US Treasury Unveils Plan To Kill the Penny (cnn.com) 239
An anonymous reader writes: The US Treasury is phasing out production of the penny and will stop putting new one-cent coins into circulation. The US Treasury has made its final order of penny blanks this month, and the mint will continue to manufacture pennies as long as its supply of penny blanks exist.
President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value.
President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value.
Take the nickel with it (Score:4, Interesting)
can't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a non-truncatable currency system. An ideal coin system will have the following characteristics - that it is "countable" for any number, and that eliminating the smallest coin will always leave the remaining coin system countable. "Countable" means that that cashier's algorithm of pulling the largest coin less than the amount needed and then repeating with the next largest coin will produce the optimum number of coins. For example, with our current system, if you need to make 42 cents, you do a quarter (leaving 17 cents), then a dime, (leaving 7 cents), then a nickel and then two pennies. Our current system is only truncatable for the penny. If you only consider coin amounts which are multiples of 5 (since other ones become impossible after getting rid of the penny), our system minus the penny is clearly countable.
The problem is, consider getting rid of the nickel. Now try to make 30 cents. You pull a quarter, leaving 5 cents, oh shit you made a mistake. Back up, you should have done three dimes.
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Easy solve: get rid of the dime too
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Your post is more of an endorsement of killing the Dime than it is saving the Nickel. I've not used anything less than
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Autodispense change-making cash registers are not rare, but they are also far from universal. They're expensive. Your corner bodega won't have one usually. As far as "going card only" there are social objections to this, ranging from personal privacy to "many of the poorer people in the USA are bankless", which is why some jurisdictions have explicitly banned cashless stores.
I agree with you on not using anything smaller than a quarter recently, but I have an alternative suggestion for you - stop minting co
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Wow...where do you live where they no longer use cash and only use credit cards?
I tend to still carry and use cash whenever I can....and I see it being used quite often when out, especially the grocery store, or gas/convenience store....
Also, I like to tip in cash when dining out....in the past that was a way to keep the server from having to pay so much tax on it....but looks like new legislation is a
Re: can't do it (Score:3)
I haven't needed cash in a very long time. Here in Australia even someone like our LEGO club has a card reader for purchases at our meetings (e.g. raffle tickets and drinks) abd I can't remember the last time I saw an actual business (retail store, food outlet, etc) that didn't take card.
Of course I also have a bank account with a Visa Debit card that has no minimum balance and basically no fees.
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Get rid of the quarter. Bring back the 50 piece and keep the dime.
Re:can't do it (Score:4, Informative)
That's 5 coins. In Europe, it's only 3 coins: 20c + 20c + 2c.
In Europe, it's 2 coins: 20c + 10c.
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The 10% of society left who transacts in cash, can have their share of a few billion pennies in current circulation. Enough to dismiss any argument or concern about our system being minus the penny anytime soon. I even expect a ton more coming into circulation as more piggy banks get broken in a belt-tightening era.
Transactional charges and fees do far more to erode the value of the new-era digital dollar than the nuking of pocket change ever will.
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>Can't do it
Funny, Canada did. They're handling it just fine.
Re:Take the nickel with it (Score:5, Funny)
That would drive mass inflation as companies stop nickel and diming customers, and move to dime and dollaring them instead.
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That would drive mass inflation as companies stop nickel and diming customers, and move to dime and dollaring them instead.
People pretty much only nit-pick over the digits past the decimal point when it comes to gas prices.
$3.02/gal "Oh, that's not too bad."
$3.23/gal "Hmm, better fill up now before it goes up any higher."
$3.59/gal "Did a refinery blow up or something?!"
$3.89/gal "Fuck these fucking gas prices in their fucking ass! I'm voting for the other political party now! Fuck!"
Meanwhile, a pack of prepared chicken strips can jump up by a whole dollar and people are like:
"I can't remember what that cost the last time I bo
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Well, when you're filling the 50-gallon fuel tank in your 7 mpg truck, those per-gallon prices all get whacked with a nasty multiplier. That 20-cent difference costs you an additional $10.
But, all the more reason I love paying $0.05 per kWh for my "fuel".
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That would drive mass inflation as companies stop nickel and diming customers, and move to dime and dollaring them instead.
You mean diming and quartering them, there is still hope... ;-)
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Yeah, that. Can you tell I don't live in America :-) To be brutally honest I'm not sure what a nickel is. Without looking it up, 2c or 5c is my guess. A dime is 10c right?
Re:Take the nickel with it (Score:4, Interesting)
From the Fine Article:
President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value.
If it costs thirty five cents to make a one cent piece, but the cost of the metal is a fraction of one cent, then no one gets one cent pieces to melt down into base metal.
If a dollar coin has five dollars worth of metal in it, only the very stupid wouldn't go get all the dollar coins they could and melt them down for the base metal.
The cost of the base metal should be less than the face value of the coin. The cost to produce the coin is largely irrelevant. The cost to make a bill of any denomination is the same for each bill (leaving out the minor variations for printing millions of them) but only last a limited time compared to a coin. For a dollar bill about 18 months, a bit longer as the denomination goes up. But every coin wears for 20 to 30 years. Arguably if saving money is the imperative we should stop printing paper money.
Your words:
Save us the trouble of repeating this entire drama in another few decades and kill off the Nickel alongside the Penny.
If the standard is that the coin is too low in value to bother with, I agree. The issue is that the one cent coin's value is too low for people to care if they lose one, or even a 100. Same with nickles, dimes, but quarters... now people pay a tiny bit of attention. But not for much longer, really, and the purchase power of a quarter drops ever lower. This is why we see more and more credit card vending machines. Inflation proof, and when we get to the point of needing a wheelbarrow to haul cash around the credit card makes it a simple transaction.
Back in the Day I had a job where we had to settle with the state tax authority each and every day we operated. The joke was as the tax percentage was not an integer, (EG: a fractional number) so we kept a one cent piece we'd cut in half. We'd trade it back and forth with the state guy depending on the balance due. It was always funny when we got a substitute state guy in during illness or vacation.
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Is this the same la Presidenta that wants to add another several Trillion to the national debt? Or that wants to accept a "gift" (read: bribe) from UAE of a gold plated plane, stick the American taxpayers for the bill of upgrading it so that it can fly as Air Force One, and then make off with it to Mar-A-Lardo?
Again? (Score:2)
This time for sure!
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Probably true, the government has a single source for penny blanks and they do lobby, they even have their own advocacy group "Americans for Common Cents" (get it?!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/... [axios.com]
Energy (Score:2, Funny)
We really should be using energy as in watt-hours as currency. Energy is work, and universally convertible to quality of life improvements. Plus, trading energy is easy. Say you want to buy a car or something .. instead of handing over a bag of cash you hand over a bunch of oil barrels. For most things it wont be inconvenient to make purchases if you carry around a gallon or two of gasoline in your backpack.
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Exactly and we should really PEG the money supply to installed generating capacity as well. That way it can easily expand (or shrink) with the economy and not be so easily tampered with.
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I'm interested in your tagline
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY!
Personally, I'd be in favor of ending the Senate's representation of each state, two senators. It makes no sense for Wyoming, with half a million people, to have two votes, while California, with forty million people, has two votes.
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This compromise along with the Electoral College for presidential elections help keep that balance....and more populous states can't run roughshod over the less populous states.
Political power is a zero-sum game. In our system, less populous states run roughshod over more populous ones.
In this way, more people get shafted with policies they don't want than if smaller states had the appropriate amount of political power for their population. (In particular, this system was originally set up largely to ensure that slavery would not get banned).
You're just happy because you probably like these widely unpopular policies, but that still doesn't make it fair.
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We really should be using energy as in watt-hours as currency.
The cost of producing energy varies quite a bit. I can go to Harbor Freight right now and buy a solar panel that'll produce electricity for free, but somehow the power company still insists on billing me about $0.14 per kWh for the electricity I use at home.
Of course, the idealistic response would be that I should just get a whole bunch of those solar panel thingies, but immediate budgetary and practical constraints make that idea infeasible. Economics is hard, and apparently, so is getting away from payi
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That's legal tender right there. And the wheelbarrow is too, if it's at the top of a hill. You probably shouldn't have flaunted your wealth on a public site though.
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That's called Bitcoin.
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How is that bartering? Bartering is when you can trade virtually anything such as two cows and goat for a desk. I'm talking about fixing prices as energy in kilowatts.
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Having something with an intrinsic use as a currency is a bad thing because then fluctuations caused by the demand and supply for the uses to which the currency can be put to will cause economic instability.
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Among the defining characteristics of a good currency are:
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You can't claim you're fixing prices in killowatts and then say you measure in gallons or barrels. That's mixing SI and Imperial which is pretty much a deportable offense these days. At least compare it to BTUs, or foot-pounds.
CGP Grey (Score:4, Informative)
Cool. (Score:5, Funny)
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So the price of everything that is like $4.99 is going to be rolled back to $4.95? Nice. Ha!
You forgot about the tax. Practically, everything will probably just get 1-4 cents more expensive. It'll be interesting to see how and where things get rounded.
I imagine this is part of a push to a cashless society, where all purchases can be tracked -- unless you're using crypto (wonder why this President would back that? /s) in which case, we all will have to wait in line while people's transactions clear... fun.
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Gotta tell you, it's reasonable to accuse me of TDS -- I think that dude is the worst, and a wannabe genocidal fascist who seeks to end Democracy -- but even I'm sitting here going "yeah, that's actually a reasonable call, to eliminate the penny."
Not disagreeing -- on any part of that :-) -- just thinking about the consequences. Most place will probably NOT round down. Even if the government provides rounding guidelines, or laws, if anything, they'll adjust prices so things get rounded up. Also, pricing and rounding will have to include the effects of the sales tax. Paying with non-cash will be simple either way.
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I imagine this is part of a push to a cashless society
What on earth makes you make that leap of logic.
The part where less physical cash is available. :-)
Granted, it's a big leap at the moment, but I stretch every morning...
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No. No one knows what's going to happen. That's exactly the problem. Sales taxes, where they exist, inevitably cause prices to be off the 5 cent mark. With no national legislation planned at all and state legislation likely to be slow to have any influence, the effect will be chaos as different vendors, different local jurisdictions, and different states struggle to find an equitable balance.
The best part is that, because nickels cost the US government even more in overhead than pennies do, the whole th
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No. No one knows what's going to happen.
Because none of the dozens of countries that have already done this [wikipedia.org] can offer any sort of an example?
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Round down and sweep to the Treasury (Score:2, Interesting)
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and account for the difference in quarterly checks to the Treasury Dept
Checks? Pay them with pennies.
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Why should the government get the money? They are neither the buyer nor the seller in the transaction. /s
Yet another sneak tax is a brilliant idea.
Please do. Post-1982 pennies sound funny. (Score:2)
I'm not joking. Kill the penny. I was usaf and did overseas for a bit, 3 years in England and a combined year in Italy and France, and AAFES (our store/supermarket/consessionaires) dealt in 0 or 5, no pennies. Too much $ to ship 'em over there.
And for me, on a personal level, the penny hasn't felt right or sounded right since 1982. That was the last year of the copper penny. Ever after you get a zinc slug with the thinnest veneer of copper. Sounds and feels like Monopoly money.
Kill it already. Serves
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Sales tax has nothing to do with the cash payment. The sensible thing to do is to round towards nearest divisible-by-5-cent number. That's what other countries do.
So if you buy an apple and with sales tax it's $1.02 you pay $1.00 in cash. If it's $1.08 then you'll pay $1.10 in cash.
Or you can pay exact value with debit/credit card.
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A moot decision by the Treasury (Score:2)
People speculating about how we're going to round up or round down without pennies are missing the point. Since COVID, I rarely carry cash, nor do the people I know and work with. It doesn't matter if pennies aren't minted anymore, because hardly anyone is carrying or using them. Practically everything is cashless.
The one-cent denomination will survive just fine. If I buy something that costs $21.62, then that's what I'll be charged on my credit card. The round up / round down issue only matters if I p
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Not where I live and travel or from what I see.
Hell, I love to carry and use cash for most everything I can that isn't online....I use cash in meatspace.
A few questions (Score:3)
Does the President have the authority? Congress doesn't have to approve?
Will an Illinois(Land of Lincoln) resident get a judge to stop this action?
Should the government mandate all prices to the nickel, including gasoline prices?
Now do daylight saving time.
Depends (Score:2)
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Does the President have the authority? Congress doesn't have to approve?
Will an Illinois(Land of Lincoln) resident get a judge to stop this action?
Should the government mandate all prices to the nickel, including gasoline prices?
Now do daylight saving time.
I am not USoA'n but if I recall correctly:
- Either congress or the president of the US mint can eliminate a coin.
- Past presidents of the US Mint wanted to eliminate the coin, but feared "political backlash"
- even if courts told trump that the executive order is invalid, the very existance of the executive order has shown the current president of the US Mint that there will be no political backslash, so s/he will eliminate the penny on his/her own volition.
And even if the president can not eliminate a coin
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Does the President have the authority?
That question stopped mattering on the 20th January.
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That'll do it! (Score:2)
> as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value
I'm sure this will fix the 2 trillion annual deficit. Now we can afford those tax cuts for rich people!
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Now we can afford those tax cuts for rich people!
You must be extremely happy then that the current administration is on the verge of passing a tax cut that provide exactly $0 benefit to rich people, unless some millionaire/billionaire decides to pick up a side gig as a waiter/bartender.
Finally something he's right about (Score:2)
Is there anything else at all? Even just one other thing?
In the 1960s, right-wingers hated the idea (Score:2)
Way back in the 1960s, the penny was going to be discontinued until the John Birchers made a stink that it was somehow part of a communist conspiracy, and that was the end of it. My, how times have changed.
More inflation (Score:3)
Since prices will now have to be rounded to the nearest five cents, which way do you think businesses will go? Will they round down to .00 or will they round up to .05 (or even the next .00)?
Taking bets.
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Prices don't change, it's the final bill. So if you buy 11 items in your cart, they only round up once.
In Australia at least, if you're buying fresh produce by weight.
Besides, don't most Americans throw their small change in the tip jar rather than saving 2 cents?
Re:More inflation (Score:4, Informative)
This only affects people using cash. People using credit or debit cards - and that's the majority of retail already, and the percentage keeps going up - won't be affected in any way. And outside of retail transactions, almost nobody uses cash, and that's been the case for decades.
The effect will be minimal, and reduced further as time goes by.
Canada did it 13 years ago, and it's great. (Score:2)
We got rid of the penny here in Canada in 2012. There hasn't really been any issue since getting rid of it. The majority of people pay with debit/credit cards. For those who pay cash, the price is rounded up or down to the nearest nickel, which at the end of the day balances itself so there's no real loss. Financial institutions and retail establishments prefer it this way too, as there's significant handling costs compared to the value.
No problem (Score:2)
Nickels and dimes too. (Score:3)
They should phase out nickels and dimes while they’re at it. I can’t remember the last time I used a coin smaller than a quarter.
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They should phase out nickels and dimes while they’re at it. I can’t remember the last time I used a coin smaller than a quarter.
Nickel, yes. The dime still costs less to mint than its 10 cent value, it can live a while longer...
The dollar bill, on the other hand, should be substituted by the dollar coin...
Oh, and re-start the production of 50 cents coins, mostly for coin operated stuff. Sometimes, something costs way too many quarters...
America doesn't have pennies. We have cents. (Score:3)
Pennies are British. America's never had any. I get that some of you are still wistful about leaving the former British Empire but, hey! Wake up and smell the coffee, and don't call it "tea", 'cause it isn't.
The penny is more about psychology (Score:2)
I agree with the people pointing out how Canada eliminated the penny and it's worked fine to round up or down to the nearest 5 cents.
But it seems to me the value of the penny in U.S. currency has more to do with enabling the psychological "mind games"? EG. Promising people can get an item or service for only a penny, because people equate that with "pretty much no cost". While sheer volume of customers accepting the deal means it adds up to at least a sum that's worth collecting vs. just giving the same th
Runs Contrary to the Depression that's Coming (Score:3)
Run on pennies (Score:2)
Could one see people hoarding pennies as a consequence of this?
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Pennies aren't really worth keeping. Even the m
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On the rare occasions I use cash any pennies returned in change are dropped in the parking lot.
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Those must be the ones I keep finding and picking up to use later.
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Once a penny is made it's in "circulation" for years.
FTFY with massive air quotes. Many of them get a one-way trip from retailers to homes.
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FTFY with massive air quotes. Many of them get a one-way trip from retailers to homes.
Rather than rounding, retailers should let you keep your cash overpayment as a store credit on a gift card. Yeah, rounding is supposed to ultimately even out, but at least this way people wouldn't feel like they're potentially being ripped off.
Back in the day, Disney did something similar for cash customers, by offering to give change in "Disney Dollars". IIRC, there was some mixed reactions from guests at the time, but apparently they're now considered collectable items.
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cost of making a nickel is more than double the value of it
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It has the absolutely awful impact of forcing those with generational wealth to keep investing and spending money, rather than retreating to their manse and snorting cocaine off your entire generational progeny of nubiles rear ends for all time.
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Because income is but one of many inputs to personal wealth?
Because inflation makes assessing the pricing/value of an item difficult, thus begetting more inflation?
Because...
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Depends on if 2 is arbitrary or not, doesn't it?
For example, what if I define markets as efficient when price is within a facrtor of 100 of value? and "Almost means at least 95% of the time".
Would Fischer Black's feelings be hurt that I'm just as correct in my definitions and ambiguities?
Re: should eliminate the nickel as well (Score:5, Informative)
Because income hasn't kept pace with inflation. Any check of the actual data supports this. US minimum wage today is ~40% lower than minimum wage in 1970, when adjusted for inflation. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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Because income hasn't kept pace with inflation. Any check of the actual data supports this. US minimum wage today is ~40% lower than minimum wage in 1970, when adjusted for inflation. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
More importantly, the bottom half of US workers struggle to earn enough for basic needs, to weather emergencies, and to save for retirement. Whether their wage growth has been more or less than inflation isn't as important as the fact that the wages are still low. When the base amount is low, the multiplier doesn't matter unless we're talking growth far greater than inflation.
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Minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation.
How wonderful that this bullshit is moderated +5.
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That's a misleading statistic, because it's relying on the Federal minimum wage, which only applies in 13 states and territories (including the Mariana Islands).
Where does it come out when you do the actual minimum wages, where some states (some have high populations) are higher? 13 states have minimums that are DOUBLE the federal minimum including California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington; this suggests that this is a lazy statistic where nobody dug more than surf
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If your income increases faster than prices
Boy, that must be nice. One can still dream, I guess.
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It's fairly difficulty to invest in the stock market when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck. Plus, I thought we were talking about income, not stock portfolios.
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Because inflation is a recessive economic phenomenon.
The wealthy classes have wealth -- properties and assets, not Scrooge McDuck piles of cash they swim in. Price inflation often means the adjusted value of their wealth/assets increases because that value is assessed for its buy/sell potential or rent/revenue potential, which are in turn inflated along with prices.
Meanwhile working classes only have money, and only for a short time. Even if income increases in step with prices (it hasn't), whatever meager
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There are 2 ways to not live paycheck-to-paycheck. To have a good wage, and to be highly frugal.
You can be both, if you want, but that sounds like a waste of one's life to me.
I have a feeling you're the latter. I'm the former. You shouldn't feel bad about this- you will get out of that rut some day. But you
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It's not hard to make prices cost a round amount including tax. The problem is pricing things at x.99 instead of x+1
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Treasuries everywhere make money when they mint money, if is called seigniorage [investopedia.com] (this site has an explanation section). That is, they do if it costs less than face value to issue. So it is not irrelevant at all to the government.
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The U.S Mint site specifies only three zeros of precision: 5.000 g. Also the much maligned and soon to be abandoned penny is exactly half the weight of the nicket: 2.500 g.
BTW did you know that the U.S. Customary length units are defined in terms of the metric system? An inch is exactly 2.54 cm.
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BTW did you know that the U.S. Customary length units are defined in terms of the metric system? An inch is exactly 2.54 cm.
Funny enough, it's defined as exactly 25.4mm, which if you ask me is harder to visualize than 2.54cm.
This happened at the same time as the UK pegged their inch to the metric system.
Metric is a first-class citizen in US law, believe it or not. It's the freedom to choose units that keeps the US pretty much locked into US Customary units.
In fact, we have more miles of road with metric signage than England does.
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who??
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If you use a penny 100 times, then its value is $1 and its cost is negligible. It's a durable item that lasts for years and provides value every time it's used.
Tell me that you did not read TFA without saying "I did not read TFA"
TFA says that part of the reason the mint has to keep minting pennies is that they end in penny jars somewhere that are never used, or in between sofa cushions or dropped in the street and people do not even care to pick them up, oor in pick a coind frop a coin plates in stablishments, because the value is so low normal people do not care about them.
So, basically a penny pit, they do not recirculate enough to recoup the value of minting th