Name: Anthony Goh Kwan Chin Group: ACB2 – AA1 Date: 25th March 2014 Title: Usage of alloy

In source number 1 it says, “ We often throw them away in water fountains, throw them in jars, or refuse them as change.” This quote means why make a coin if all we do is throw them in jars, or refuse them as change, and just throw them in water fountains. Also, “We have penny drives to get rid of them sense people don’t want to get rid of quarters and dimes.” This quote says why make something if all we are doing with it is using them as loose change or just giving them away.

Not only has the penny been around for more than one millennia, but it has become very important to our society, even if its cost doesn’t mean a whole lot unless in a large group. It has worked its way into the zinc

Between 2001 and 2006, there has been an increase of .6 cents for the reproduction of the penny. This increase displays economic problems that may lead to fatal ones. The penny is composed of 2% copper and 98% zinc. These elements are exponentially in demand causing the price of these materials to skyrocket. Many Americans think the penny is putting our country in jeopardy with financial losses. This meaningless coin is losing money for the mint, and should be abolished.

Plautus once said “You have to spend money to make money,” a quote made painfully true by the penny, a coin worth 1/100th of a dollar. The penny’s story starts in 1792 with the first U.S. Mint which produced the dime, quarter, nickel, penny and half penny which we will get back to later. Pennies were originally made of 100% copper, however, as prices of copper rose they soon started to make pennies out of 95% zinc and 3% copper, which is how they are made today. Soon after this, the raw material of pennies began to cost more than the penny itself was worth, therefore people began to melt them down and sell the material for profit. When this occurred, instead of the government getting rid of the pennies all together and being happy citizens where removing them from circulation they made melting the currency down illegal and continued producing 4 billion pennies a year! You can find these tiny useless coins anywhere from in your couch cushion to on the sidewalk. The reason we should stop minting pennies is that they cost money, waste time, are bad for the environment, and they are useless.

United states produces 13 billion pennies each year. The Penny coin in America played a role to our economy/without people noticing too much. People most likely don’t recognize it due to inflation of prices. To public eyes the penny has always been heated debate topic. Which leads into my paper here. Should the penny be eliminated or kept? The penny should not be eliminated from our “coins system” because the prices would be rounded(making prices mostly going up), the penny has need to stay for economy. And the “public”(average american citizen) view matters and need to be heard. Even the penny kept costing United States to make then it is worth, but the benefits of the penny beats out the cost.

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”

A second reason this should happen is that it is bad for the environment. Creating the penny releases C02 into the air. For example the article Should we get rid of the Penny 8 Reasons to Keep it vs Eliminate it says,”Design Life-Cycle.org a sight created by students at the University of California, calculates that just transporting pennies to banks-not even counting any other stage of production-puts about 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (C02) into the atmosphere each year. The penny also contains toxic metals. For example the article Should we get rid of the Penny 8 Reasons to Keep it vs Eliminate it says,”Along with the Zinc the ores usually contain other metals, including toxic metals like Cadmium and Lead. Along with toxic metals the penny uses a surprising amount of metal. The surface metal is only 2.5% of the penny’s entire metal composition. The penny should go away, because of how environmentally unfriendly it

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

When walking through the streets, have you noticed penny coins on the ground? If you did, did you wonder why? People today don’t find value in pennies, so when dropped, they don’t bother to pick them up. They degrade penny coins and want to eliminate the coins. Penny coins shouldn’t be eliminated because it has history and is valuable.

In Forbes magazine, Neena Moorjani said “It’s practically useless in everyday life” (Lewis). Most people today fling their pennies into the trash, they drop out of circulation, or in couch cushions where you won’t see them again. In the 1900’s there was a thing called penny candy. You could go to a local store and buy one piece, or a few pieces of your favorite candy with just one penny. Today, candy bars from a gas station can cost up to two dollars. Adding to this, vending machines cause problems with coins. The vending machines used to take all types of coins, nickels, dimes and even pennies. If you try to put a penny in a machine now it will just spit it back out or an alarm will sound. In stores when someone says “one second I think I have some pennies” is very annoying. It uses about “...40 wasted seconds per day per person.

Others say they can change the pennies material contents, but the thing is that they already have done that, they changed the contents to have less copper4, but right now the penny is at 5 percent copper, if we remove the last bit of copper is it even a penny anymore? And it obviously didn't work because here we are debating if we should get rid of it or not because it’s too expensive. So there is still no real reason to keep the

One of the biggest reasons the penny should be banned is because it costs money to make money. In 2011 it cost 2.41 cents to make and distribute the one cent coin(Sommer). That is 1.41 cents we lose every time a penny is put into the economy. Now, the penny costs 1.8 cents to produce(Story). The penny is inflating the economy because of the cost. The copper and zinc coin should be eliminated because of this reason, but also because of how it is a total waste of money.

Why do people hang on to things that have no value or use? Why can’t people learn to just let go? Often people think that just because an item has been around for a long time, that it needs to be treasured regardless of its worth. This is true of the Canadian penny. I think the Canadian government should eliminate the penny from circulation. The penny is not valuable to many Canadians anymore and we could make better use of the financial gains if we stopped making and using the penny.

To discontinue the minting of these coins would mean better prices and a better economy. Furthermore, pennies cost more than their value to create, leading to more debt for each impractical coin minted. Despite being a trademark piece of currency, the most opportune option would be the abandonment of pennies. The United States should eliminate the penny because they are causing inflation and the results would be extremely beneficial.

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.