Death to Pennies

All I want is for all paper cash to be plastic so I can wash the covid off of it. I support getting rid of the penny, but I feel that plastic cash would make more of a difference. CGP Grey has a wonderful video on the penny, he is my favorite YouTuber. ▶ this video

CGP Grey has an excellent youtube video on the whole issue for the US. The US currently makes 4 billion 1 cent coins annually. And they have already been abolished at US military overseas bases. ▶ this video (Come to think of it, doesn't the US military use a lot more metric system than the general population. If so, this would be a good reason to increase the military since it would appear to be the only way progress happens!)

This already happens with cents. Your tax frequently comes out to a fraction of a cent, and it gets rounded to the nearest cent. The US used to have a half-penny coin. It stopped being minted in 1857. The purchasing power of the half-penny at the time was about as much as a quarter has today. It wouldn't be crazy to get rid of all coins worth less than 25¢ and round all purchases to the nearest quarter. Obligatory CGP Grey: ▶ this video

They've done some of that in the past. The United States had a half-cent coin until 1857. When it was coin was eliminated, it was more valuable than the penny is today[1]. There is also a US $1 coin. They were widely used in Equador when I visited in 2005, because their currency was pegged to the US dollar. I spent a day in Miami on my way back home and I left a few as tips. People were very confused by them. It seemed kind of funny to me that a US coin was more commonly used outside the US than inside. [1] See CPGrey's "Death to Pennies". ▶ this video