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The Author believes that we should stop using pennies.
"few people nowadays even bend down to pickup a penny"
"They add unwanted weight to our pockets and purses" - line 10
"Few people nowadays even bend down to pick a penny off the sidewalk. Doesnt that prove that mining and minting copper pennies is wasteful?"
- line 11,12
Prices would most likely decrease from $.99 to $.95 to keep the price from showing a bigger whole number.
"A price such as $39.99 is designed to keep a four from appearing as the first digit—something the retailer deems psychologically important. In a penny-less society merchants probably would change the number to $39.95, not raise it to $40". -line 65
"Prices ending in 99 cents are powerful because we are conditioned to think 99 cents is a bargain, no matter how small the saving."
"It's interesting that people don't perceive much difference in value between items priced at $20 and $25. But drop the price by one penny, and they perceive great difference between $19.99 and $24.99."
Reasoning - Both of these pieces of evidence show that prices end in .99 for a reason, to trick customers into buying their "cheap" products. This directly relates to what the author is saying in "abolishing the penny," storeowners would have to round up to the nearest number, making their prices seem more expensive then they are. This might cause stores to lower their prices to .95, so there is still a few cents between the nearest number.
"That quirk we collectively share of looking at a price like $19.99 and seeing it as $19, instead of a penny shy of 20.
We judge prices by the left digit. This method of not pricing items in round numbers is also called "Odd Pricing" — referring to the resulting odd price numbers like 69 or 99 cents. The practice of odd pricing has been used for for more than a century."
Reasoning - This is a persuasive technique used by merchants to make customers seem like they are getting a deal, when the price really rounds up at the register. This would no longer be a thing if pennies were abolished, hence the reason stores may turn to changing their prices to .95 cents.
"Making pennies is a money loser: While the U.S. Mint is a net contributor to the U.S. Treasury, producing pennies is a money loser for the Mint. In 2021, the nation lost $83.6 million making pennies."
"Found pennies aren't worth the effort required to pick them up: The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. At that wage, it takes five seconds of work to earn a single cent. If you took longer than that to pick up a spare penny found on the ground, your effort would be earning less than minimum wage."
"Pennies don't buy as much as they used to: In 1913, a penny purchased a little more than a quarter does today (about 28 cents)"
Using pennies in the store to buy items takes a long time, and people behind them in the line have to wait longer.
"Think how often you have waited in line while the customers ahead of you fumbled through their pockets or purses for a few—expletive deleted— pennies. A trivial problem? Yes, until you multiply your wasted seconds by the billions of cash transactions that take place in our economy each year. I estimate that all this penny-pinching wastes several hundred million hours annually. Valuating 2 that at, say, $10 an hour adds up to several billion dollars per year, which is more than enough to justify this column."
"Carrying around extra pennies and using them to make purchases is a hassle. On average, a transaction in which a consumer uses pennies takes two seconds more than a transaction in which they don’t."
Reasoning - Pennies take time to collect and to use. When in a rush at the checkout line, It can be annoying and wasteful to have to wait for the person infront of you to count individual pennies.
"While two seconds does not seem like a lot, time is money. The time wasted annually costs each worker is approximately $3.65, amounting to a whopping $1 billion for the entire U.S. In the digital age, pennies are virtually worthless, as many automated machines like vending machines and toll booths don’t accept them."
Amadeo, K. (2022, January 29). 9 Reasons Why America Should Get Rid of the Penny (E. Rasure, Ed.). The Balance. https://www.thebalancemoney.com/get-rid-of-the-penny-4178219
Blinder, A. S. (n.d.). Abolishing the Penny. https://www.humbleisd.net/cms/lib2/TX01001414/Centricity/Domain/8538/Abolishing%20the%20Penny.pdf
The real reason most prices end in 99 cents. (2018, July 2). CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/the-real-reason-most-prices-end-in-99-cents-1.4731238
Witt, D. (n.d.). The penny should be eliminated. The Breeze. https://www.breezejmu.org/opinion/opinion-the-penny-should-be-eliminated/article_ed85cf8c-f244-11e8-84cf-87a4183e248d.html