American History And The American Civil War

Did you know the first penney the u.S. has ever seen was created and produced in the year 1857? The penny we know of has been in the states for 161 years. In the year 2012 there was a proposal that the United States get rid of the penny, the least valuable coin in the money system. The penny has so little value, but cost too much to make. Although the U.S. loses millions of dollars a year to the production of pennies, American pennies should not be ceased minting because of the risk of economic changes,the piece of culture they each possess and their “ power in numbers”.

The penny, also known simply as the one-cent coin, was first made about 230 years ago in 1787. The first penny ever made was 100% copper and it was heavier and larger than the usual penny today. The design itself was suggested by the famous Benjamin Franklin ("A Brief History of the U.S. Cent”). Lately, people have talked about the idea of abolishing the penny, but others disagree. The penny should not be abolished.

To start off, Binyamin Appelbaum, author from www.nytimes.com, states that making 100 cents once costed 143 cents. “Thanks to the magic of inflation, what cost a penny in 1950 requires a dime today.(Appelbaum,1)”

President Lincoln who is a great model of the USA, " would be ashamed to have his face on this specious specie"(Source C). Why would they put the face of a great president who did good things in the US on a piece of copper that has no value what so ever. He will feel no gratitude toward the country by repaying his hard work in a non-valuable piece of copper that should be helping but its really not. As years pass by, the economy is changing by how much money is worth by stating that, " you can't buy anything with a penny any more"(Source C). The penny was worth more back then but now you can't even buy a piece of gum with it. If the penny can't even buy a product why keep it around, its not like its being used. It can also be said that, " Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation" (Source C). Meaning to say that approximately sixty-six percent of pennies disappear or just end up in a place where it will eventually be

Though some parties may claim that the penny holds value to the United States, majority of the arguments presented are invalid or out of date. Examples such as the man who has saved “90 pennies a day” (Source B) are an extreme case that cannot be used to argue for continuation of the penny. In the average lifespan of an American denizen, it is improbable that one will have the time to collect this many pennies. In addition, on order for this man to reach his grand total of $13,084.59 took about forty years, making this argument illogical as the process is time consuming and one can save even more by simply collecting larger denomination coins. In addition, arguments made those countries such as the “EU … and Canada” that have kept their “penny”

In recent times the U.S. penny has become a heated topic for debate. The issue people debate is whether the U.S. mint should discontinue the penny. Most Americans seem to have a definite opinion about this topic. Both sides of the argument have increasing support and a numerous amount of legitimate reasons to support their argument. In my opinion pennies are a nuisance and do not really offer enough value, therefore the U.S. Mint should discontinue the production of the penny.

Every day we buy things, and to purchase these items, most of us use credit cards or bills. Do we use pennies for virtually any transactions? The answer is no, we don’t. Consequently, the penny is far and away the least useful monetary value we have. Pennies are inefficient and should be cut out of the currency. The rationale behind this conclusion is simple: the price tag of minting a penny is more than one cent. Unfortunately for the penny, two other reasons prove that we require it no longer. The first reason is that not only will the removal of pennies make us more effective, it will drop prices similar to what happened in Australia and New Zealand when they abolished their “pennies”. The second is that we know that we do not need it

You find them behind couch cushions, in the pair of pants you tossed in the laundry, or most often, just sitting in a jar—pennies. This one-cent coin has been in circulation since the late 1700s, but within the last 10 years, they have become more costly to produce than they’re worth. This has led to discussions about whether we should keep the penny, or drop it to save money. After hearing both sides of the argument, it only makes sense to stop producing the penny, benefiting everyone who has been using these outdated coins.

The production of the one cent piece has long been a topic of controversy. Some argue for the penny saying that the penny has been a part of U.S. history for over 200 years; while those on the opposing side argue that eliminating the penny could save retail businesses time and therefore money by saving the time wasted counting pennies at the register. Some argue that we should phase out pennies because the value is so little that no one uses them; In fact, the face value of the penny is so little that it costs more to produce it. Because of the downsides to the continued production of the penny, we ought to phase the penny out.

At this point in the American economic system, there is no good use for the penny. As U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe’s press secretary, Neena Moorjani, said, “‘It’s practically useless in everyday life’” (Lewis). People can’t purchase anything with it, it creates unnecessary loose change, and it has a time consuming effect. The penny is not regarded by charge cards, it is trashed by those who find it meaningless, and is even “Hijacked by cashiers who assume you’re among the 27 percent of Americans who don’t even keep track of their loose change” (Kahn). The New York Times’s John Tierney recognized that “Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation, into piggy banks or behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers…” (Safire). Pennies vanish because no one cares about their worth. People do not have a high regard for them or their value, so they are always misplaced. Every time a penny is lost, which happens quite frequently as Tierney points out, governmental manufacturers’ time and money is being wasted. The penny is a time-consuming coin, and without it, people involved in its use would have better places to put their time. Those government manufacturers could be tracking counterfeiters if they did not have to worry about creating the penny. Pennies cost more employee hours than the cost would be to totally eliminate them (Safire). By using pennies in stores, there is a huge amount of time wasted in both the cashier’s and the buyer’s lives. There was an estimation done by the National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreens drug store chains that the use of pennies takes about 2 to 2.5 seconds. After multiple calculations and equations, they arrived at the conclusion “that each person is losing $60 per year, at a cost to the nation of over $15 billion per year” (Kahn). Time is a valuable thing in America, and losing $60 per year due to a loss of time is not

The United States dealt through many problems and challenges that they were forced to overcome. Throughout the battles that The U.S. faced, they encountered many benefits that shaped them. Such as the conflict in the west, the gilded age the change and industrialization, along with the progressive area were events that lead to the problems and issues that the United States addressed.

In 1864, the first pennies were made. In 1909, they were made with Abraham Lincoln’s face printed into it, in honor of his 100th birthday. That was 108 years ago, and pennies are still going around today, with the same president still printed on. However, many U.S. officials are saying the penny should be obsolete. More believe that the little copper and zinc coin should stay as a piece of U.S. money. This essay will give evidence on both sides, supporting them equally in their arguments on why the penny should stay, or go.

Over the recent years, there has been an argument in the US whether pennies should no longer be manufactured. In some places, the pennies have already stop making the pennies, and have started rounding to the nearest multiple of 5. We should still keep the pennies, since it has been part of the US history for long, it has expanded our culture, and it is cheaper to make compared to the nickel.

Another thing to think about is the fact that the penny costs more to make than it is worth. In Source C the writer acknowledges that, “it takes nearly a dime today to buy what a penny bought back in 1950s” yet pennies are still in circulation. This stabilizes the economy by ensuring that the penny won’t be overproduced. Instead of making money with no monetary value, the US MINT has to properly conduct monetary policy because it costs more money to produce the coin.

In the history of the United States, African Americans have always been discriminated against. When Africans first came to America, they were taken against their will and forced to work as laborers. They became slaves to the rich, greedy, lazy Americans. They were given no pay and often badly whipped and beaten. African Americans fought for their freedom, and up until the Civil War it was never given to them. When the Civil War began, they wanted to take part in fighting to free all slaves. Their opportunity to be soldiers and fight along side white men equally did not come easily, but eventually African Americans proved themselves able to withstand the heat of battle and fight as true American heroes. Ever since the beginning of America there have been consequential events that led to the American Civil War. Throughout history, there has been much controversy over whether this war was or was not unavoidable. Upon looking back into the chronicles of history and the longtime conflict between the North and the South, one can see that the American Civil War was undeniably inevitable. And in a time when black people were supposed to be quiet, submissive and not involved or interested in politics, and the epidemic of racial prejudice was heavy in the North as well as the South, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass, and many more, dared to speak out.