President Donald Trump on Sunday said that the penny is a waste of government time and … er … money.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” he wrote on his social media account.
It’s estimated that it costs the U.S. Mint 3.07 cents to produce one penny — more than three times its face value. According to JM Bullion, the U.S. Mint lost $179 million in 2023 due to penny production.
The debate over whether to continue minting the penny has gone on for years. In production since 1793, it’s kept in circulation due to its sentimental value, not its actual value.
The old adage it takes money to make money rang true. But when it takes more money than it’s worth to make it, it’s time to stop making it.
On the plus side, all those rolls of wheat pennies my Grandpa saved just went up in value.
We need a $5 or $10 coin. One side with the image Benjamin Franklin proposed as the national bird: Meleagris gallopavo, the North American wild turkey.
I like that idea.
Why can’t one of those coins have an image of Uncle Ted???
The United States has NEVER minted a coin called the “penny”.
They are “cents”, and always have been.
But it is far past time to eliminate them. Also probably the five cent and ten cent coins, too.
If we had kept our coinage and currency system up to date with the currency depreciation of the past 90 years, our smallest coin would be the quarter-dollar, and we would have coins of $1, $5 and $10 denominations, with bills of $20, $50, $100, $200, $500, $1000 and $2000.
The fact that we do NOT such a coinage and currency system is due, I believe, to our government and various globalist forces trying to make the physical money system as impractical as possible, to force people out of using it and into an Orwellian cashless society. Which I will resist to the death.
Makes cents. – sd
You are on a roll with the penny puns.
The puns roll out like pennies from heaven. – sd
Wish I still had my penny collection contained in a large mayonnaise jar. Will be worth a fortune in 2075.
Our fiat US-dollars have no intrinsic value. More than 90% of transactions with them are now electronic. Digital currency, such as Bit-Coin, Ethereum, XRP, Stellar, etc, is based upon blockchain technology; it cannot be added to or replicated. Its security is managed by each coin (file) having a transaction record attached every time the “coin” is traded. On the other hand, the government can declare your fiat paper dollar worthless at any moment. In fact, they do so constantly with their relentless creation of more dollars (inflation). Behold prices rising… that’s not what is happening in reality; rather, it is our dollars losing value as more and more are created by our government. The government fears digital currency that it does not directly control. People generally fear that which they do not understand.
Well, there goes penny ante poker. And my buddy Mr. Nickel is freaking out.
That is a justification for keeping the penny that I can absolutely get behind.
All the other ones.. not really much there, but the penny ante poker, yep. Solid reason.
How are we going to teach our kids “a penny saved is a penny earned”?
Because it makes good sense! Pun intended.
I’m not sure how this will work in practice. All items and taxes will have to be in whole numbers, in factors of 5. Many items are priced $x.99. Tax tables are in 3 digit odd numbered amounts. If every transaction rounds up to the next multiple of 5 (a nickel), who keeps the up charge? The business? The government? Will the up charge only apply to cash payments? Credit/debit will remain at calculation based on price and tax table? I know this sounds minor, until you calculate a 4 cent up charge on every transaction across the nation. Tens of thousands everyday? Who gets the money?
Purchasing power of $100 USD since the creation of the Federal Reserve:
1913: $100.00
1923: $84.00
1933: $60.00
1943: $43.00
1953: $32.00
1963: $25.00
1973: $18.00
1983: $12.00
1993: $8.00
2003: $6.00
2013: $4.35
2024: $3.00
Dollar bills will be next when tariff-induced Trumpflation kicks in and they are worth less than the cost of printing. Happily, we’ll all have $Trump sh*tcoin to spend instead.
Paper dollars are already worth less than the cost of printing if the cost of replacing worn out bills is included in the analysis. 2000-yr old Roman coins are still intact while $1, $5 and $10 bills only last about 5.5 years.
So, how do vendors price their goods and services. When pricing an item or service and then adding sales taxes, do they round up or down to the nearest nickel ( five cents) or dime (ten cents)? What will that do the economy? Two or three cents difference in each transaction will eventually result in Billions of dollars one direction or the other. Who benefits?
This move could be inflationary. A store that sells comething for $1.96 to $1.99 would then raise the price to $2.00. Multiply this times billions and billions of transactions per year, and American consumers could be paying billions more- way more then the savings the mint will see.
The real solution is for the mint to reduce its costs.
Note trump just imposed another sales tax on imported steel and copper. This too will be inflationary and make it harder to build things that require these materials. Home builders and home buyers are screwed.
I’m tired of itdiots in government doing everything they can to make home ownership in this country more expensive. If its not the local parasitic governments with endless property tax hikes, its regulators making the cost of land and construction more expensive.
Government, including Trump, is the enemy.
Nope
First step to getting rid of physical currency….this is how it dies…to loud applause
Fine..,I guess.
No issue with it, but there seem to be many more pressing issues
This is a pressing (pun intended) issue. Trump is on a roll to cut waste spending. Printing out copper pennies has been a huge waste of time and resources for the past 30 years.
With President businessman issuing 100’s of executive orders in the first month would it be too much to ask that one of them would address food and housing costs. Asking for most of the nation.
It took 6 months in his first term to undo the obama mess and get the prices lowering. I’m thinking since joey screwed it up even worse it will take longer. Be patient it will happen.
That would be Socialism and a huge government over reach.
A penny for your thoughts, or it makes a lot of sense to stop making cents, that’s just my nonsense!
I vote we print a 7 dollar bill (silver certificate) with Trump’s face on the front and Mt Rushmore with his face added on the back.
For every 7 dollar bill printed, 7 million dollars of federal reserve notes must be removed from circulation with no replacement…
Rand Paul is an impotent fool.
So much for Rand Paul’s
“six penny plan”.
Raise the eligibility age for social security to save some real dough!
Useless congressmen have had years to do what Trump has done in weeks. Soon they will just be zeros, sinecures.