In my article “Should Pennies Be Made From Recycled Plastic“, I suggested replacing pennies with recycled plastic.  The idea being that if we replace a penny with a plastic instead of metal, the benefits would be two-fold.  First, the recycled plastic version would be much cheaper to create that the metal version, and secondly we would be cleaning up the environment by recycling plastic instead of dumping plastic in landfills and the oceans!

Since the plastic penny idea has multiple ways that it could benefit our society, I still think it holds some merit.  That said, perhaps we should consider upping the ante by creating a new secondary currency system.  In this new currency system, the zinc penny equivalent would be replaced with a penny that would be equivalent to what a dime is worth in the current currency model.  Then have the rest of the coins and dollar bills flow the same proportional valuation system as today.  So a new currency nickel would be worth 5 old dimes, and 1 new currency dime would be worth one dollar in the old currency.

The two currencies could float together for some specified time period, oh let’s say 10 years, with the old currency no longer accepted at the end of the 10 year time-frame.  Obviously, the old currency could be taken to banks to be converted into the new currency at that point.

The approach of using a new version of our currency would breathe value back into the penny and make coins worth picking up once again.  I think it’s important to have the penny because it makes the money valuation system make sense.  Not having the penny would be like having a piano without certain keys missing.  After all, the currency system is based on math, and we wouldn’t consider skipping numbers in math would we?

Initially, I thought the government could implement some type of country-wide deflation, but too many clever crooked people would find ways to take advantage of such conversions.  The rolling currency idea would be less painful that forced deflation, and in a way, it would have the save benefits of deflation since the money value would jump scale 10 fold.

Perhaps this process could be performed every 100 years, if inflation make the penny not worth minting again in the future…

Well here are my two “outside of the box” thoughts on the penny problem, and I’m done thinking about it now.  What do you think, do you have any clever ideas that you would like to share other than dropping the penny altogether?

MR