The “Nuisance” Coin
June 15th, 2010
Remember when you would receive change back at the grocery store and notice that a certain piece of canadian currency would sneak its way into your coin purse? Well, nowadays in Canada you will find that people are saving those coins for themselves. Some may say because it’s a part of “our heritage” and others because they just can seem to pass free coins laying on the street. Either way, there seems to be a value put into this mostly useless coin.
After reading about the gradual increase in costs to produce a Canadian penny, one may not blame Canadians for “hoarding” a metal that clearly holds more intrinsic value than its paper relative.
Some legislators in Canada recommend rounding up to the nearest $.05 as an answer to the nuisance coin, even though they have already rid themselves of the $1 and $2 bill. The only arguments thus far is the price of updating all retail and corporate computer systems to round up or down, and even though the government loses money every year on making these coins (it costs $.015 to make $.01) the pennies do add up.
HT to lewrockwell.com
