The penny should be immediately discontinued. (Kleptin Tourney)

This is a RD 1 debate for Kleptin's tournament, and I will be assuming the role of Sportsguru from the following debate: . http://www.debate.org.... Feel free to peruse it prior to reading this one. Sportsguru will, in effect, be opposing himself (or at least arguments inspired by his own). Hence, if you see chunks of text directly quoted from the above-cited debate, I'm not plagiarizing. :) I affirm, resolved: the penny should be immediately discontinued. No definitions were provided within the referenced debate, and the topic was assumed to mean that the US should stop minting pennies as a form of currency. This resolution does not require me to do anything extreme, like pull all current pennies from circulation (hence the use of "discontinued"). We'll stick with that interpretation. Any others would be considered extra-topical, especially in light of the purpose of this tournament. Onto case: 1. Pennies are a complete waste of critical resources. a. For all its use within the American economy (i. e. next to none), the penny is produced at a cost to the U. S. Per the group Citizens for Retiring the Penny, the U. S. Dept. of Treasury produces approximately 7 billion pennies (worth $70 million) each year. The cost to make all those pennies was around $100 million. [1] As Sportsguru predicted a year ago, this cost is only rising. ABC World News reported in 2008 that the cost of minting pennies is right around $130 million. Each penny produced costs the U. S. 1.7 cents. En total, the U. S. loses around $50 million during the penny production process. [2] Talk about ill-advised spending. In times like these, with a global recession, a U. S. economy in the throws of a depression, poor government spending, and the public quickly losing faith in the ability of its elected officials to properly money-manage, this gesture, though relatively small, would be a step in the right direction to much needed expenditure examination. It is a piece of the reform so desperately needed to encourage the economic health of the U. S. b. The transaction time in penny exchange costs the U. S. economy further. Though we don't often consider the time costs of a monetary exchange involving pennies (or change, for that matter), we should. Efficiency is a primary concern of a struggling economy, and any step toward improving efficiency while maintaining a just system should be taken. The National Association of Convenience Stores as well as the Walgreen's drug stores assert that transactions involving pennies waste approximately 2-2.5 seconds per cash transaction. That may seem like a pittance , but the resulting wasted time is exponentially terrible when considered on a national scale. I won't bore the readers with the calculus here, suffice to say that each American wastes around 2.5 hours every year on penny transactions. This would be mirrored in all consumer industries that take pennies within their transactions. If we then calculate the opportunity cost per person in the U. S. (i. e. what that 2.5 hours means in dollars in terms of salary), each person in the U. S. "pays" the government around $30-$40 just to keep pennies in circulation. Granted, some of that can be factored into the original production cost of $150 million (through taxes), but considering that the opportunity cost adds up to closer to $10 billion per year for the nation, pennies cost much more to keep in circulation than their production value. Though this $10 billion may seem like a tiny drop in the heaving, "perfect-storm-esque" sea that is the national debt, imagine the programs that can be funded on that money each year. 2. Increasing out dependence on China (and other foreign countries) is detrimental to both the domestic and foreign interests of the U. S. As is well known, China currently possesses the highest concentration of utilized zinc resources in the world. [3] Furthermore, they are actively trying to corner the market on this particular resource. Just this year, Chinese zinc giant Metallurgical Corp of China is seeking to bid on Anglo-American Zinc, worth approximately $1 billion. [4] If this acquisition is completed (which it likely will be), China would successfully purchase a huge chunk of the American industrial market, which is crucial because the US currently has the second highest concentration of zinc resources in the world. But, you might ask, why don't we just produce the zinc ourselves? Easy answer: we import because companies like Anglo-American can't undersell our foreign competitors. This is evident at the sale of Anglo-American. What's worse, it appears that Anglo-American will be controlled by a country other than the U. S. The other major bidders are all out of the country. We are already far too indebted to other nations, especially China, to be able to operate freely within the world economy. These expenditures further damage our political capital, as we appear weak and unable to control our domestic affairs. Furthermore, as is clearly illustrated by the U. S. political lobby system, indebtedness translates directly into policy compromises. Considering China's current state of affairs, do we really want to compromise influence that we might have over, say, their human rights abuses? In conclusion, for the good of the nation and its citizens, I strongly urge a vote in favor of eliminating the penny. [1] . http://www.retirethepenny.org... [2] . http://abcnews.go.com... [3] . http://www.mapsofworld.com... [4] . http://www.reuters.com...