Gwendolyn Buchanan 14 April 2012 Practice Synthesis Essay

The penny is, oddly enough, a subject of controversy among a surprising number of U.S. citzens. People debate over whether the penny should be abolished or kept, and many arguments are proposed on each side. However, despite the valid arguments from those who want to keep it, the penny should be abolished from the U.S. currency as soon as possible. One reason to eliminate the penny is that it is no longer commonly accepted tender in things such as vending machines and parking meters (Source C). This becomes an inconvenience in certain situations--such as the student who couldnt buy the candy bar because ten of his cents were in pennies, or the family who cruised around Ashville for a half hour looking for a parking space, only to discover that they didnt have enough quarters to pay the parking meter. If people were discouraged from using pennies, and if they knew for sure that vending machines, parking meters, and similar items would no longer accept pennies, annoyances such as the ones described above would not occur with such frequency. A second, and far more important reason to retire the penny is that it wastes money. Jeff Gore recently published a study saying that every year, each person in the United States lost four hours per year because of the time it took for cashiers at stores to handle the pennies (Source B). With a persons time valued at $15 per hour, Gore says, that amounts to $60 lost per person per year--$15 billion for the U.S. as a whole. It seems that this sum of money could be saved, at least in part, by eradicating the penny and rounding prices to the nearest nickel. (In addition to

this, people would no longer waste pennies in vending machines, because they wouldnt need to carry pennies anymore). And not only do people waste time with the penny, but as William Safire pointed out, two-thirds of the minted pennies drop out of circulation immediately (Source C)! How much money is being wasted to mint these millions of pennies that are never even used? The cost of maintaining the penny is enormous, and far outweighs the benefit. Many proponents of keeping the penny cry that this is simply not true. Mark Weller says that only 5.6 percent of pennies drop out of circulation (Source D), as opposed to the 66.666 percent that Safire states. Even if this were true, the fact still remains that the penny is simply obsolete. A dime today will buy what a penny bought in 1950 (Source C). Imagine vending machines where a candy bar costs ten cents instead of a dollar! The penny would not be useless then. But prices are what they are, and they are too high for pennies to be useful any longer as currency in the United States.