Canada ponders pulling the plug on the penny

[madfranks]

Link Here (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/836527--canada-ponders-pulling-the-plug-on-the-penny?bn=1)

Snippet from article...


OTTAWA – Is Canada facing a penniless future?

While Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has openly mused about the end of the one-cent coin, documents reveal that officials from his department have been in discussions with the Royal Canadian Mint to prepare for the day when the penny finally drops.

They’ve talked to officials in both Australia and New Zealand — two countries that have axed the one-cent coins — to learn about their experience in a penny-free society.

They considered how the end of the penny would affect cash purchases.

And they’ve mused about plans to convince Canadians to part with the stock of 30 billion pennies produced since 1908, many of which are rattling around bedroom drawers, piggy banks, kitchen jars — and weighing down pockets and purses.

One briefing note prepared by the mint in December was done “to provide information to the government to assist them in their deliberations on the future of the one-cent coin.”

It says Ottawa could withdraw the penny from circulation but still allow them to be accepted for commerce. Or it could end production of the penny and “demonetize” the coin on a specific date, meaning they could no longer be used to pay for purchases.

Pity the penny. When first produced at the Ottawa Mint in 1908 (earlier production was done in England), you could buy a paper for two cents and a loaf of bread for five cents. But since then, it has lost 95 per cent of its purchasing power, Pierre Duguay, the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, told a Senate committee in May.

More at link...

[keehah]

Everyone will tell you the penny is a joke, other than the government lackeys who are paid to say they keep studying it and the MSM who repeats mindlessly the well paid procrastination that has changed little in 15 years.

[Ponce]

At first they will bitch about it and then accept it..........as everything else.

Is not what they do to you but what you ALLOWED them to do to you.

[keehah]

I don't bend over for dropped pennies! :D

[Phoenix]

Pity the penny. When first produced at the Ottawa Mint in 1908 (earlier production was done in England), you could buy a paper for two cents and a loaf of bread for five cents. But since then, it has lost 95 per cent of its purchasing power


Gee, why is that? ???

[Ponce]

I don't bend over for dropped pennies! :D


Well, I do.......and specially since that time that I bend over to pick up a penny and two feet away I saw something shinny and it was a diamond ring........ parking lot of Wally's.

[ximmy]

There was a time when pennies were valued...

The man in the candy store said, “What would you like?”
Morris looked at the candy. He liked the gumdrops. He said, “Give me some of those.”
The man said, “They are one for a penny. How much money do you have?”
Morris looked. He had six pennies.

[madfranks]

When I was a kid my cousin and I would walk the mile or so to the only gas station in town, scrounging for pennies on the ground the whole way there. We'd leave with no money and if we were lucky arrive at the gas station with a penny each. Tootsie rolls for a penny and zots for two. If we found a penny we'd split a tootsie roll, if not we'd just walk home and try again later.

[Awoke]

This would be another hidden tax, like inflation, where the prices would constantly be rounded up to the next 5 cent piece.

The blue-collar pay again...