S02.E35: Aftermath of Paris Attacks and Penny Manufacturing Costs

[Athena]

Season finale.

 

Segments: Responses and aftermath of Paris attacks, penny manufacturing costs.

[Delwyn]

Janice from Accounting and Creepy Baby with Hulk Hands in Tutu OTP.

[Iguana]

Aw, I'm going to miss you until you come back, John. But not as much as I will miss Janice from accounting, because she don't give a fuck. Not one penny's worth.

[peeayebee]

I was pleased but surprised to see Janice from Accounting there. I always thought they were using a stock photo.

 

And it's always great to see Rachel Dratch.

 

One other use for pennies that John omitted mentioning was pressed penny souvenirs. 

 

Loved John saying that more people died from peanuts last year than from terrorist refugees. I can't tell you how angry I am at politicians for being so stupid and xenophobic about this.

[HelenBaby]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about what I call "smashed" pennies. However, when I was in Australia a couple of years ago, they had the smashed penny machines that just used blanks instead of you using one of your own pennies, since they quit using them over there.

I will miss the show but found it odd that Penny minting was a topic he chose to cover.

[The Luvly Junkie]

I will miss the show but found it odd that Penny minting was a topic he chose to cover.

       I'm inclined to agree because for the entire season covering tough topics, he kinda soft balled for his season finale. I guess the piece can parallel the salmon cannon from last season's finale, but that only lasted at most 4-5 minutes. But to me it felt like fluff, not defeated and careless, but still fluff.

 

       I was hoping he would stay true to his word and actually cover the state of satire. With 2 tragic attacks on Paris it would be a perfect opportunity for him to divulge deeper into the Satire Subject after discussing Paris' refugee status since he originally wanted to report on Charlie Hebdo. But I guess plans change...

 

       I just realized now that the carved wooden penis has a woman hugging the ball sacs. That made my day. Also, the lyrics to LWT's theme is odd, but maybe it's because of the rarity that American artists would use Japanese phrases without stereotyping the culture. 

[ganesh]

I didn't think Janice was "real" either. That woman is hilarious.

I would have liked more time on the refugees and congress being ridiculously xenophobic about it. 

[trow125]

I looked around Twitter last night and discovered that "Janice" is actually LWT writer Jill Twiss.

 

The penny piece disappointed me too, but only because there was no call to action. I've actually been anti-penny for YEARS -- a college boyfriend used to throw them away, something I thought was nuts (personally, I save mine and use them in the self-checkout machine at Safeway, provided there's no line and thus nobody to complain that I'm inserting 18 pennies into the register). But JO introduced the piece by saying something along the lines of, "Here's something we can actually do something about," which made me think the writers had come up with a clever way for LWT viewers to lobby Congress to get rid of the penny. No such luck.

[Victor the Crab]

I can't believe there's a lobby group that exists to keep the penny around in the United States. Would people have lobbied to keep the 8-track cassette around? They need to throw in the towel and surrender because the benefits of getting rid of it far outweigh keeping it, as we in Canada have discovered.

 

Anybody know when LWT will return?

[Sharpie66]

I had a feeling that "Janice" was an LWT staffer!

 

The first I'd heard of someone wanting to get rid of the penny was on an early-season episode of The West Wing, where (IIRC) Sam Seaborn pointed out that Lincoln lobbyists have a lot of power in DC, especially ones from Illinois. I'm pretty sure we were the last state to accept pennies in the manual-pay lane of the tollway system.

[purist]

 

Anybody know when LWT will return?

 

I heard John say they'd be back in February. 

 

Wouldn't the best thing to do with unwanted pennies be to give them to charity? I was hoping John would recommend such a course of action.

[Eliza422]

I heard John say they'd be back in February. 

 

Wouldn't the best thing to do with unwanted pennies be to give them to charity? I was hoping John would recommend such a course of action.

I think that is a great idea...like the Ronald McDonald house collection boxes....

[cattykit]

They included a 60 Minutes clip with Morley Safer, but Andy Rooney did the same experiment a long time ago with throwing pennies on the ground and seeing if anyone would pick them up.  Even when I was a kid 50 years ago, there was talk about eliminating pennies and rounding everything off to nickel prices.  Clearly that never happened.

 

My father used to save pennies in large jars (well, really empty liquor bottles, but still).  I can't help but think of him when I think of pennies.  For years after he died, I would often come across a couple of pennies in strange places and think I was getting a message.  I know that's not true but I still (illogically) think that.

[Irlandesa]

Anybody know when LWT will return?

During the credits, there was a blurb on the screen that said it'd be back Feb. 14th.  Happy Valentine's Day!

 

I actually liked that he did a soft topic to wrap up the season.  It was like a "holiday" show. 

[Hanahope]

Can you believe all the money that is wasted on keeping the penny around.  The costs of making it, the lobbyists, distribution, storage, etc.  Its such a waste.

 

 I will miss JO over the holidays, though I'm sure we'll get some webisodes.

[fastiller]

Why not do what the UK and other countries have done and go to the two-penny piece?  Re-configure the penny die-cutting machine so that the coins will read "2 Cents".

[Notwisconsin]

AS to the penny, there's been little reform except as to that awful dollar thing. Get rid of the penny and the dollar bill and accept that inflation has changed spending habits.

[Gulftastic]

Why not do what the UK and other countries have done and go to the two-penny piece?  Re-configure the penny die-cutting machine so that the coins will read "2 Cents".

 

Even the two pence piece is pretty much useless. Any change I get below 20 pence these days go in a big jar to be saved till it's full. Last time I cashed it up, there was £100 in there.

[fastiller]

Even the two pence piece is pretty much useless. Any change I get below 20 pence these days go in a big jar to be saved till it's full. Last time I cashed it up, there was £100 in there.

 

I get that.  But at least then the item -- which costs 1.7₡ to create -- would actually cost less to create than it's value.

[OneWhoLurks]

Comedian and political commentator John Oliver said on HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”, that France without all its cultural institutions “would be Luxembourg. And nobody wants that!”

 

[...]

 

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, meanwhile, invited the comedian to visit via Twitter, after sharing what he thought made Luxembourg interesting, i.e., its language skills, high spending on development aid and the large number of castles never conquered by Britain.

 

The response of one politician, however, was not so good humoured. When asked about the jibe by Luxemburger Wort's Brussels correspondent, Diego Velazquez, Culture Minister Maggy Nagel said she was “not amused”.

 

She said that she had passed the matter to the State Department and that the Luxembourg government would discuss it on Friday.

 

 

http://www.wort.lu/en/culture/interestingluxembourgfacts-comedian-s-luxembourg-jibe-debunked-on-twitter-56556e910da165c55dc4e14d

[trow125]

"She had passed the matter to the State Department"?!?!?!?! Wow, talk about not being able to take a joke.

[izabella]

Well, there's another country John won't be welcome in!

[OneWhoLurks]

“We’ve been looking at the penny for a long time, because obviously the value of a penny has gotten smaller and smaller as time has gone on. Even with low inflation, it continues to diminish,” Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday.

 

Mr. Lew took questions from students and faculty at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Va., at a forum designed to solicit feedback on the separate $10 bill proposal, which has generated surprising backlash from devotees of Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury’s founder whose portrait has adorned the note since the 1930s.

 

The question over the one-cent piece was prompted by a segment that ran Sunday on John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” program on HBO. Critics have said the penny should be eliminated because it is both a nuisance and a waste, since it costs more to make than it’s worth.

 

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/11/24/should-treasury-ditch-the-penny-its-under-review/

[Hanahope]

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said this week that the government is reviewing a proposal to stop making the penny. But Velde says he has an even better proposal: Nickels cost five times as much as pennies to make.

"You would just abandon the nickel and just declare that all the pennies are worth 5 cents.

 

 

Apparently, it costs 8.1 cents to make a nickle, so nickles actually lose the government even more money than pennies.

 

http://www.npr.org/2015/11/26/457397908/critics-wonder-whether-pennies-make-sense-anymore

[possibilities]

If we discontinue the penny, you know they will become collectors' items.

 

When I was a kid, my grandfather set me up collecting pennies, so I'd have one for every year. The wheat pennies (backs had sheaves of wheat) were "special." After I had one for each year, the rest went into a huge jar. When I went off to college and cashed out the contents of the jar it was worth something like $4. An entire childhood's worth of saving pennies only amounted to $4!

 

I don't feel strongly about pennies as harmful or helpful. But there are some people who want to discontinue all cash in favor of an exclusively (and highly trackable) system of plastic (debit cards). That's something I do feel averse to.

[theatremouse]

One thing that confused me, but I'm sure will reveal my own great ignorance, is I thought I heard John say something like a third of pennies aren't circulating? So that made me think, ok, pennies are so useless no one's using them, and they cost more to make than they're worth...why are we still making them? That to me seems like it is a separate issues of whether we still accept them as currency and use those that are already out there existing. But why do they need to keep making them in the same numbers reported on the show? Seems like we have a sufficient number of pennies out there for the current need/usage. Or at the very least could make a boatload less. Or maybe that'd make the margin worse. I mean, I get there's a lobby about keeping the penny but are they specifically lobbying for how many new pennies need to be made too? I know a certain amount of any currency gets destroyed periodically and so theoretically if it's still "in use" those would need to be replaced but...maybe they don't? I wonder what would happened if we just stopped making more but still used them. It'd be a little different than killing it entirely, but just deciding they don't need to be produced in such major quantities.

Or have I completely misunderstood what was meant by the "not circulating" bit?

[trow125]

I think the pennies that are "not circulating" are ones that are being stored in penny jars for years on end, thrown away (yes, a lot of people actually do that), etc. If you stopped making new ones, presumably shopkeepers would go into banks wanting to get rolls of pennies to give in change and be frustrated when those were not available. Then they'd have to institute a "no penny" policy and round up or down. Hmm... maybe creating a penny shortage wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

[dcalley]

I was pleased but surprised to see Janice from Accounting there. I always thought they were using a stock photo.

 

I didn't think Janice was "real" either. That woman is hilarious.

I should have chimed in sooner with the info that Janice is Jill. I went to school with her. I get so happy every time I see her on screen (and once when I heard her voice).

 

Wouldn't the best thing to do with unwanted pennies be to give them to charity? I was hoping John would recommend such a course of action.

That was what the one guy testifying was saying, that if we get rid of the penny, donations will go down. I don't buy it. Did you all know that you can get some gift certificates at Coinstar without paying the service fee? You can also donate to charity without paying the fee. Anyway, that's what I do with my coins. And I don't know why the hell the parking employees actually took 3 hours to hand count the pennies when they could have just taken them to the bank to use a machine.

[dusang]

And I don't know why the hell the parking employees actually took 3 hours to hand count the pennies when they could have just taken them to the bank to use a machine.

 

Or refused them as a form of payment.

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

Most people know that pennies cost the government more to make than they're worth, even after the U.S. Mint switched to using mostly zinc in 1982. They may not know that making all those pennies has a serious environmental impact, from raw ore, to smelter, to mint, and then to banks before finally being dropped on the street or dumped into a coin kiosk or a fountain.

 

How Much Does it Really Cost (the Planet) to Make a Penny?