Demonization.  What a word.  When I read it first I thought it was some kind of exorcism term.  But after perusing the Currency Act of Canada (did you know we had an Act about currency?  Bet you didn’t.) and some of its associated literature I became quite familiar with the word.  For those slower folks out there, it means to take money out of circulation…forever.  Well, maybe not forever, but probably forever.

I have long hated pennies. Even as I write I have a few stacks of pennies on my desk, refusing to use them for exact change.  Sure, looking at them all here I feel like Scrooge McDuck, but is that why we still have the little coins?  Is it to keep relevance to those dozen or so clinches and sayings?  I want pennies gone.  Forever.

In a recent study, by me, just now, I found that the Canadian mint made a bunch of pennies in 2009.  Any guesses how many?  C’mon.  Just guess.  Bet you have no idea how many they made.  Because no one cares about pennies, right?  For a country that probably doesn’t care about the little copperheads, our government minted 455,800,000.  In.  One.  Year.  With a little more digging by my research team (me), I calculated that they have minted approximately 32,000,000,000 pennies since 1908.  Yes, you read that number right.  32 billion.  Pennies.  Why are we doing this?

The Desjardin Financial Group published a report in 2007 saying that the cost to keep pennies in circulation cost $130,000,000 per year.  Or about 13,000,000,000 pennies.  Yes, that’s just under half of the number we’ve ever minted.

Where, or where are the pennies going?  Swear jars, wishing wells, candy, and people’s thoughts.  It costs 1.8¢ to make a penny these days.  When is the last time you bought anything for a penny?  I’ll tell you when: a long, goddamn time ago.  So why are these almost worthless pieces of copper (it’s composition is actually 94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plating or copper plated zinc) still in circulation?

There are some people out there, and I’m not fingering the elderly here, who think they’re going to lose money without pennies.  And I suppose that with billions of dollars of pennies in the country (or somewhere else, according to the law of conservation of mass) there’s lots of money that would be “lost” if we just melted the bloody things.  The most ever saved by one person was only $13,084.59.  That’s the most someone could lose if we got rid of them…today.

Some smart money people say that we should adopt the Australian coin system, which uses the Swedish rounding system.  The Aussies don’t have a “quarter,” never beat our Bluenose, and don’t have any beavers either, so I reckon that we can keep our 25¢, 10¢ and 5¢ pieces fine.  If we have to.  I hate change in my pocket, going jing-a-ling-a-ling.  Yes, we’ll have to get used to it.  Of course it’ll be strange at first, like fingering the elderly.  But we’ll have to only have amounts ending in a .05, which is awesome.  Five fingers, right?

So waddya say, guys?  Can we get rid of the pesky pieces and save something more valuable for rainy days?