You just have to look at the Dollar Store to realize how far inflation has gone.  The Five And Ten Cent Store was a new idea decades ago.  I really do not know how old that chain was but now the Dollar Store has replaced that chain.  Everything a dollar can buy.  It actually cost more than a cent for the Mint to produce a cent.  Eliminate the sales tax and the cent goes.  The Dollar Store chains tells me how much prices have gone up.  Now it is a dollar not five or ten cents that products often cost.

I used to be addicted to playing pinball machines.  I would be coming home from collecting money from my paper route customers.  It was 42 cents for a week of newspaper delivery and many of my customers would give me two quarters and tell me to keep the change so I often would have a pocket full of change, particularly quarters.  Before I went home, I would often play pinball at the local candy store.  That is what you called them back in those days.  You know it was a long time ago.  Playing a game of pinball only cost a quarter.  And not only that you got five balls per game.  Today one game costs 50 cents and you only get three balls.  Inflation, indeed!  Of course the days of five balls per game and a quarter each game go back almost fifty years.  I am dating myself.  I, also, remember when gasoline was 33 cents a gallon.  All those days are long gone.  Of course, those days you made a whole lot less a week.  In 1970, I made an $100 a week and thought that was a lot.  Then tickets to the Fillmore East were $3.50, $4.50 and $5.50.  Those were the days.

Times have certainly changed.  I had to look really hard in the store to buy chocolate with the sum of fifty cents.  It was difficult to find anything I could buy with that amount.

I remember candy stores in my childhood and candy that could actually be purchased with a penny.  Even bazooka gum costs more than a penny today.  I have not looked lately but the last time I checked it was at least a nickel.

In fact, it cost the government more than one penny to manufacture one penny.  To me, that makes no sense to excuse the pun.  In fact, if you eliminate the sales tax you really would not have any further use for a penny.  Pennies then would become dinosaurs.