Abolition of the Penny

Greetings and welcome to todays random thought.

I try to watch the McLaughlin Group each week.  It is this political round table show that airs locally on PBS on Friday nights.  Now, I know you are thinking, "This guy needs to get a life if this is his idea of a fun Friday evening."  Perhaps you are right.  But if I had not stayed home a few weeks ago, I would have nothing to blog about today.  So maybe is it good for you that I have no life.

Anyway, one small segment of the show focused on a house bill that would in essence abolish the penny (CNN Money Article).  This intrigued me a little.  I mean, do we really need the penny?  We could probably do without it but I am sure there would be some way the credit card companies would kill us financially by some sort of evil rounding up scheme.  Did you know that the pennies from before the 1980s could now be melted down for a profit as there are over 2 cents worth of copper in them?

The wife and I did try a new Italian restaurant recently and all the pricing looked a little odd.  Extra dipping sauce for the breadsticks was $0.33, my sandwich was $4.01, etc.  We quickly figured out that after the 6% tax was added in, everything came to a total that did not involve any pennies (sauce was 35 cents with tax, sandwich was 4 and a quarter).  Maybe they have seen the future and did not want to have to change their menus when the "get rid of the penny" bill passes.  I tend to think the owner is just anal-retentive.

I had a French professor in college (he was not French, he taught French).  He stated on more than one occasion that when he died he was leaving all his money to the foundation to abolish the apostrophe.  I think it might make French easier but would confuse English.  Just so you know, there are people that are particular about their commas as well.

Now Xanga does not charge me to post my blog (or charge for you to read it) so I did not have to use any pennies for this posting and if you look carefully, I did not use any apostrophes in this post either.  Maybe I am just ahead of the game (or maybe I am really anal-retentive)

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon