Sean+H’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

=Title of Speech=
 * Death To The Penny**

=Text of Speech= We all have done our fair share of the recreational activity known as shopping. And we have all experienced what comes after all that shopping. You come home and empty your pockets or your purses of all your change in that jar where you keep the rest of spare change collected from previous shopping trips and elsewhere. And while you may reach into that jar for quarters, nickels and dimes to use again in things like vending machines, laundromats, parking meters, toll booths and maybe even pay phones and newspaper dispensers if anybody still uses those. But it seems that there always ends up being one coin that never disappears from that jar and only continues to grow in numbers in that spare change collection; and that is the worthless, time consuming, less than 5% copper coin with honest Abe’s face on it: the penny.

Here in the U.S. like most countries nowadays we use money as a medium of exchange to make the exchanging of goods and services easier rather than bartering like savages for things we want. And to get the price right we divide the cash into pieces so we don’t over pay but if you keep dividing eventually the value it represents becomes too small to buy with or even bother with. And this why in today’s society pennies are absolutely worthless. And now that I think about it worthless isn't even a good explanation for the penny, and why? Well things that are worthless are worth nothing and pennies are worth much less than nothing. I dare you to find a machine that accepts these worthless coins. None of them do! The only exceptions are Coinstars which take 10% of the money put into it and in return give you money that was already yours to spend; and those souvenir penny machines you see at all tourist attractions which take 50 cents from and in return you get a compressed pennies that will remind you that you have visited that site (Probably the only legal way to get a penny out of circulation).

Pennies are so worthless that I've seen pictures on the internet where people have redone their kitchen floor with nothing but pennies. Pennies are so worthless that when a Cutco salesman wanted to demonstrate the cutting power of his scissors he used a penny to show the cutting power and it worked quite well actually.

In the America I grow up in I don’t want to see anybody’s time or money being wasted with the production of new pennies or simply just fiddling with them while in line to pay. They are simply not worth our time. A person who pays in exact change and includes pennies adds on average 2-3 seconds (maybe even more than that) fiddling with pennies. This might not be as big a problem if America unlike most countries actually included sales tax in the price labels of merchandise, and since not even our human calculators in the room can multiply a price of something by the sales tax while waiting in line for the register there’s no way you will have your change ready before you reach the register and in the end you waste more time fiddling with pennies than it is worth. So unless you are an inconsiderate jerk who likes to waste people’s time in line for the register, pennies just aren’t worth the time.

I’m pretty sure that Mrs. Blackler in the student store would hate my guts if I told her I was paying for something with pennies. We are all part of a family which means that we all at one point or another gone grocery shopping. We all know how expensive the average grocery bill can be nowadays. If we pretend for example that your grocery bill was $20. Would you really want to carry around with you 2000 pennies weighing about 12 pounds to pay that bill? (Keep in mind we are in America and sales tax has not been included yet. 7.5% for California.) Or even worse, would you want to be the cashier who has to count all those pennies? NO!! Of course not!

Way back in the day when pennies were first being made in the first U.S. mint in 1792 and could actually be used to buy stuff, they were made of 100% copper. But the two reasons why pennies are still not made of 100% copper to this day are: the value of copper went up and due to inflation the value or buying power of the penny went down. Today’s pennies are made of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper. The only business that would suffer from the elimination of the penny is some zinc production company in Tennessee. In 2011 the government spent $120 million of tax payer money to produce $50 million worth of pennies. Why such a huge loss of money? It’s because it cost about 1.8 cents to produce 1 penny. (I think that number is now 2.14 cents) And on a side note nickels; which are even worse cost about nine cents per nickel to make. A quarter is worth 25 cents but at least it only cost 11.14 cents to make.

Because of inflation today’s pennies have become less valuable while the older pennies that were made with more copper began to have a value greater than 1 cent. People began to take these pennies and actually melt them down and sell the raw copper for a profit since these pennies were now worth more dead than alive. The government should have realized these citizens were actually doing the right thing in removing these useless mediums of exchange from circulation but what did they do instead? They made melting U.S. coins illegal and continue to produce more and more at a higher cost every year. We must get rid of them. It’s not like it will save the government millions of dollars every year from being wasted.

A common question that often comes up when discussing the elimination of pennies is won’t prices rise and charitable donations drop? No they won’t. Studies have shown this would not happen; and by studies I’m referring to all the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Guinea, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the newest member of this list Canada. These are all the countries in the world that have eliminated their least valued denomination or their version of the penny, and in most cases if not all, now round to the nearest 5 cents or New Zealand for example, they round to the nearest 10 cents for any transactions; because worrying about a one or two cent difference just isn't worth the time. These countries have seen no prices increase nor charitable donations drop. And actually the U.S. has gone through this process before. The U.S. has eliminated a few coins itself in the past; one of them being the half-cent coin which was discontinued in 1857 for being worth to little but keep in mind when this coin was discontinued it had more buying power than today’s dime. So maybe one day in future Mr. Geib might hear another AmEx student giving a speech about why we should get rid of the nickel or maybe even the dime.

The one final issue that stands in the way of getting rid of the penny is that everybody loves Abraham Lincoln, well almost everybody. But getting rid of the penny would not erase him from history. Lincoln and his monument are and will remain on the $5 bill which isn't going anywhere. And if you think that it’s unpatriotic or disrespectful to retire this presidential coinage I would now like to talk about the most patriotic group of Americans I know: the U.S. military; who on overseas bases have already gotten rid of the penny and simply round to the nearest five cents for any and all transactions.

Eventually even the most diehard Lincoln/penny lovers will have to give up the penny. They cost way more than their worth to make, they don’t work as money, they waste peoples time and aren't worth the time to count or transport, and because of inflation they become less valuable every year they remain in circulation which in turn makes all the other problems worse. And quite frankly if Lincoln were alive today and saw how worthless the penny has become he would probably ask why is his face on a coin that is worth 1/26th of what a penny was worth when he was president.? So sorry to those of you who still like the penny, but it is time that we begin to rid America of these disgusting bacteria ridden non-copper coins that live a short and useless life and fail at their only job which is to facilitate commerce.

=Cite Your Sources= CGPGrey: Death to Pennies

vlogbrothers: I HATE PENNIES!!!!!

CGPGrey: Canada Gets Rid of the Penny

Countries that eliminated penny

Cost of Pennies

Amount of Copper in Today's Penny