Eliminate The Penny:
Results from a Bank of Canada Study
Results from a Bank of Canada Study
In 2005, The Bank of Canada did an in-house draft study that recommended elimination of the penny in Canada, something I have been urging for nearly two decades. Details from the Globe and Mail.
For more see this, this, and this.
“Today's purchasing power of the five-cent coin is equivalent to the purchasing power of the penny in 1972,” the study noted....The case for getting rid of the penny is even stronger nowadays with the high price of metals: the cost of minting pennies has risen dramatically and greatly exceeds a penny, especially when transaction and transportation costs are taken into consideration.
As of last summer, the Finance Department had not directly consulted retailers or the public on the penny. A Royal Canadian Mint survey conducted a decade ago found that 35 per cent of Canadians were in favour of eliminating the penny and 26 per cent wanted to keep it.
Australia stopped making one- and two-cent coins in 1990. New Zealand stopped making them three years before that. France, Norway and Britain are among the other countries that have eliminated low-denomination coins.
For more see this, this, and this.
Category: Economics, Pennies Posted on
Thursday, July 5, 2007 at 10:20am
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Do you think Zimbabwe is at the point yet where paper is worth more as paper than as bank notes? Do you think it matters if a country gets there fast or slow?
I don't have a problem with fiat money, so long as it is responsibly controlled, as it has been in Canada for at least two decades (depending on one's criteria for "responsibly controlled", one could argue it has been for over 60 year).
Nice question about paper in Zimbabwe. If paper is worth more than the notes printed on it, we should observe all sorts of interesting uses of the paper: cigarettes? fuel? toilets?