Published: October 06, 2008 05:16 pm         

THEREFORE I AM: Even new pennies are an annoyance

You’ve seen this car around town — the clunker with more rust than metal, the shredded interior, and an engine that sounds like it’s been chain-smoking two packs a day for 40 years. However, the wheels on this garage-sale beater are immaculate with $3,000 worth of shiny, custom rims. That’s what I feel like we’re doing with the penny. We’re slapping $3,000 rims on a coin that should have been tossed into the chopper years ago.

It turns out that the lowly penny is getting a high-priced makeover which will debut next year. In the fine example of government excess, the U.S. Mint last month revealed four designs for the penny which will mark the bicentennial of Honest Abe’s birth. For those of you who slept through American history class, he’s the guy on the penny.

I’m sure you, my savvy reader, see the delicious irony of redesigning the penny during a trying economic time when our dollar is becoming about as valuable as, well, a penny. (Is it truly irony? I’ll have to check with Ms. Morissette on that one.)

Years ago in this column I called for the removal of the penny from our financial system. Well, not only have the glad-handers and baby-kissers in Washington chosen to ignore my suggestion, they have gone in the opposite direction and sunk millions and millions of your overly-stretched tax dollars into a penny redux. Hey, I’m a fan of Lincoln too, but isn’t that structure overlooking the Potomac honor enough? The man has a world-recognized memorial in our nation’s capital. Do we really need to spruce up a useless coin that most of us wouldn’t even bother to pick up?

It’s time for the penny to exit stage left. I’m sure you’ve heard that it now costs more than a penny to produce a penny. It’s true. According to The New York Times, it cost 1.4 cents to produce a penny, and that was in 2006. I’m sure it’s more expensive now; everything else is. If the economy stays in the toilet much longer, you may want to consider melting your pennies down. You’ll probably come out ahead.

If pennies are so wonderful, why do they give them away at your local Kwik-E-Mart? Go into any self-respecting convenience store and you’ll find a “leave a penny, take a penny” tray. Not even a business, whose sole existence is centered around making a profit, wants to deal with these annoying, dirty little coins.

My idea is to round everything to the nearest five cents. Statistically speaking, it should all even out. For instance, if an item costs $1.11 or $1.12, round it down to $1.10. If an item costs $1.13 or $1.14, round it up to $1.15. If there’s someone out there smarter than I who can explain why this wouldn’t work economically, I’d love to hear it.

The annoyance factor is significant. Have you ever been behind someone in the checkout line who insisted on hunting through her purse or his pockets for the exact change, right down to the penny? It’s enough to make you want to bludgeon them over the head with a loaf of french bread. If a coin is the root cause of grocery-related violence, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I’m not totally unsympathetic to the penny. My first-ever “girlfriend” was named Penny. It was seventh grade. We “went out” for maybe two weeks, which in seventh grade amounted to calling each other on the phone once or twice a day to talk about nothing in particular. I don’t know what ever happened to Penny, but she was a fine girl, and I doubt that anyone is suggesting that she be retired because the sum of her components is worth more than her whole. At least I don’t think so.

And while I’m at it, what’s with gas stations tacking on nine-tenths of a penny to the price of a gallon of gas? What’s with that? They’ve been doing it for decades.

True story: I was taking a college course in which a high-up official from Pilot, a major gas retailer in the nation, visited our class and answered questions about marketing and whatnot. I asked him why gas was priced down to the nine-tenths of a penny, and the guy said that he didn’t know why and that he didn’t realize that it was. Come on! I don’t buy any more gas than he does, and he’s in the GAS-SELLING business and he didn’t know that his company (and every other gas seller, for that matter) charged nine-tenth pennies? Give me a big fat break! Someone’s making out like a bandit on the nine-tenths penny shuffle.

The penny was quaint in its day, but so was the half-cent coin, and that annoyance didn’t even last long enough to see the Civil War. The penny doesn’t need to be redesigned, it just needs to go. I think the U.S. Mint is trying to irritate us. If that’s the case, it should go ahead and produce a nine-tenths penny coin. It would be just as useful.

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday.