It’s time to abolish the penny and the dime.

I’m not saying it’s uncommon for people to think this, it’s just that the name of this sub is “unpopular opinions”. <br><br>The penny and dime are both useless in today’s economy, an argument I constantly hear is that if we abolish the penny, everything will get rounded up, and you will be screwed out of your hard earned money. That argument makes sense, but it doesn’t take into account that prices are determined proportionally to the lowest denomination coin. For example, if something costs $1.89, that is because the lowest coin denomination is 1 cent. If pennies were to be abolished, sellers of products would just price their products proportionally to the lowest denomination coin, which would be the nickel. So instead of $1.89, a product would be priced $1.85.<br><br>Another common argument is that if we abolish the penny, it will be too expensive to implement. First of all, we don’t need to abolish already minted coins, we just need to cease the production of them. The coins that are already in circulation will eventually die out. Second, the cost of implementing this does not come close to outweigh the cost of producing a penny. According to the US mint, it costs 1.7 cents to produce 1 penny, so 100 pennies costs $1.70 to produce. According to the US Treasury, as of 2021, there are over 130 billion pennies in circulation, and over 7 billion more are produced annually. If we abolish pennies, 100 million dollars a year can potentially saved, 130 billion dollars will be saved over time, and probably a lot more if adjusted for inflation. And that’s just for pennies, dimes also cost more to produce than they are worth.