Doge Takes Aim At The Penny

The cent needed to go away twenty years ago. Canada has managed to survive the past 13 years without it.

Artazn (Jarden Zinc) needs to shift their lobbying efforts towards zinc blanks for the five cents coin, so we are no long spending nine cents to make a nickel.

Cut the cent!
Pull the penny!

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the argument that you can't strike a coin if the manufacturing costs exceed the face value of the coin. Coins are a tool. Specifically, a government issued tool to facilitate commerce. We do not demand that other government-supplied infrastructure breaks even. We simply prefer that the benefit exceeds the cost.

For a very long time, the value of most coinage was tied directly to the metal value. More precisely, the circulating silver coins were tied to metal value. Circulating copper and base metal coins were fixed in relationship to the silver coins. This resulted in profits from striking the base metal coins (or from striking any smaller silver coin where the silver amount was less than the amount implied by the fixed relationship). But they aren't actually required to be a profit generator, and indeed, in a fiat money system of ever increasing inflation, it was inevitable that the coin face value will eventually be exceeded by the materials cost. That is true of copper, zinc, aluminum, steel, plastic, or any other durable medium. It is also mostly irrelevant. We don't need the highway snowplow to break even, because we all agree that the benefit of a cleared road exceeds the cost of the snowplow, driver, and support.

Nice story, but the cent provides zero benefit today. Not when most end up in the trash, which is why we have to mint so many of them.

Rounding down is a better tool and everyone wins. Just as Canada how they are doing without the cent. 13 years and they are still up there.

How about a historical precedent for eliminating a coin?


https://www.pcgs.com/news/why-did-t...er%20costs).

Yes! In 95% copper, too!

99% of people will not even bend over to pick-up a penny from the ground. Besides the negative seigniorage, pennies are destroyers of the environment. Consider the nasty mining/smelting process, electricity used making planchets and minting coins, diesel fuel expended moving them all over the earth and the land/water pollution they cause in the end. (Copper is acutely toxic to aquatic life.)

It's time to move on for so many reasons. This is a perfect issue for both the left and right to align on - after all, WE'RE ALL AMERICANS.

I no longer use any change in commerce. I mostly use plastic anyway, What change I do get goes into a coffee can. Every couple years I give the cans to the nieces and nephews along with some paper wrappers and they go to town, I do however check all coins for errors, rarities etc. If eliminating the cent can reduce the budget I am all for it.