Haha. I plan on paying my final term's tuition in pennies. Gonna back my truck up to the bursar's office, and unload the crates.
Dude, coins are where its at. At least they have some intrinsic value, unlike paper money.
Think about it...what gives a dollar bill its value? For that matter, what's different between a $1 and $100 bill besides whats printed on it?
The Treasure just gets to create money out of thin air by promising to repay it in the future, and then they can just print new bills to pay it. Fiat currency is dangerous shit. Once people start to doubt the stability of the US economy (which they will, for example, if this debt ceiling isn't raised), our money will be worth jack shit, and we'll be unable to trade internationally. Everything will come to a screeching halt --> make the great depression look like sissy shit.
Of course, even if we raise the debt limit, there's still the weird issue of how we "owe" money that we can just make up. But this is an opportunity for us if we're going to move to a specie-backed currency (for example, a gold standard, although there are many other options), we can just print a ton of new money to pay off all of our debts, and then make the transition. Other countries will trust our money anyway, because its linked so a commodity that is actually worth something real, and China will be left holding a few billion crisp greenbacks. Maybe they can try selling them back to us as tissues or toilet paper something. Cause that's basically waht they are.
/rant.