Americans Are Living in a Penny Ante World
Posted on: Friday, 16 May 2008, 00:00 CDT
By Jack Markowitz
Always somebody in government wants to take our pennies away.
The one-cent coin is in danger again. The five-center, too. A few years ago the complaint was that pennies are too much trouble. Set all prices in multiples of five or 10 cents and time would be saved. Checkout clerks wouldn't have to make change in pesky amounts like three cents on a $2.97 item. Anyway, what can a penny buy anymore?
But the People knew better. The penny's enemies backed down.
Now the complaint is almost too shameful for Washington to admit. It is that pennies and nickels have grown too valuable. Their metal content is worth more than their minted promise.
The dime, the quarter and the silver dollar are OK -- "silver," as if! -- all are worth less than the metals in them. Lamakers can live with that. Giving the People short-count is standard procedure.
But to give them more! That is wasteful. It fritters away $100 million a year of the People's money. This could pay for the Iraq War (for a few hours). Or nearly a quarter of Pittsburgh's subway boondoggle.
Look how the penny robs us. Once mostly bright orange copper, nowadays it is 97.5 percent zinc, just 2.5 percent copper, and even that wretched alloy is worth 1.26 cents. A Jefferson nickel, truly just 25 percent nickel now, the rest copper, costs 7.7 cents to mint
The real villain here is the dollar's decline. As it has fallen, commodities like metals have gone up.
But it has to stop, it increases the national debt, says U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. In recent years the debt has soared $3 trillion, thanks to wars, entitlements, pork, farm subsidies, interest payments and, infinitesimally, a mighty good penny.
Still, that last has got to be debased ... uh, er, reformed make that. The House this week was expected to take up a bill to tell the Treasury to tell the Mint to reformulate the humblest of our coins. Stamp them out in cheaper materials.
Steel is a favorite. (And none of your jokes about wooden nickels, please.) Pennies were made of steel in World War II, to save on strategic copper, and the People didn't complain. They knew there was a war on. And darned if the dull gray cent of those days couldn't buy a bag of jelly beans or a box of pumpkin seeds at the candy store, as any patriotic child remembers.
Today the children and grandchildren of the "greatest generation" would tell lawmakers to let our coins be. Get the dollar's value back up and the penny and nickel will take care of themselves. Or, Congress might try cutting other spending. See if that helps.
(c) 2008 Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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