http://nytimes.com/2004/06/02/opinion/02SAFI.html
(registration required)

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Abolish the Penny
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: June 2, 2004


WASHINGTON - Because my staunch support of the war in Iraq has generated
such overwhelming reader enthusiasm, it's time to re-establish my contrarian
credentials. (Besides, I need a break.) Here's a crusade sure to infuriate
the vast majority of penny-pinching traditionalists:

The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and
wasteful penny. Even President Lincoln, who distrusted the notion of paper
money because he thought he would have to sign each greenback, would be
ashamed to have his face on this specious specie.

That's because you can't buy anything with a penny any more. Penny candy?
Not for sale at the five-and-dime (which is now a "dollar store").
Penny-ante poker? Pass the buck. Any vending machine? Put a penny in and it
will sound an alarm.

There is no escaping economic history: it takes nearly a dime today to buy
what a penny bought back in 1950. Despite this, the U.S. Mint keeps churning
out a billion pennies a month.

Where do they go? Two-thirds of them immediately drop out of circulation,
into piggy banks or - as The Times's John Tierney noted five years ago -
behind chair cushions or at the back of sock drawers next to your old
tin-foil ball. Quarters and dimes circulate; pennies disappear because they
are literally more trouble than they are worth.

The remaining 300 million or so - that's 10 million shiny new useless items
punched out every day by government workers who could be more usefully
employed tracking counterfeiters - go toward driving retailers crazy. They
cost more in employee-hours - to wait for buyers to fish them out, then to
count, pack up and take them to the bank - than it would cost to toss them
out. That's why you see "penny cups" next to every cash register; they save
the seller time and the buyer the inconvenience of lugging around loose
change that tears holes in pockets and now sets off alarms at every
frisking-place.

Why is the U.S. among the last of the industrialized nations to abolish the
peskiest little bits of coinage? At the G-8 summit next week, the Brits and
the French - even the French! - who dumped their low-denomination coins 30
years ago, will be laughing at our senseless jingling.

The penny-pinching horde argues: those $9.98 price tags save the consumer 2
cents because if the penny was abolished, merchants would "round up" to the
nearest dollar. That's pound-foolish: the idea behind the 98-cent (and I
can't even find a cent symbol on my keyboard any more) price is to fool you
into thinking that "it's less than 10 bucks." In truth, merchants would
round down to $9.95, saving the consumer billions of paper dollars over the
next century.

What's really behind America's clinging to the pesky penny? Nostalgia cannot
be the answer; if we can give up the barbershop shave with its steam towels,
we can give up anything.

The answer, I think, has to do with zinc, which is what pennies are mostly
made of; light copper plating turns them into red cents. The powerful,
outsourcing zinc lobby - financed by Canadian mines as well as Alaskan -
entices front groups to whip up a frenzy of save-the-penny mail to Congress
when coin reform is proposed.

But when the penny is abolished, the nickel will boom. And what is a nickel
made of? No, not the metallic element nickel; our 5-cent coin is mainly
composed of copper. And where is most of America's copper mined? Arizona. If
Senator John McCain would get off President Bush's back long enough to serve
the economic interests of his Arizona constituents, we'd get some
long-overdue coin reform.

What about Lincoln, who has had a century-long run on the penny? He's still
honored on the $5 bill, and will be as long as the dollar sign remains above
the 4 on keyboards. If this threatens coin reformers with the loss of
Illinois votes, put Abe on the dime and bump F.D.R.

What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and
issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed
national polarization. Coin reform can close the controversy gap and fill
the vitriol void. Get out those bumper stickers: Abolish the penny!