Why Does The US Mint So Many Billions Of Coins Every Year?

then stop using $1 bills that last 18 months and adopt $1 coins that last 30 years, and we can cut out the cost os making those bills so often.

5.4 cents per each dollar bill? 18.4 cents for a dollar coin? if the coin lasts just 5 years it reduce the cost and you dont have to burn the coins to get rid of them and store them in a landfill, because you can melt them down to make anything the metals could make, called recycling.

anyone got the cost of getting rid of old bills vs the cost of making the cents and nickels? how msut does it cost per year to dispose of bills? how much is that costing taxpayers?

do you pay your buddy back the moeny he lent you with a credit card? I was unaware that everyone I the country could take credit cards now. I haven't gotten my gov't issue credit/debit card taking device "for all transactions public AND PRIVATE".

these education lotteries dont have a problem with coins as they spend jsut as quickly as other forms and MUST be purchased with CASH, not electronic payments. schools are happy to have them. how much does that generate for schools? what percentage of public school funding do they subsidize that tax dolalrs don't have to cover?

as long as there is cash, there will be coins. maybe people should treat the coins better then so many wouldn't have to be made? do schools still do those chemistry experiments with coins to turn them or "melt" pennies and nickels? even after the law said it is illegal to melt them after 2006? the ammonia experiment dissolves them and that is pretty much melting them. how about those others that change the color of them? why arent schools jsut using stock sheets of copper for these things since you can get those at hobby stores? not illegal to melt a sheet of copper you bought, and the same test and experimenter can be done.

they make so many coins because so many are needed. more businesses pop up needing more change to give out, meaning more coins are needed for opening the cash register. when the rich people that dont need cash for things start sharing the wealth with everyone else so everyone has debit cards full of excess moeny, then maybe coins wouldnt be needed so much or in such large quantities, but until then, those rich people with such fat bank accounts with so much they can spend with debit cards should just shut up and worry about themselves since they dont want to redistribute the wealth so more people have the luxuries that they do and not have a need for coins.

[/walks away]

That's a long rant that has little to do with nickels and pennies. I don't think my friend would accept that lunch I owe him in pennies anyway.

If the cent and/or nickel would be eliminated, I don't see businesses rounding down. After all, they would look at those "lost cents" as lost revenue. They would round up.

I've seen businessmen who would spend a million dollars to track where a penny went.

For what it is worth, many companies in Canada round down since the discontinuation of the cent. For example, Home Depot (which in a classy move also rounds up customer refunds).

Do you really want to be the guy who rounds up when your competitors are rounding down? I did not think so. Take care of your customers, or someone else will.

This is one of the strongest arguments for eliminating the wasteful penny. The biggest reason dollar coins aren't used is most cash registers don't have a proper slot for them. If you get rid of the penny you free up a place to keep the dollar coins.

We have the same currency system that was in place half a century ago when you could buy lunch for 50c. Indeed, we've even lost the half dollar and gained an albatross known as the cent.

The exact same $5 bill that could buy lunch for a crowd in 1964 now won't even buy lunch for one. The dime that once bought a cup of coffee no longer buys anything at all in the grocery store; (half a banana anyone?).

The currency systyem is broken and the major cause and chief symbol of the dysfunction is the penny.

The only thing the penny is good for is to show to future generations that we are the most wasteful society that has ever graced the planet. We are so full of ourselves that it makes perfect sense to us to make a coin worth less than the cost of production. Heaven forfend that a modern human should be "shortchanged" at the checkout! It's better to throw away Two Cents wealth than to risk someone being a penny poorer.

To who wrote this, look at the State Quarter program and the quarters issued in 2009. you wil notice 5 that use US money but are not 1 of the 50 states or with the borders of the contiguous 48 states. Aside from those, many people require those nickel and cents to make ends meet each month. they don't qualify for debit cards from banks and must use cash. Those wealthy enough to not need every cent to make it each month are wearing rose-tinted glasses and not realizing what the rest of the people have to use. It is VERY connected to the reason cents and nickels are required. Some people leave them in those trays at stores labeled "Have a penny leave a penny. Need a penny take a penny" while others only get by because those trays exist. too many people that don't use coins that often are wearing blinders to hide them from reality.




some people are still alive from the Great Depression of the 20s~30s. their children are still alive and were taught that method to save money as well. Coinstar gave people a reason to not need to rush to spend your change.

Personally, I wait until I have a roll worth and just take it to a store and spend a whole roll.

Aluminum is at 85 cents per pound if I am reading spot prices currently right now, while copper is at $3.25 per pound. I have Putt-Putt tokens that are as old as and look in better shape than pennies. Nickel on the other hand is $8.90 per pound. So if anyone can figure out a cost of production based on just metal prices to figure out what the other costs are, then I am guessing making nickels out of aluminum would probably counteract the cost of cents being made from copper. not sure if you could cooper-coat/clad an aluminum core for a cent, but Zins is 20 cents more per pound than aluminum is as well.

Heck if ALL the "silver" coins were made from aluminum instead of cupro-nickel, then ALL the costs would be down. heck I have used an aluminum soda can for planting things in for 2 years and it is still going strong as thin as it is to hold the dirt, take the weather, take the sun. maybe the lacquer coating on it to protect it from the soda acids has helped, but aluminum seems just as good as any othe metal since we are using base metals anyway, why not use the cheapest one that will work?

has the mint given ANY reason why they don't use aluminum?

I know. He's trying to pretend like he is someone who doesn't exist.