William Safire takes a break from warmongering to fire on a new target; namely, the Lincoln penny:
The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and wasteful penny. Even President Lincoln, who distrusted the notion of paper money because he thought he would have to sign each greenback, would be ashamed to have his face on this specious specie.
That's because you can't buy anything with a penny any more. Penny candy? Not for sale at the five-and-dime (which is now a "dollar store"). Penny-ante poker? Pass the buck. Any vending machine? Put a penny in and it will sound an alarm. ...
What's really behind America's clinging to the pesky penny? Nostalgia cannot be the answer; if we can give up the barbershop shave with its steam towels, we can give up anything.
The answer, I think, has to do with zinc, which is what pennies are mostly made of; light copper plating turns them into red cents. The powerful, outsourcing zinc lobby — financed by Canadian mines as well as Alaskan — entices front groups to whip up a frenzy of save-the-penny mail to Congress when coin reform is proposed.Hah. Silly man. It is not the zinc lobby that preserves the penny, but rather an unholy alliance of coin collectors and state taxmen. Seriously. Proposals to abolish the penny have been around forever (one even made it into a West Wing episode), but it'll never happen because it would screw up the sales tax. Indeed, during the depression, rather than getting rid of the penny, sales tax tokens (scroll down) were created so that states could charge a sales tax rate of a fraction of a penny.
