I HATE PENNIES!!!! (Also Nickels.)

Vlogbrothers shirts: http://dftba.com/vlogbros
In which John Green discusses his virulent hatred for pennies and nickels, two utterly irrelevant coins that inexplicably remain money in the United States of America. It costs more than 1.7 cents to make a 1 cent penny coin in the US; nickels are even more ridiculous, costing more than nine cents to produce.
My inflation calculations came from the CPI inflation calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
Information about the opportunity cost implications of pennies and the calculations of lost productivity can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400946.html and here: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/penny_sense.html