Everyone wants to throw in his two cents about the penny.

   I argued recently that the one-cent coin has outlived its usefulness. It's a burden not only to millions of trouser pockets, but also to the U.S. taxpayer, since each penny now costs roughly 1.75 cents to mint.

   Many readers agree, and some even have their own personal coin-reform programs. Ed Naratil writes: "For many years now my pockets get emptied of change every evening into a jar. ... About every two months I roll up the change and take them to my local bank where I exchange it for half dollars and dollar coins.

   "I never carry one-dollar bills. The smallest I carry are two-dollar bills (which) I get in packets of 100. I've been doing this for years. In fact some clerks don't use my name; they just call me `funny money.'"

   Others simply put up with it, though a penny saved seems like a complete waste of time. Jim Tanney Jr. writes:

   "I detest the penny. I buy a 20-ounce coffee at 7-Eleven every morning. It costs $1.27. I usually have a quarter and take two cents from their little penny collector on the counter. If it is empty, I take my lumps, give them two bucks and leave the three pennies from my change ...

   "(At Blockbuster) for whatever reason, it costs $4.76 to rent a new movie. Give me a break. I usually try to take a penny in with me. Sometimes, if I forget, a daring clerk will give me a quarter change from my fiver.

   "Those who never dare are State Store workers ... I think these clerks live in abject fear of losing a penny. I often leave my pennies, but I have never been offered a penny when my bill is $15.01. They give me $4.99 from my twenty."

   But I also heard from plenty of penny-pinchers, who are certain cent-less shopping would be a loser for consumers.

   "If we go to the nickel as the smallest denomination, will the merchants all raise their prices, now calibrated in cents, to the next highest nickel? You bet they will," writes John Rooney.

Adds Ralph Swift: "I live in New Jersey where the sales tax is 7 percent. Scrapping the penny would only benefit the politicians who set tax policy and the retailers who collect the sales tax.

   "If I make a $1 purchase, I pay seven cents sales tax. Do away with the penny and the tax will be rounded to 10 cents. Small change, perhaps, but meaningful to the consumer."

   I have to admit that last argument had me puzzled. Even if you do all your shopping in those wonderfully lively and chaotic places called dollar stores, do all your purchases come out to exactly $1 (before tax)?

   What happens when you get a bill for $1.59? Your 7 percent sales tax is precisely 11.13 cents. Do you offer the store an IOU for thirteen-one hundredths of a cent?

   As for prices rolling up inexorably toward the next-highest nickel in the absence of pennies, I'm skeptical.

   Think of all those price tags that end in ".99." That's called "strategic pricing" and it's done for a reason: Consumers mentally round down, and somehow we're more willing to buy if something's priced at $4.99 than at $5.

   Suppose the penny disappeared, and merchants had to round down to ".95." Do you think they'd give up strategic pricing rather than swallow the four-cent difference?

   Bet you a nickel they wouldn't.

   But the strangest case for keeping the penny came from reader Darrel Morton, who cites the impact on jobs at the Philadelphia Mint.

   "Even though every survey shows the public still supports making the penny, you propose the opposite which would likely affect the livelihoods of hundreds of Philadelphia Mint employees," Morton wrote.

   Well, OK, although some of the extra tax dollars paid to subsidize the penny also come from the pockets of Philadelphians.

   But if local job-preservation is your goal, why not have Washington resume minting half-pennies, two- and three- cent pieces and all the other coins we've abandoned over the years?

   Makes cents to me. ...