Should the penny be retired? It's been our smallest-denomination coin for 150 years. But if people are leaving pennies at the cash register, is it time to get rid of them?

• Author: Gore, Jeff
• Position: DEBATE

YES

Inflation has so eaten away at the value of the penny that it is no longer useful: It is simply a nuisance.

The penny has been our lowest-denomination coin since 1857, when the halfpenny was retired. (At the time it was retired, the halfpenny was worth more than the equivalent of a dime today.)

Pennies are now worth so little that people often don't pick them up off the street, despite the lucky-penny adage. As Harvard professor of economics Gregory Mankiw points out, "When people start leaving a monetary unit at the cash register for the next customer, the unit is too small to be useful."

But what harm is caused by continuing to mint the penny? First, it's a waste of time. Most cash transactions involve the exchange of pennies, and this increases the time it takes to complete them.

Second, minting pennies is a waste of money. The U.S. Mint produces about 7 billion pennies a year at a cost of $100 million. Pennies are made of copper and zinc, two metals that have recently soared in price. Because of the high value of those metals, a penny is worth more melted down than as U.S. currency. (In fact, the Mint recently announced that it's illegal to melt down the penny.)

A simple way to retire the penny would be to round each cash transaction to the nearest nickel. Similar reforms have been successful in other countries, including Australia and the Netherlands. The U.S. might have already made similar changes if not for lobbying by the zinc industry to keep the penny in circulation.

The penny has outlived its usefulness. Let's retire it.

--Jeff Gore Citizens for Retiring the Penny

NO

Abolishing the penny would hurt both consumers and the economy.

The alternative to the penny is rounding transactions to the nearest nickel. But that will make goods and services more expensive.

Since the objective of any...