The penny should be immediately discontinued. (Kleptin Tourney)

Okay, man, it has been a while since I've done this. I thank Kleptin for organizing this tournament, and alto2osu for this debate challenge. Without further ado, let us begin (As a brief roadmap, I will go down my opponent's case before my own). Interpretation- This is a reasonable interpretation, and the one I intended when I originally made the debate. Thus, I agree and there is no clash here. 1a. I cannot deny the cost of zinc in the world. However, alto2osu makes it seem like the discontinuation of pennies is the only action to take, with the net benefit of public confidence in the economy through reform. However, we can see that the elimination of the one-cent piece would actually LOWER consumer confidence, as the German Finance Ministry stated for the introduction of the one-cent euro piece [1, page 8]: "If a euro one-cent coin were not introduced, public opinion might regard this as a sign of weakness in the euro and confidence in the stability of the common European currency might suffer as a result" Also, this is not the only option to solve this problem. At the point where the cause of this cost is from the metal it is made from, primarily zinc, we can see that it is much more beneficial to accept the following counter-plan: "The United States should change the metal that pennies are made out of". Not only does this solve my opponents first point, but it has the net benefit of avoiding the harms of the negative case that is to come. 1b. Again, while the case my seem to be against the penny, the actual cost of a cash transaction comparatively is not the wasteful picture my opponent paints. When stores calculated the cost of each transaction (in time, armored courier costs, etc.), they found that cash transactions, including those with pennies, were the cheapest by FAR, whether it be per item, or in total transactions [1, page 6] Also, I searched for this report by the NACS that you claimed, but I could not find it. I'm not saying you are lying, but could you please give the source? 2 First, cross-apply the counter-plan. If the penny is not made out of zinc, we don't have this "problem". Secondly, we must see that even if this sale happens, we do not become more "indebted" to China. This is simply one company selling itself off. Ok, we don't have the world's biggest deposits of zinc. Therefore it makes sense we are not the biggest producers; this is not apocalyptic , just common sense. "We are already far too indebted to other nations, especially China, to be able to operate freely within the world economy." Can you prove this? Where is the bright-line between us being able to operate freely and not operate freely? On human rights, we already have NO influence on China in the issue of human rights, nor do private businesses as shown with the recent tiff between China and Google. In fact, China shot back at the US calling the US hypocrites for criticizing China.[2] Neg case (other than impact turns): 1 Direct Impact. If one were to get rid of the penny, obviously one would have to round prices to the nearest nickel. While seemingly insignificant, this causes a huge price to be paid. Due to the disproportionate amount of items ending with 9 and certain other numbers [1 page 3], a $600 million "round tax" as Lambra calls it, would be paid by each consumer yearly simply because of this rounding. If we are going to talk economic impacts, this forced extra spending that does not actually produce benefit is simply going to leave consumers with less disposable income, meaning less spending which means a slower recovery if not another recession. 2 Long-term-Inflation. Long term impacts do not look any better. The rounding that would occur would negatively affect governmental spending. Using data from the congressional budget office, Lambra calculates that government spending would be up by 2 billion JUST by this rounding. Note that this was is 2001, when the economy was actually good and our spending was not that high. With the higher spending we have today, the artificial rise would just be that much greater. 3 Stores- Finally, we can look to the affect on stores. After taking into account the fact that cash transaction is the cheapest transaction to make, we can see that this rounding would run stores out of buisness. At a 1998 convention, the NACS stated that the average profit per transaction is about 6-7 cents [1 page6] Thus, a two-three cent rounding would take about 30% of a store's profit basically kicking someone while they are down. Also we can look to the threat deterrence of pennies. Without pennies, exact change is more likely to be had. At that point, the register does not have to be opened to procure change and the employee can just pocket the money. With pennies, this is MUCH less likely to happen. For all these reasons, I urge a vote in negation. 1: http://college.holycross.edu... 2: http://www.reuters.com...