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Why we should abolish the penny
Aug. 1st, 2006 03:57 pmA number of people associated with the world of business and finance, including Rich Lowry of the National Review, have proposed the abolition of the penny.
I wholeheartedly support them, but for entirely different reasons. His are purely economic (pennies are too costly to make, and tend to be collected rather than circulated.) Mine are aesthetic and theological.
Abolition of the penny would de-decimalize the U.S. currency, and reclaim a bit of our world from the loathsome scourge of decimalism. Decimalism is the abominable and loathsome practice of arranging a currency or measurement system so that each unit is a factor of 10 larger or smaller than the next. As such, it is an affront to human scale, which requires halves, thirds, and quarters. It is also an affront to almighty God, who decreed a seven-day week and set π equal to an even 3. Abolish the penny, and the U.S. dollar will have units beneath that divide it into halves, quarters, tenth, and twentieth parts.
I'd also propose that we hexadecimalize the larger denominations of currency: rather than fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds, we could have fours, eights, sixteens, thirty-twos, sixty-fours, and one hundred twenty-eights. Better even than this would be a system based on a sixty dollar bill, which makes thirds as handily as it makes quarters.
I wholeheartedly support them, but for entirely different reasons. His are purely economic (pennies are too costly to make, and tend to be collected rather than circulated.) Mine are aesthetic and theological.
Abolition of the penny would de-decimalize the U.S. currency, and reclaim a bit of our world from the loathsome scourge of decimalism. Decimalism is the abominable and loathsome practice of arranging a currency or measurement system so that each unit is a factor of 10 larger or smaller than the next. As such, it is an affront to human scale, which requires halves, thirds, and quarters. It is also an affront to almighty God, who decreed a seven-day week and set π equal to an even 3. Abolish the penny, and the U.S. dollar will have units beneath that divide it into halves, quarters, tenth, and twentieth parts.
I'd also propose that we hexadecimalize the larger denominations of currency: rather than fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds, we could have fours, eights, sixteens, thirty-twos, sixty-fours, and one hundred twenty-eights. Better even than this would be a system based on a sixty dollar bill, which makes thirds as handily as it makes quarters.
