What If The Penny Was Discontinued?

"and who knows? maybe one day they will make trillions of coins for the year 2200 and our 2013 shields will be like the wheats of today....and the wheats of today will be worth like 50 bucks a piece."


Hah, I just did a fun calculation. Try this, for the 2% inflation every year, multiply an amount of money times .98 187 times (once for each year to 2200)

For $50, it's $1.37 of todays money. I sure hope a 256 year old coin would gain a little more numismatic value than that! But who knows. I'm sure we will have destroyed the earth by then. Especially if we keep minting the penny. From wiki:

Ecological/Environmental damage â€" Zinc is a heavy metal, highly toxic to the environment in its elemental state. The mining and smelting of zinc pollutes the air, soil[20] and freshwater sources,[21] which, when ingested excessively, can cause stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting. High-dose, prolonged exposure can cause cholesterol imbalance, a weakened immune system and sterility.[22] Elevated heavy metal concentrations in crops grown near zinc mining/smelting locations has also been observed.[23] Disposal of large amounts of unused pennies annually has a negative effect on the environment, though the exact degree of this damage has not yet been fully established

OK, so I looked to Wikipedia for possible metals for a better penny. Antimony, Carbon, Gold, Lead, Palladium, Platinum, Silver, Copper and Zinc are out for obvious reasons. That leaves aluminum, chromium, iron, manganese, magnesium, nickel, and tin. What would be a good alloy (maybe with copper in small amounts) for a new penny?

So like I suggested, how about aluminum with copper plating? Aluminum is cheaper than zinc and less harmful. Only problem, I read something about the difficulty to mine aluminum. This may raise the price, but would it be worth choosing over zinc?

Shipping, distribution and time will still make it unprofitable, even if cents are made out of rainbows and moonbeams!

1982 was the time to go to aluminum, not now. And forget copper-plating - that takes copper, electricity, and time.

If the cent was in a vacuum, then yes getting rid of it would work, but it is not.

Cost of Producing the Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter, and Golden Dollar Coins.

$1 Coin
18.03 cents

Quarter
11.14 cents

Dime
5.65 cents

Nickel
11.18 cents

Penny
2.41 cents

(United States Mint, 2011 Annual Report, pg. 11)

1 of each coin costs: 0.4841 cents
$1.41 face value less costs: 0.9259 cents

what needs to be done is get rid of the dollar bill with a life expectancy of 18 months, and convert to the dollar coin with a life expectancy of 50 years to reduce production costs all around, and to make the coin production profits raise.

$1 and $2 5.4 cents per note

5.4 cent over 50 years at 18 month increments is $33.33 for the 50 year period to keep circulating the $1 bill, and $0.1803 for that same 50 years for the dollar coin (president and native american)

savings of $0.66 per year per $1 over the 50 year period. pretty sure that will cover all the pennies needing to be made over that time. it will at least pay the costs of 27.5 pennies to be made for each $1 coin made per year.

Just doing the math....

We should reduce production. Its that simple. This will extend die life and use less material if we decide to keep the cent at all.

And with the dollar coin idea, that never goes over well with the public. Look what happened to the Susan B Anthony dollar! And I haven't seen a Presidential dollar since bought a train ticket in Boston! The people have spoken!

shadz, it is true that making a dollar coin and dollar bill is wasteful. But you have to remember the PURPOSE of money, to facilitate trade. If people won't use the brass dollars, they, too, are a waste. Same with the $2 bill.

You can say we make a "profit" off of them, but remember, our country takes out loans on a mortgage in order to print those bills. In other words, we are actually paying the price of production, plus any interest on loan. The loans are 4% a year, so it adds.

Of course, we could save money by not printing the $1 note and forcing people to use the brass coins. But remember, people generally dislike change. If we can't get people to agree that the coin system is wasteful, how can we get them to change the "cash" system? People like "cash" (as in, notes) and generally don't want to be bothered with change.