pennies

On the news recently, right between two much more awesome stories (When i say awesome i mean in the surprising fashion, not 'wow that's so cool!' because they weren't cool stories) fell one that most other people would just shrug off, but one that most definitely caught my attention.

"Only hours ago, a child in broad daylight was grabbed by a stranger, luckily the child punched him in the jugular and made his escape"
"The government doesn't want to use pennies anymore"
"The G-8 has become the G-20 and Canada has decided to hand over large amounts of money that they don't have in order to fund security efforts, even though no one really needs security in Canada, and the result of the summit will surely only be that half of the 20 will deny the existence of global warming, while the other half will reject all action plans since all the money they have was used in order to host the summit in the first place"

I could probably talk for hours about any of these news stories but for some reason i just kept dwelling on the penny thing for days afterward. Apparently, as told to me on tv, the cost of manufacturing a single penny is; GET THIS, four cents. FOUR CENTS? Are you serious? It costs four times its worth just to manufacture it? The governement spends nearly one and a half BILLION dollars each year just making these dumb little things. Canada is always complaining about how we don't have money to spend on things that matter like health care or a better education, and they're using more than a billion a year this way?

Personally, I've always thought that pennies were a stupid idea. On any given day, come around and ask me to open up my extremely fashionable, indefinitely functionable, undoubtedly awesome red domo-kun change purse; and i could most likely show you more than 20 pennies. Each of which comes completely crusted in greening copper and a thick layer of years of scum. If you use a penny to pay for something, you probably lose even more money washing your hands of its nastiness after.

As far as i can remember, i've always treated pennies like they were garbage. If i'm bored, i throw them at friends, if my table is rocking, i stick it under the leg and leave it there. Never have i once felt the innate connection with the penny that all the people on tv said that they have.

"I don't want them to go, i'll miss them"

I bet that's a load of bs from someone who wanted to just seem compassionate on tv during their 15 seconds of fame. What they're really thinking is

"Why did i just say that? That was more blatantly untrue than the general public saying they don't like Justin Beiber."

Australia got rid of pennies a longgggg time ago, and i think they've got the right idea. It means much less fumbling, less hand grime, more government funds, and a happier population. Though i do start to wonder what Canada would be like without it. With our messed up 13% tax rate, stores would have a super difficult time making all of their bills land only on multiples of ten. Maybe we could just start doing little multi-cent favours to pay the difference. Any time you get charged, you pay up to the ten cent mark just lower than your total, and depending on how many cents you have leftover ( 1-9 ) you have to do a task with difficulty corresponding with cents owed. Maybe for a 2 cent favour someone could give the other person a sexy wink. Or for an 8 cent favour, dance to "Jump on it" for a full half minute.

Oh i could have fun with that... but seriously Canada; we don't need no damn pennies.