Discontinuation of the Penny and Nickel

I ask that you keep this debate partially serious. I don’t mind having some fun but we should be a bit more serious. I also must apologize for forfeiting round two. I had meant to post my argument but time hadn’t allowed. However, I digress… As for the penny and nickel: be it resolved that both the penny and the nickel be eliminated from the production of coins by the US Mint. To begin, let’s make sure we understand some background information. The penny has been fluctuating in price for the past several years. Pennies are made of both copper and zinc, and these metals have both become rather pricey in the past several years. Currently, the price to produce one penny is roughly 1.7¢ [1]. This alone should cause you to vote in the affirmation of this resolution. The penny is literally worth less than we pay for. Also, over 13,000,000,000 pennies each year [2]. Let’s do some math now. To find the total amount of dollars spent on producing pennies we will take the cost of producing a penny and multiply it by the amount of pennies produced in a year. When we do this, we discern a monetary total of $221,000,000. Now if we subtract the spending value of all these pennies from our production cost, we lose a total of $91,000,000. This wouldn’t be a problem if less money was spent producing the penny than it is worth. Lastly, the US Mint is a government run organization. All of the funding it receives to produce these coins comes directly from taxpayer pockets. We cannot allow any more tax dollars to be needlessly wasted like this, especially if it is such a large number as $91,000,000. The second half of the proposed resolution is to discontinue the nickel. Allow me to explain why we need to do this. As you should remember, there is a massive inequality between the production cost and face value of the penny. Guess what! The nickel is the exact same way. The production cost for a single nickel is 11.2¢ [3]. This is an even greater inequality that the penny, seeing as it is more than twice as expensive to produce than it is a face value. There are roughly 4,300,000,000 nickels produced in a year [3]. Doing the same math as before, we find that we are losing a total of $266,600,000. Combining this with the deficit created by the penny inequality, we find that we are losing $357,600,000 annually. We cannot allow this. Any product that wastes any amount of tax dollars should be cut out of production. It’s very simple. It should seem obvious that there is only one logical choice in this debate; to discontinue the penny and the nickel from the US Mint’s production of coins. We would save millions of dollars by deciding on this resolution. Considering all these things, I must urge a vote to Pro. Works Cited 1) "Cost to Make the Penny: Chart/Graph. " Copper Pennies. N. p. , n. d. Web. 04 May 2016. <. http://coincollectingenterprises.com...;. 2) Zielinski, Michael. "Cost to Make Penny and Nickel Declines But Still Double Face Value. " Coin Update. N. p. , 12 Dec. 2012. Web. 04 May 2016. <. http://news.coinupdate.com...;. 3) Isidor, Chris. "Obama Wants Cheaper Pennies and Nickels. " CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 15 Feb. 2012. Web. 03 May 2016. <. http://money.cnn.com...;.