Opinion

Do pennies still make sense?  Many economists, business people and ordinary folk believe they don’t.  Pennies, they say, are essentially worthless, a nuisance to use, and costly to produce.  Has the time come to say goodbye to the penny?

You can fool some of the people some of the time and that’s enough to make a decent living

 -  W.C. Fields

What looks like a great idea on paper at first doesn’t always look as good on closer inspection. A restaurant that just opened in China is an example of this.

Over the millennia, people have lived and died for it, married and betrayed for it.  They’ve even killed for it.  Yet now, when so many are suffering through financial hardships, a growing number of people refuse to touch it.  Is cash about to give way to digital money? Are we entering an era where cash is becoming obsolete? A growing number of respected people are answering “yes” to both of these questions.

A tiny Israeli company has developed a product that can create clean green electricity, do so inexpensively, and that can be used by any country that has a coastline.  Will this technology improve the lives of billions of people?  Will it revolutionize business?  Even under the most optimistic circumstances this will not happen overnight. But early indications are that the technology works, and a growing number of countries around the world are taking a close look.

Hopefully, by the time you read this, the riots now wreaking havoc in dozens of US cities will be history. Tempers will have calmed, cities will have started rebuilding torched neighborhoods, and the legal system will be hard at work meting out justice for the horrific death of George Floyd, the African American whose death touched off the rioting. This is the best possible scenario.  The worst case makes our current problems look like a picnic by comparison.