https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113977224933701762
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.
- Donald Trump, via Truth Social, 10th Feb 2025
Good!
About a month ago I wrote a piece about the Australian quarter and how I think that it should replace all of the silver coloured coinage in Australia. I would replace the 5c, 10, 20c, and 50c, with just one 25c coin and be done with it. The reason why I want this to happen, is identical in principle to getting rid of the United States One Cent coin. Getting rid of it is sensible.
The last time that I wrote about the United States One Cent coin was more than ten years ago and even back then, it still should have killed off. The reasons back then have only accelerated with the passage of time and as inflation has rendered the penny an even more of an economic dead weight on the economy.
The only purpose of a coin, is to allow the exchange of goods and services, via a universal token system. This universal token system, which is denoted in Dollars and Cents (and Mils) in the United States, is represented with banknotes and coins. If it costs more than the value of the token to make the token, and it costs more to process the transaction than the value of the transaction, then the token has failed in its only purpose for existence. Keeping it around is stupid.
The actual break even point, when the United States One Cent coin passed into negative seigniorage was circa 2002; which means that this discussion is now about twenty years too late. It's not like this is a new problem either because the United States has already been here before, when it killed off the Half Cent in 1857. Back then, the Half Cent had about the same amount of buying power as 18 cents does now; so actually there is a good enough argument for the United States to also kill off the nickel and the dime as well as the penny.
Killing of the penny is so unbelievably obvious, that you would either have to be criminally stupid or hideously self-interested, or both, such as the company which makes the blanks for the penny, as to want to keep this wee little brown piece of annoyance in existence.
Oh, wait...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/10/business/costs-of-pennies-and-nickels/index.html
President Donald Trump says he has ordered the US Mint to stop making pennies, which he correctly says cost more than one cent to produce.
- CNN, 10th Feb 2015
This continues...
But there’s a problem with his plan: Phasing out the penny could result in needing to make more nickels, and the US Treasury Department loses far more money on every nickel than it does on every penny.
- CNN, 10th Feb 2015
NO IT DOES NOT.
WHO SAID THIS?
Demonstrably, in every case where previous coins have been demonetised, it does not result in needing more of the next denomination upwards to cover the spread. The reason for this is that the number of transactions does not go up. If I go to the shop and I buy a can of Pepsi, a Snickers bar, a pencil, a banana, a slice of ham, and a hammer, then unless I am feeling particularly nasty and want to annoy the jinkies out of the shopkeeper, as I am not going to rejoin the queue five times and go around and around and around, then there is only ONE transaction. The coins used in that transaction are the residual end part of the maths going on. If the amount at the end is $8.94, then I do not magically need more nickels to make the transaction work. To say so, is the result of a self-interested lie.
“Without the penny, the volume of nickels in circulation would have to rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions. Far from saving money, eliminating the penny shifts and amplifies the financial burden,” said American for Common Cents, a pro-penny group funded primarily by Artazn, the company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies.
- CNN, 10th Feb 2015
Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2025/02/10/trump-pinches-pennies-00203439
“It’s a horrible idea. Eliminating the penny wouldn’t save money. It would actually increase government losses and cost more,” MARK WELLER, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, said in an interview. Americans for Common Cents is a pro-penny advocacy group primarily backed by Artazn, the company supplying the Mint with zinc penny blanks.
Weller argues that the nickel costs even more to make than the penny — nearly 14 cents per coin. Without pennies in circulation, the demand for nickels would increase, he said, potentially doubling the Mint’s financial losses.
- Politico, 10th Feb 2015
Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292082/trump-penny-mint-treasury
Mark Weller, the executive director of Americans for Common Cents, told NPR in 2009 that the alternative to the penny is "is rounding to the nickel, and that's something that will negatively impact working families every time they buy a gallon of gas or a gallon of milk."
- All Things Considered, NPR, 10th Feb 2025
Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face... HANG ON, IT'S THE SAME DANG NABBITY GUY!
What sort of eejitacious journalism is going on here? I absolutely reject the concept in journalism that you need two sides to tell a balanced story because if one side is deliberately stupid because of self-interest, then they should be ridiculed. In this case, when the only objection that anyone has found, has been made by the same exact guy whose job it is to shill for the company that makes the blanks, you do not need to see the other side of the coin.
In Australia where we have not used either the 1c or 2c since 1992, or in New Zealand where they don't even have 5c anymore, literally nobody bemoans the loss of 1 or 2 cents in transactions. And if you are using EFTPOS, then because you have tapped or swiped your card to effect the transaction, there are no coins at all used. I wonder how Mark Weller, the executive director of Americans for Common Cents feels about the runaway fact that the alternative to the penny is to eliminate all coins altogether.
Quite frankly about the only practical use of the penny at this point, is to collect a bunch of them and either use them for fun gambling games such as poker, or to fill a football sock with a bunch of them and then use that as a cosh to bludgeon someone for deliberately being so stupid in saying that anyone needs pennies.
And while we're at it America, get rid of the Dollar note and replace that with the coin. It's cheaper in the long run.
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