So much for the Canadian penny

Canada's triple-U senate (unelected, useless and ugly) has recommended that we get rid of the Canadian one-cent coin, popularly known as the penny. The senate's logic, such as it is, is that each penny actually costs one and a half cents to manufacture and they are so last millennium anyway. They recommend phasing the penny out over the next two years and if it were not for the entire idea being so totally idiotic I would be on board with it. As things stand I am forced to disrespectfully disagree.

The cost to manufacture each penny is really a pretty good investment when you bother to think about it for a moment or two. What else is there that you can build something for a cent and a half that will last for decades in good working order? How many transactions does your average penny go through in it's operational lifetime? I would suggest thousands if not hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of transactions that drive the economy of Canada and the civilized world. I think that everybody can agree that as a prime driving force of the economy of the free world, the penny is indispensable.

AS far as the penny being so last millennium (or "old fashioned"), well the collective I.Q.'s of the entire senate don't add up to the collective value of a pile of mouldy cat poop, and we haven't got rid of them yet. So why get rid of the penny?

Another point about tossing the one cent piece; when was the last time your purchase added up and ended with a '0' or a '5'? This means that once the penny is gone all purchases will be rounded up so that a five or ten cent piece can be used to complete the transaction. So if you were to buy something where the total cost comes to $1.56, then under this new penniless scheme you would now pay $1.60, an addition of $.04. Granted, four cents isn't a lot of money, but add up these transactions over a year or two and it adds up. And add it up with the transactions in a small city for a year or two and now you are talking about some major change. It is like the apocryphal story of the computer hacker who broke into a bank (online) and directed all interest payments of less than one cent into his own accounts. Within a very short time he was a multi-millionaire (what the story tends not to mention is that hacker-buddy gets caught and is sent to prison where he becomes third-tier bitch to a dude with eye-lid tats, named Bubahh but who calls himself Jackhammer. It's a rough 5 - 10 for computer hacker buddy).

It would appear obvious that getting rid of the Canadian penny would be the first step on the slippery slope down to complete societal breakdown. Rather than that, why don't we just get rid of the senate?

Anyway... Humouroceros