Pennies from heaven

I had a bit of a disagreement with a friend of mine recently. It seems he wants to do away with the penny. Personally, I'm all for the penny. It's the basis of our monetary system. What would happen if you could no longer break a dollar into all of it's constituent parts? I'll tell you what would happen; our society would collapse! We live in a base ten world. If we did away with the penny, we might as well do away with the centimeter, or the centiliter, or the centipede. Our entire society revolves around tenths, except for computers that are base two or eight depending on your perspective; oh and the whole old English weights and measure system really isn't base anything, well maybe base King George's foot, or something like that; but everything else is base ten. So my concern of course is for the children because let's face it, they'll be the ones that will really suffer if we do away with the penny. I can see it now. Poor little Jimmy is sitting in kindergarten/first grade (whenever they start learning about coinage) and he learns about the dollar. He learns that the dollar can be cut in half, it can be cut into tenths, it can be cut into twentieths, but then when he goes to break it into hundredths; BAM, sorry Jimmy, that's illegal. The poor kid will be devastated. Another example. Poor little Susie just learned to count to ten. Now she wants to show her mom by counting out the change, but can she do it? No, she'll have two nickles, but somehow two equals ten. What's that going to teach anyone? Two equals ten? What kind of crazy mixed up world is that? Not the kind of crazy mixed up world I want to live in.

However, the anti-penny establishment makes a very strong argument when it points out that it costs the government more money to produce a penny then the penny is actually worth. Of course we all know that this lose is made up over the life of the penny because of inflation in other countries (except recently, this has sort of backfired on us). Also it assumes a fifty year life span in which the penny remains in circulation and not in a jar on top of someones dresser, or in a wishing well (do they even take pennies any more?), or being scuffed up and burned, or flicked at people by teenage boys. So it is possible that the government is losing money by manufacturing money which the Argentinians have proved is not a winning business model on numerous occasions.

To every ones relief, I believe I've devised a solution. I'll wait for the applause to die down........... The solution is as simple as it is brilliant. The government needs to begin manufacturing pennies from recycled cardboard! Currently both programs are money losers, but together they can be money winners! Think about it. Used cardboard is nearly worthless. Pennies are nearly worthless. Therefore used cardboard equals pennies. It's a classic use of the transitive property! Besides, using used cardboard could really cut down on production expenses. People could manufacture there own pennies. The government could supply a template on the Treasury Departments website and presto a cottage industry is born! We won't have to worry about being swamped with pennies either because cardboard doesn't hold up as long as zinc or whatever it is we're using now. Also, this could help mitigate the homeless population and reduce poverty as it would be the poor and small children (let's not forget the children) that would be manufacturing the largest number of new coins. Bums wouldn't have to spend another day sober. Jimmy would be able to break a dollar. Susie would be able to count to ten with ten coins instead of two. The best part of all, however, is that it's environmentally friendly. In one fell swoop we would reduce the amount of cardboard going into our landfills while simultaneously reducing mining cost for more metal. With all the savings, the government would be able to pay down the national debt, or more likely declare war on yet another small nation, preferably one that is rich in cardboard reserves.