Today, two posts in a row here are worth comment:
1. I strongly agree: Get rid of the penny AND the nickel. Or at the very least replace them with a design that costs far, far less to mint.
2. Philanthropic fraud?! Who knew? Well, I knew, but that's just because my knee-jerk impulse is to associate charitable trust mavens with Ayn Rand villains. Also blah blah United Way blah.
Posted by Matt Bruce at March 31, 2008 10:16 AMYou can't get rid of the penny. Americans love Lincoln way too much to let that happen. What would have been a good idea would be to adjust the content and introduce it as a part of next year's 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth and 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny.
As for the nickel, I like the new look of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2006_Nickel_Proof_Obv.png
So I'd have no qualms with getting rid of the penny and promoting Lincoln to a loftier currency. That said, "Americans love Lincoln" is certainly a better pro-penny argument than Newsweek's recent waste-of-space guest editorial ("people make fun of me for collecting pennies but my mom would approve").
I wonder sometimes if the secret behind those lines of argument is that nobody wants to offend a well-meaning passionate hobbyist. (See also some of my most ardently pro-vinyl (recording medium) colleagues.)
Posted by: me at April 3, 2008 10:14 AM