorer citizens. There's that penny, being an object lesson in compassion and charity.
Prices are going up anyway Which makes it all the more imperative that we retain the penny so our poorer citizens can afford those higher prices.
Every argument against the penny is one of wealth, privilege, and cold-heartedness.
The penny is the modern day gleanings of the fields, and while the wealthy may deem a penny to be an item of zero worth, something to be left behind or eliminated, the poor live off those pennies.
The only reason to eliminate the penny is to punish the poor.
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This terrific bumper sticker from koosah on Paul Ryan's support for "personhood." - In Kaili Joy Gray's Diary.
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