Should we stop making the penny?

[Memphis1979]

How do we do away with it? Make all transactions round up to 5 cents? I don't think any business would round down.

[pvande55]

Stop minting pennies and nickels for circulation, but include them in proof sets, for which collectors will pay several dollars. Stores will change prices on $29.99 items to $29.90 so it looks less than $30.00. So there may be small savings to consumers.

[AkronAlan]

Originally Posted by KantLockeMeIn

I've got one flaw in your argument. The penny represents one cent. There's a difference between saying that we are going to stop circulating pennies and that we are going to eliminate one cent from a possible transaction cost.

It's entirely possible to retain cents for electronic transactions, where we even deal with fractions of cents for some transactions (think gasoline retailers 9/10ths of a cent practices). Any physical currency transactions would require rounding, where the consumer would most likely take a hit, rounding up when paying and getting rounded down when receiving change.

+1. The "instant inflation" argument is so silly...sellers will still have to compete with each other and it's just as likely they would round down to curry favor with their customers. And it would only be on the total bill, not each individual item which could still be priced to the penny.