Pennies from Hell?

Sebastian Mallaby has interesting op-ed in the Post today called "The Penny Stops Here". His main point is that it makes sense for the penny to be eliminated as currency.

Two months ago, in an Olympian act of statesmanship, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) took aim at the true menace in our nation. He introduced a bill that would get rid of the penny. In the first half of this year alone, the U.S. government minted 4.8 billion of these useless coins, and since it costs 1.4 cents to make each one and maybe two more cents each to distribute them, that robbed taxpayers of $115 million. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page denounced Kolbe's capitulation to the sinister forces of inflation, as though recognizing reality were the same as creating it. But in truth the noble statesman should go further. He should abolish nickels and dimes.

End the Penny? End the nickel and dime? That's crazy talk. Mallaby uses a bunch of fancy boy statistical risk/reward arguments to make his point. I don't care about the economics, however. I care about the idioms and figures of speech that will be lost if we eliminate the penny, the nickel, and the dime. These sayings will lose all meaning to younger generations:
A dime a dozen
Pennies from heaven
Stop nickel and diming me
If I had a nickel for everytime that happened...
A penny-wise, a pound foolish (I'm not sure what that means, however. I think it might be English)
The nickel defense and the dime defense in football
A dime-bag

And the list goes on and on and on. The penny may die, but its memory will live on in our hearts, if not in our pockets or under our couches.

Fun fact: If you look hard enough at the back of a clean penny, you can see Lincoln sitting in the chair in the Lincoln monument.