The use of pennies in the US pricing system should be eliminated.

"It means that abolishing the penny is virtually equivalent to abolishing the American flag. "I did not think my opponent was attempting to make this inference. Of course, eliminating the penny would not be the same a abolishing the American Flag. Let me explain further. "In the same way, The reason that the penny serves as a patriotic value should not be irrelevant when it comes to this debate. This reason should be enough to continue to manufacturing and circulation of the penny. " "My opponent contradicts himself by stating that he does accept the fact that the penny has sentimental value, but at the same time he states that we should eliminate anything with no benefit. This contradiction then translates to. .. Since the penny is of sentimental value, then the penny is of benefit to the public mind which then protects it from being eliminated. " Sadly, my opponent misunderstood me. I do not contradict myself. Yes, I do believe the penny holds a sentimental value. However it should be eliminated because it does not have a benefit towards its purpose of facilitating exchange. My opponent forgot to mention the part where I stated, "If it is of no benefit. .. not facilitating exchange. " Now, as I said I would explain further above, eliminating the penny is not equivalent to abolishing the American Flag because whereas the American Flag's purpose is to serve as a "symbolic of nationhood and identity,"[1] the true purpose of the penny or any money in general is to "function as a medium of exchange when it is used to intermediate the exchange of goods and services. This function facilitates and eliminates the inefficiencies of a barter system, where goods and services are directly exchange for other goods and services. With the use of money, now you can just conveniently pay for the things you want to buy. "[2] My opponent's comparison between the eliminating of the penny with abolishing the American Flag is a non-sequitar comparison and should not be considered. All in all, the sentimental value of a coin does not matter because that has nothing to do with the true value of a coin. So therefore no, my statement was not contradictory. "If this statement made by my opponent is true then using the train of taught. we should neglect the statue of liberty simply because it isn't proportional to the "ULTIMATE" goal of economic stability. The statue of liberty as we all know it, is a symbol of both patriotic as well as personal value. The same statue of liberty brings in approximately $40,000 - &70,000 annually, however we neglect the fact that the statue of liberty needs maintenance. "Again, this is a non-sequitar comparison and therefore should not be considered. The purpose of a penny is not the same as the purpose of the Statue of Liberty. My opponent is saying that anything that does not contribute to the good of the economy whilst I am saying that monetary mediums such as pennies should be eliminated is they do not contribute to the good. "This might be seen as the logical thing to do, however, we must look into the fact that the like I mentioned in my first NC and this rebuttal, It is harder for people to give up their(sic) penny than to give up their(sic) nickel. If you were to eliminate every penny in the making, giving up the nickel would be even harder because the nickel can now be seen as the only way to complete a purchase (all item will now be rounded to the nearest 5 cents). " >"giving up the nickel would be even harder because the nickel can now be seen as the only way to complete a purchase"My opponent does not realize that keeping the penny would make "giving up the [penny] harder because the [penny] can now be seen as the only way to complete a purchase. " However, as my opponent mentioned the success of the Penny Drive, obviously that claim is false and the nickel would be just as easily given up. "If 84 people give a nickel to the charity organization, then it is also likely that 8400 people would give the penny. "Sadly, my opponent misunderstood my calculations. My opponent has no justification as to why 8400 people donating a penny could be as likely as 84 people donating a nickel but I do for my calculations. Take situation A where donors only donate pennies and situation B where donors only donate nickels. As previously stated by my opponent himself, 15.5% of American people are of the lower class and would have trouble donating a single nickel (which I personally find difficult to believe unless those individuals had absolutely no idea of the severity of poverty around the world. Most of America's homeless are better off thank some average people of third world countries. ) and so mathematically speaking, 100% - 15.5% = 84.5% would be able to donate a nickel. For the sake of easy math, let's say that situation A has 1000 donors all capable of donating a penny. However, since situation B donors are donating nickels, we must take into consideration the lower class who are reluctant to give that nickel. Therefore, situation A would have 1000 people whereas situation B would only have 845 people. Situation A would make 1000 x $0.01 = $10. Yet, Situation B would make 845 x $0.05 = $42.25. So mathematically, asking for a nickel would not only be more profitable but also it would help the mission of the charities which my opponent was concerned about. Evidence for the JC PENNY claim: >($655508.54 asking for pennies) x (84.5% of people rather than the complete 100%) x (5 as that is the amount of times a nickel is worth over a penny) = $2,769,523.58 The price here comes out to be more because above, I approximated 84.5% to 84 in favor of my opponent because there is no such thing as .5 of a person. However, this time I took into consideration 1000 people providing a more accurate result. My opponent misunderstood my claim that "$7.02 as $6.98" would be just as likely. It is saying that the probability of an item costing $7.02 would be the same as an item costing $6.98 and therefore would both round to $7.00 cancelling each other out. Nowhere did I mention a percentage of 6.98% or if my opponent made a mistake typing the dollar sign, if he read more carefully, he would see that I never stated that an item would round down to $6.98. The fact that a business normally makes 3,000 sales makes the statistical probability of rounded prices cancelling each other greater and more ideal. My opponent misunderstood my question to him. The only way you could pay for something worth $0.04 or $0.07 (two of four prices that would round up or down to $0.05) would be with 4 pennies or 1 nickel and 2 pennies whereas $0.05 would only take one nickel. There would be more hassle. Similarly, that can be said about any value whether it be $0.84 or $0.87 compared to $0.85. My claim is that, paying for any price would only require at most, 1 nickel (because of the existence of dimes and quarters) whereas a with pennies, the most would be 4. Also, as I mentioned above, taking the time to add up the correct change with these coins would be worth it because of their larger face value. So I ask again, why would production of the nickel be necessary? Ultimately, I believe the penny should be eliminated because it does not serve its purpose as a monetary medium. If you had a Engineer who was bad at engineering but a great artist, wouldn't you move him to the art department? Similarly, if a penny is a poor monetary system, it should go where it belongs: in a museum. I thank my opponent for willing to debate with me in my first debate. I thank every one of you who took time to read through our debate. And have a very merry Christmas. Sources:[1] . http://www.tpk.govt.nz... [2] . http://moneyrelease.com...