The current issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating story about how the government is losing money making pennies. While the story itself is interesting, buried about halfway through is the piece that just set the hair on the back of my neck on edge, and which explains so many of the problems we're suffering with here in the U.S. -- the fact that it is often way more valuable for a private company so spend a ton of money to prevent something than it is for every day citizens to support it (other proof points include the way the government monitors milk and the usurious tax on sugar, among others; both of which benefit a small number of businesses and cost the rest of us money). For more on thos issues, read "The Logic of LIfe" by Tim Harford. Here's the section in the New Yorker (bold mine):
In November, 1989, Representatives James A. Hayes, of Louisiana, and Jim Kolbe, of Arizona, having had just about enough of all this, introduced the Price Rounding Act. Its purpose was to phase out the penny by requiring that all cash transactions be rounded to the nearest five cents. The bill was actively opposed by Americans for Common Cents, a lobbying organization that had been founded specifically to defeat the legislation. A.C.C.’s main funding came from Jarden Zinc Products, which is one of the nation’s largest producers of zinc, and which has supplied the U.S. Mint with penny planchets since 1982.
Yow.
Two points.
1. Stories like this is why I read the New Yorker.
2. All the transparency and disclosure and citizen journalists and mainstream journalists in the world are not going to solve this problem.