With a cold steady rain falling in the background, I found time this morning to read some articles in a recent issue of The New Yorker. One of them focused on the American penny and how the average American is not willing to part with it even though it is expensive to mint and maintain. The simple truth is that the government knows that it costs more than a penny to make a penny, but any efforts to do away with the penny have met with strong resistance even though many Americans have been seen throwing them away as being useless. One might even say that sentimentality trumps logic in this case except for the fact that doing away with the penny would also cost the average American.
Having traveled to other countries where there is no such denomination as a penny, I know that a country can function without one, but I confess that I would miss the penny if it ever were done away with by the government. I do not mindlessly throw pennies way, nor do I horde pennies. Once my tin bank in the shape of the TARDIS from Doctor Who is full, I take it to my local bank and exchange them for paper money. I do not see this as a hardship in any way and look forward to seeing how quickly and or slowly the container fills. Plus I usually have a good idea of the amount of coins before I am told the total by the bank teller.
The second article that I read also focused on money but on how money shapes lives in modern China. More quickly than one might have imagined the average person in China is discovering how quickly they can change their lives through commerce and tourism. In fact the author Peter Hessler says that instead of following the Chinese zodiac calendar and its parade of animals, one might say that the new calendar is divided into element of modern growth such as a new road followed by a new car and so on.
It was nice to read another article from Hessler, because I enjoyed his book River Town : Two Years on the Yangtze. In fact I will admit that I envied what he had done in his book.