The penny should be immediately discontinued.

Okay after a long hiatus, I am back again and ready to rumble. I must unfortunately begin with the almost obligatory request that voters vote for whom did the better debating rather than with whom you agree with. With that out of the way I will first present my case before moving on to my opponent's. 1. Direct waste of money According to Citizens for Retiring the Penny (http://www.retirethepenny.org...) , the U.S. Mint produces about 7 billion pennies ($70 million) every year at a cost over $100 million. Thus, we directly lose at least $30 million a year producing the penny. And with the rising cost of zinc, that deficit will only grow. 2. Waste of time (= indirect waste of money) The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreen's drug stores estimated that pennies waste 2 to 2.5 seconds per each cash transaction. If we estimate that each person goes through two of these transactions per day (which seems rather low) and that on average there is one person waiting in line (which once again seems low). This makes for 3 persons' time to be wasted (cashier, penny finder, person in line). We can then calculate that the presence of pennies wastes (2 transactions/day) X (2 seconds/transaction) X (3 people per transaction) = 12 seconds per day, or 1.2 hours per person per year. Of course, when you get home you still have to find something to do with your pennies, meaning that probably only about half of the wasted time is directly connected with a cash transaction (the other time is associated with counting pennies etc), giving a total of 2.4 wasted hours per person per year. The mean wage in the US is approximately $17/hour, implying that each of us is effectively "paying" $40 per year to keep pennies in circulation. Given that the US has ~ 240 million adults, using pennies is currently costing the nation $10 billion per year. Thus, the penny costs us $10,030,000 per year. While this may seem small compared to the total national debt, every little bit helps. In fact, if no cost cutting measures were taken other than retiring the penny, the current debt would be erased in 959,619 years! 3. China dependence The reason for influx of the price make pennies is the main ingredient: zinc. And guess who is the world's largest exporter of zinc… you guessed it: China! With every penny we make, we further increase our economic dependency on China. So retiring the penny would also make our economy more independent. Now to my opponent: My opponent has one argument: that the nostalgic value of the penny cannot be ignored, comparing it to various monuments in D.C. I will contend the actual nostalgic value in a second but first we must see that keeping the penny could in fact result in the end of it. As I have shown, we are losing tremendous amounts of money due to the penny. This annual loss helps push our economy helping to lead to a recession or a depression. When you have depression, countries are in danger of breaking apart. If the U.S. were to cease to exist so would the penny, so either way we lose any nostalgic value. Now I contend that there is no value to the penny. Considering that 58% of people save pennies rather than spend them, the new penny philosophy seems to be the one found in this Ashfield comic: http://www.ashfieldonline.com... rather than the one my opponent is indicating. As I have shown why the penny should be discontinued I bid adieu until my opponent responds.