The Penny Makes No Cents

qwerrty

We should. We already eliminated the half-cent coin. Many places have eliminated the penny and in cash transactions they just round a few cents down or up. This is how it is done in Canada: 

We used to have a half-cent coin but we removed it. It was worth more than a current dime. Pennies don't contribute much and just take way more to make then they add to the economy. 

Removing the penny could save 85 million dollars. This isn't a lot for the federal government but it can still do way more than just making pennies. 

Pennies also waste time. "Americans waste 2.4 hours each year handling pennies or waiting for people to handle them."

AlofRI

A 0.50 roll of pennies is worth more as a copper bar than it is as pennies. A negative value coin COSTS U.S. money. Without it, capitalists wanting to keep the price of something under the next dollar value …. for optics … would have to put the price at, say, $99.95 instead of $99.99. We'd save four cents every time they tried to save face! 

MayCaesar

I have not used cash in ages. This proposal does not seem very relevant in the 21-st century.

Yang's campaign is strange. Aside from the economically unsustainable UBI proposal and the abysmal PRC-inspired social credit proposal, he only seems to propose countless minor fun things that do not affect anything. I understand that he is pandering to the social network crowd, but it is still bizarre. I think he would be much more popular if he took things a bit more seriously and realised that politics is not an Instagram contest, and that lives of real people are at stake - people who cast their votes in the end.

I have long suspected that he has never intended to win anything, and the entire campaign was effectively an advertisement of his public persona. He has not done much to prove me wrong so far. Regardless, he could be so much more successful if he just focused a bit.

qwerrty

MayCaesar said:

I have not used cash in ages. This proposal does not seem very relevant in the 21-st century.

Yang's campaign is strange. Aside from the economically unsustainable UBI proposal and the abysmal PRC-inspired social credit proposal, he only seems to propose countless minor fun things that do not affect anything. I understand that he is pandering to the social network crowd, but it is still bizarre. I think he would be much more popular if he took things a bit more seriously and realised that politics is not an Instagram contest, and that lives of real people are at stake - people who cast their votes in the end.

I have long suspected that he has never intended to win anything, and the entire campaign was effectively an advertisement of his public persona. He has not done much to prove me wrong so far. Regardless, he could be so much more successful if he just focused a bit.

This is not true. Yang does have small policies that don't make huge differences but he has a lot of large ones. Such as: 

Data as a property right https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/

Decriminalize opioids https://www.yang2020.com/policies/decriminalizeopioids/

Rebuilding infrastructure and providing internet access https://www.yang2020.com/policies/rebuild-america/
Providing funds to help communities transform malls into other stores https://www.yang2020.com/policies/american-mall-act/
These are some among many others. 

He also has a lot of 21-st century solutions. This entire thing: https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in-the-21st-century/

Yang does focus. He focuses on automation and UBI and does talk about his other proposals, such as ranked-choice voting and democracy dollars. 

BaconToes

MayCaesar said:

Yang's campaign is strange. Aside from the economically unsustainable UBI proposal and the abysmal PRC-inspired social credit proposal, he only seems to propose countless minor fun things that do not affect anything. I understand that he is pandering to the social network crowd, but it is still bizarre. I think he would be much more popular if he took things a bit more seriously and realised that politics is not an Instagram contest, and that lives of real people are at stake - people who cast their votes in the end.

https://debateisland.com/discussion/4231/should-the-u-s-provide-a-universal-basic-income-to-its-citizens

Again, it is not economically unsustainable. Do you really think that top economists in the world would support a proposal that will economically hurt people? 

A thousand economists signed a letter to Congress detailing why a UBI would be beneficial

Greg Mankiw supports Yang's UBI proposal as a way to address income inequality

• Professor of Economics at Harvard University 
• Chairman of the Harvard economics department
  
• 23rd most influential economist in the world out of 50,000 authors, according to RePEc
• 11th most cited economist 
• 9th most productive research economist 
• Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush
  
• Economic adviser to Mitt Romney

Sir Chris Pissarides: "Universal basic income is an easy way of providing for the basic needs of life. Then you can perhaps provide social services such as health and education through the market."

• Professor of Economics & Political Science
• Regius Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics
  
• Professor of European Studies at the University of Cyprus
  
• Winner of Nobel Prize in Economics

Daniel McFadden: "Child abuse dropped drastically, spousal abuse dropped drastically, crime dropped. Simply handing money to poor people was salutary. It really helped them. Being trapped in poverty, with the stress and insecurities associated with that, is progressively debilitating. Sometimes even the simplest kind of transfers can break the cycle."

• 2000 Nobel Prize in Economics
• Presidential Professor of Health Economics at the University of Southern California
  
• 1975 John Bates Clark Medal given by the American Economic Association
  
• 2000 Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics
• Trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security

Vernon Smith: "Every citizen would hold an equal share, with annual dividends paid in cash...These assets also belong to the people, not the government"

• 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics
• Professor of business economics at Chapman University
  
• Professor of economics at George Mason University
  
• Founder and president of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics

Peter Diamond: "argues that direct transfers, including introducing child benefit to everyone who has children and a UBI, would help tackle poverty."

• 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
• Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, head of the Department of Economics
  
• President of the Econometric Society
  
• President of the American Economic Association
  
• 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
  
• 2011 The John R. Commons Award from Omicron Delta Epsilon, the economics honor society

 Angus Deaton: "The government should take care of people with low income and should be pushing basic income grants"

• Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University
• 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
• Professor of Econometrics at the University of Bristol
  
• 1978 Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society

Abhijit Banerjee: "Why not have one universal basic subsidy that covers everything (perhaps except health and education) and let people decide how they will spend it, rather than trying to target subsidies based on our imperfect knowledge of what people need and deserve."

• 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics
• Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• President of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development
  
• Research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research
  
• Research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research
  
• International research fellow of the Kiel Institute
  

...and on and on.

The truth is that UBI is a measure that is widely supported by people in economics. 

Again, I point to anyone on the fence about UBI to this thread: https://debateisland.com/discussion/4231/should-the-u-s-provide-a-universal-basic-income-to-its-citizens

John_C_87

BaconToes said:

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/no-pennies/

Andrew Yang proposes to remove the penny and this is something I've argued for in the past. What do you think? 

Credit cost far more than the manufacturing cost of the penny. The coin system is all that is left of the gold and silver standard. Dimes should have been changed to copper before the idea of selling them as copper took place and penny to a less valued material. Again the numerical displacement of issued receipts on the National Debt have been an issue for quite some time. 

Wheelman

Government fiat currency inflation is the reason a penny has no value. A penny today is equal to a quarter in 1913 a 2498% increase (CPI inflation calculator). The century before, from 1800 to 1913, price inflation was -21% before fiat currency. If currency was still commodity backed, America would need to create even smaller denominations of currency.

Don’t end the penny, end fiat currency.