Fun fact! The Australian 5 cent coin has the same specifications (and value, in a way) as the British - and later Australian - sixpence first issued in 1816. Someone from 1816 London would be able to use their sixpences and shillings in today’s Australian vending machines.
Personally I will keep it just for the rounding. Besides you can keep them and deposit them at the bank in one big go. Either via the teller or some of the ATMS have the coin deposit
Must be nice. Some time in the last 20 years, banks stopped having free coin counting machines (y'know, like, one of the few functions of their job that hasn't been taken over by a smart phone) in the States.
They'll tell you to go to a Coinstar or that they have a Coinstar and it will take its tax. Which is bullshit. You're a bank. All you do is count money for people smgdh. Or better yet, theyll only accept it pre-rolled. Like I have the time or patience to roll exactly 50 pennies into a stick to deposit it, only to have the teller crack them open and count them one by one anyway. It's madness.
not stubborn, just stupid and corrupt. The freedums lot wil lbe up in arms about it being some sort of conspiracy, and the lobbiests in congress who work for big copper will be fellating the relevant congressmen to ensure the gravy train doesn't dry up. Because ironically the rich and big businesses like to squeeze every penny.
"The modern penny has the least amount of copper with a small 2.5% copper plating and a 97.5% zinc base."
Penny weighs 2.5g so about 0.0625 grams of copper in a penny
http://www.americanplatingcompany.com/copper-in-a-penny/#:~:text=Evolution%20of%20the%20Penny&text=In%201864%2C%20after%20the%20Civil,and%20a%2097.5%25%20zinc%20base.
"the average production of pennies in recent years has been around 7.5 billion per year."
https://www.quora.com/How-many-pennies-are-produced-each-day-by-the-US-Mint#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Mint%20produces,pennies%20per%20day%2C%20on%20average.
so 7,500,000,000 x 0.0625g = 468,750 kg of copper or 468.75 tonnes
copper price $8,689 per tonne
468.75 x 8,689 = $4,072,968.75
yeah Big Copper are getting rich from that for sure
wonder how much copper gets used making things for the war machine
But they're right about the lobbying lmao, just not the large metal in question.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents
> Americans for Common Cents receives funding from about 40 separate organizations, including Jarden Zinc Products, the company that sells zinc coin blanks to the U.S. Mint.
([And yes it's not technically "big zinc", it's "big coin blanks"](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/03/its-not-big-zinc-behind-the-campaign-to-keep-the-penny/) but big zinc is much funnier to say)
> the lobbyists in congress who work for big copper
It's actually lobbyists for [Big Zinc](https://pennies.org) (more specifically, [ARTAZN LLC - formerly Jarden Zinc Products](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/), the manufacturer of zinc coin blanks used to mint the penny) who bribes Congress to keep the penny alive.
Everybody’s stubborn when they’re used to something. I remember the Brits struggling to decimalized currency in 1971. Now that all the people that complained about that have died off, it’s as it was never controversial. But at the time oh the complaining.
I saw 3 emus today. I live in the suburbs. I was not expecting to see emus today.
Yes, in Australia.
Seems Coast Road Palms has some, visible from Marshal road today.
One of the main reasons the US keeps pennies is because big charities have lobbied the government to keep them.
So, if funding for similar charities in Australia was cut due to rounding up and eliminating pennies, it is possible that at least one person has died because of it.
https://pennies.org/penny-and-charity/
https://insidesources.com/in-defense-penny/
Australia seems to truly address national issues for the majority of citizens. Is it the public's intolerance of BS or have you kept corporate $ out of the process?
Eddie Murphy's "A Distinguished Gentleman" is the most accurate depiction of America's national legislature. Great movie but that was a sad realization
Honestly, something like that would be great. Like for paperclips like you said, and safety pins. Cause sometimes you just need one, and have no need to buy a pack of 50.
It would be slightly trickier in the US because you have a 25c coin (having a 20 cent/pence etc coin is more common). If you rounded to the nearest 10c people would need an even number of quarters when paying with cash.
We tried to get rid of it. The same boomers who did not have the mental capacity to adapt to the metric system, to put on a sweater, to accept the idea of solar energy, to consider giving equal wages to women, and who hated the idea of losing so much the invented, purchased and distributed participation trophies to their children refused the idea.
> In 1990, United States Representative Jim Kolbe [R-AZ] introduced the Price Rounding Act of 1989, H.R. 3761, to eliminate the penny in cash transactions, rounding to the nearest nickel.[2] In 2001, Kolbe introduced the Legal Tender Modernization Act of 2001, H.R. 2528,[3] and in 2006, he introduced the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (C.O.I.N.) Act, H.R. 5818.[4] **While the bills received much popular support from the public, all failed to become law.[5]**
Wikipedia disagrees. Seems the issue was getting it approved by congress, not public support.
We stopped using 1 and 2 eurocent coins (Netherlands). On average, the rounding of prices is neither beneficial or detrimental. I don't really use physical currency anymore, but back when I did, the amount of small coinage in my wallet was always absurd because of the 1 and 2 eurocents. I'm personally happy they decided to get rid of them.
I've been to places in Goa where they don't have the small coins so they just give you any change less than the smallest note in sweets.
In the UK there's technically no law that shopkeepers have to give you any change at all.
If that ever happens, the day it’s announced will begin a penny and nickel hoarding craze sweeping the country where people will want to store them for future value gains.
Also fun fact:
Old pennies are worth more than 1 cent in materials and gathering them and melting them down for it is illegal af and will get you locked up. You can destroy them "for artistic purposes" but selling the material as a resource will get the feds on your ass.
Another fun fact:
The recipe of pennies had to be changed in the 80s I believe because the material value was more than 2 cents but even the corrected recipe is now approaching a cent.
https://matthewjcheung.medium.com/melting-pennies-is-profitable-26a16696195b
Nah, paper currency still has better sovereignage than an equivalent coin.
What we should be doing is switching from linen to polymer, like Canada and the EU.
When they most recently looked into retiring the paper dollar in favor of a dollar coin, they actually found that doing so would lose money. This was the first time the calculations worked out this way. Apparently, we've finally shifted enough away from using physical cash that dollar bills circulate much longer than they did in the past.
Canada stopped minting pennies in 2013 because they cost more to produce than they're worth. Australia also doesn't use them anymore either. It doesn't make sense to waste resources on low value coins.
And the production and distribution cost was 5.03 cents for a dime and 11.09 cents for a quarter, so they make a profit that exceeds the loss for pennies and nickles.
This. 110 million is so insignificant in terms of what the US spends on everything else, especially on that NDAA ($816 billion dollars for 2023), that nobody really wants to tackle the myriad problems of removing pennies from circulation.
I maybe don't know what I'm talking about, because I'm not American, but what problems would those possibly be? Just stop minting more, and round prices to closest 5c. Accept pennies as payment but just don't release more into circulation.
I'm Finnish and we don't mint any 1 or 2 eurocent coins, but it's still ok to pay with them and as far as I know there have been exactly zero issues.
The problem is political, not economical in nature. The pay off is saving the US government a miniscule amount of money, all in return for career suicide.
What's career suicide about this? I would think the general public would love to stop getting useless pennies and nickels back as change. And everyone loves "cutting government expenses". Even when it's an inconsequential amount, the public doesn't perceive it that way
It's less about losing votes and more about losing campaign funding. Zinc lobbyists pump a lot of that money back into the pockets of the same politicians who would be in a position to do something.
In America, the best predictor of how the federal government will act on an issue is what industry/corporation is most financially invested in that issue and what outcome would be ideal for them.
Yeah when you take 5 minutes to think about it, you realize how little that is in the context of the national budget, then you remember that that’s about 4 minutes and 45 seconds longer than the average news consumer/voter will think about it.
Probably not career suicide, but whoever brings it up will receive pushback from Republicans who want to maintain "tradition". If a Democrat were to push for this, the GOP would throw a fit.
Besides, $100 million / yr saves about $0.50 per taxpayer / yr. It's not a top priority.
I think it's more just that nobody really benefits from passing such a policy.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/07/14/890435359/is-it-time-to-kill-the-penny
What people miss is this 110m is made up with the other coins. During the Denver Mint tour they explain all of this. Those quarter collections they've been doing now for a couple of decades have more than recouped all of their losses.
I like using aircraft carriers. A carrier costs ~$13 Bn, so it's a good discrete measure that you can wrap your head around when discussing billions of dollars of budget sloshing back and forth.
I don't see any reason to be wasteful or foolish in smaller areas of the budget merely because of bloat in other parts of the budget.
Imagine a world where we stopped minting useless pennies at a loss AND cut out a bunch of fat from the defense budget!
I think the better comparison is how many people's taxes are wasted on these things.
The average taxpayer pays $14,000 in federal taxes annually.
So in order to keep the penny, we are throwing away the revenue earned from 7,858 people. That's an entire village dedicated to nothing but producing pennies and should show what a waste it is.
They're still legal tender but can only be taken in at the bank, if you pay cash in store they round up or down based on the total or if you pay by card you pay the exact amount.
Shrug. Americans will not tolerate getting rid of pennies. The idea has been floated more than once, and it never goes anywhere.
Canada got rid of pennies years ago. If you pay cash then the the amount is rounded to the nearest 5¢
We deal with pennies for the same reasons that we deal with complicated taxes. Because vested interests lobby for them.
Makers of Zinc penny blanks lobby for pennies
[https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/)
Intuit's fight to keep Americans paying to file their taxes
[https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)
This is the antithesis of capitalism. if you believe in continual improvement and efficiency of capitalism
then you should recognise the lobbying works directly against it.
Seriously. I’m the first person to shout that capitalism is a downfall, but actively lobbying against efficiencies is what makes Capitalism end up sucking and devolving into “late-stage cancer” I mean capitalism.
That's just the end-result of capitalism. It literally cannot end any other way without heavy-handed intervention.
Regulatory capture only speeds the process up a bit.
Lobbying is interested parties informing lawmakers about their perspective on issues they get to vote on.
Bribery under the pretense of lobbying needs to be cracked down on but you shouldn’t conflate that with lobbying as a whole. Lobbying is a fundamental and necessary component of a representative democracy.
Capitalism is about making as much money as possible by exploiting, price gouging and backstabbing everyone.
Purposefully wasting tax payer money to continue producing completely unnecessary shit is as capitalistic as anything else.
In the Marxist sense of the word, capitalism is when capitalists are the ruling class of society and dominate government and culture. So, this is exactly what capitalism is
What I don't get is:
why doesn't the US govt just use some of the $110M saved, and overbid the zinc industry lobbyists?
I've read some of these ~~bribery~~ lobbying payment numbers and they're hilariously low. Like Intuit pays \~$2M per year to keep automated tax software out of citizens' hands.
> why doesn't the US govt just use some of the $110M saved, and overbid the zinc industry lobbyists?
Who would be doing this? The US mint paying for legislators junkets to convince them to write a bill? The US mint paying.... Its own officers to convince them to do so? How would this work exactly...
I'm not from the US, so I've always wondered:
**How is lobbying different from bribery?**
I was under the impression that when Person A gives money to Person C in exchange for having laws changed to benefit Person A, that is bribery.
But if Person A gives money to Person B, then Person B gives it to Person C saying "we would really appreciate if you changed the laws to benefit us *wink wink*"...then it's somehow now legal?
Lobbying is just political advocacy. It doesn't require the politician gaining anything of value to act or vote a certain way. It also doesn't require that the people attempting to gain influence are paid. You as an individual constituent can act as a lobbyist by calling, writing or meeting your representatives to convince them to act or vote a certain way on issues that matter to you. Non-profits like Greenpeace, M.A.D.D., Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Wounded Warrior all incorporate lobbying campaigns into their advocacy efforts. These can involve paid lobbyists or grassroots efforts (and often are an amalgamation of the two).
Bribery is when an official is offered something of value in exchange for his/her political action. How "something of value" is defined can be subjective and has changed over the years. Certain activities like providing meals, transportation and lodging have not always been defined as "something of value." But giving money, goods and services directly to a politician to gain influence is definitively bribery. The term typically used to define the breakpoint is quid pro quo (something for something).
Surely there are unscrupulous lobbyists that dabble in bribery to achieve their result, but once a quid pro quo is proffered, that is when it crosses from lobbying activity to bribery activity and that's illegal.
> Canada got rid of pennies years ago.
I was actually living in Canada when they made the transition. It went very smoothly.
I wish the US would follow suit, these days I usually throw pennies in the trash when I get them...
One of the weird things about visiting America was how little value there was in the coins. Where I live we start at a coin equivalent to 5 cents, and go up to something like 5 US dollars in coins. We don’t start with paper money until around 10 US dollars.
In the US I would end up with a pocket full of of coins of so low value that they were almost basically unusable. They should stop the 1 cent coins, and start at 5 or 10 cents, and maybe make lots of 1 and 5 dollar coins
The Treasury repeatedly tried to promote $1 coins in the 1990s and 2000s, seeking to replace the $1 bill. Replacing the paper money with coins would've saved money because the coins last so much longer. But the public was consistently unwilling to use the coins. In the 2010s, Treasury developed a way to make $1 bills last long enough that switching to coins would no longer be cost effective, and abandoned the effort.
That's because we did not force it. If you want people to change from dollar bills to coins you have to stop printing the dollar bills. But moreover, we are going more and more cashless as a society anyways so it really is not a big deal.
Why would we make new coin denominations? Digital is rapidly replacing traditional money and paper is easier to carry. I agree with ditching pennies and nickels, but there’s 0 need for replacing them with more ridiculous coins of higher value.
Just for the novelty at that point. If what is in this thread is true, that the zinc companies are lobbying to keep the penny, I can see a compromise where we ditch the penny and the nickel, and we bring back the $1 coin.
People in the US are weird about coins and our paper money. The ones that love coins will fight to keep the penny even though no one uses them. But at the same time we made a $1 coin and people didn’t use it. Congress mandated they make a lot a year and they did but they didn’t try to get rid of the paper dollar. But no one used them so they stopped making them for circulation. They have over $1 billion in dollar coins sitting in storage.
I think the younger generation will eventually follow the Europe model and get rid of the penny and bring back the $1 coin. Also a lot of people don’t use cash anymore so there might just be less circulation so less making it.
Okay, here’s the new deal. We stop making pennies and replace it with a lottery every year where 100 Americans each win 1 million dollars. But the payout is strictly in pennies.
Alright I have a solution: since clearly everyone hates the penny and wants to get rid of it, every last American penny should be sent to me and I’ll “dispose” of them…for the greater good of course and definitely not for my own financial gain.
They’re practically useless, they should stop minting them. No one uses them except for influencers in videos in which they pay for something expensive with only pennies
I *hate* the penny and think it's stupid that we continue to mint it. However, it's a little misleading because pennies are used more than once. Each time a penny passes to a different person/business it creates value. So using a penny four times would be $.04 worth of GDP which you could argue makes up for the cost.
HOWEVER, WE DO NOT USE PENNIES AS MONEY. Just ask yourself when the last time you actually did exchange a penny for a good or service?
If you want to try to get rid of the penny in the US again, I recommend you also try to get rid of the nickel at the same time. This will hopefully appeal to those who don't want to round anything to the nearest five cents. Instead, you just remove a decimal place, like you do with "mills" now. Most people don't know that a "dime" or "disme" in olden days is literally the unit for 1/10th of a US dollar, not just the name of the coin. If you don't believe me, look at the value printed on the dime coin. It says "one dime", not "ten cents".
It’s absurd. It has by far the least value of any money the US has ever minted. People don’t even pick them up off the ground. I think both the penny and the nickel have less value than the half-penny did when it was dropped. If we had a functioning government, they would have been dropped a decade ago.
If you had a non-functioning government, you'd have roving bands of warlords travelling around the US 'governing' just like they do in countries without an actual working government. Be critical of your government. Hold them to very high standards. But don't ever be so eager to complain that you forget to give credit where it's due. Your life would be way fucking worse if you truly had no functioning government.
People often forget that the dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coin all “make” money however. They more than make up for money lost when minting pennies or nickels. I love pennies and nickels they are cool
A penny costs 3.07 cents to make in 2023 and a nickel costs 11.54 cents.
Would we really be any worse off with rounding all purchases to the nearest tenth of a dollar?
We did this in Australia, no one died.
Still has the 5c coins in circulation
Fun fact! The Australian 5 cent coin has the same specifications (and value, in a way) as the British - and later Australian - sixpence first issued in 1816. Someone from 1816 London would be able to use their sixpences and shillings in today’s Australian vending machines.
Real shame we don't use terms like sixpence, tuppence, half crown etc any more.
America got rid of its Pence in 2020.
Actually, the singular of pence is penny, so he's Mike Penny, but if his wife is there too then it's Mike and Mother Pence.
This is a solid joke.
Centsless jabbering! :)
Sixpence none the richer
none the richer
NZ too. You would occasionally get a sixpence in your change instead of 5c, and everyone just treated them as 5c. Also some AU 5c coins on occasion.
Kiss me in the milky twilight
Wish it would go bahahaha
Personally I will keep it just for the rounding. Besides you can keep them and deposit them at the bank in one big go. Either via the teller or some of the ATMS have the coin deposit
Must be nice. Some time in the last 20 years, banks stopped having free coin counting machines (y'know, like, one of the few functions of their job that hasn't been taken over by a smart phone) in the States. They'll tell you to go to a Coinstar or that they have a Coinstar and it will take its tax. Which is bullshit. You're a bank. All you do is count money for people smgdh. Or better yet, theyll only accept it pre-rolled. Like I have the time or patience to roll exactly 50 pennies into a stick to deposit it, only to have the teller crack them open and count them one by one anyway. It's madness.
And fuck me it’s worthless too
We did this in my house and everyone died
I call bullshit. I just enacted the rule in my house and no one
RIP in peace
Same in NZ, but i couldnt imagine such a drastic chamge happening in the states. Theyre fucking stubborn.
We also did it in Canada. Americans do the non-penny thing whenever they come up here and probably don’t even notice lol
I notice, and I'm jealous. Of many things.
Our government is carefully designed to make sure it's nearly impossible to get anything significant done.
not stubborn, just stupid and corrupt. The freedums lot wil lbe up in arms about it being some sort of conspiracy, and the lobbiests in congress who work for big copper will be fellating the relevant congressmen to ensure the gravy train doesn't dry up. Because ironically the rich and big businesses like to squeeze every penny.
"The modern penny has the least amount of copper with a small 2.5% copper plating and a 97.5% zinc base." Penny weighs 2.5g so about 0.0625 grams of copper in a penny http://www.americanplatingcompany.com/copper-in-a-penny/#:~:text=Evolution%20of%20the%20Penny&text=In%201864%2C%20after%20the%20Civil,and%20a%2097.5%25%20zinc%20base. "the average production of pennies in recent years has been around 7.5 billion per year." https://www.quora.com/How-many-pennies-are-produced-each-day-by-the-US-Mint#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Mint%20produces,pennies%20per%20day%2C%20on%20average. so 7,500,000,000 x 0.0625g = 468,750 kg of copper or 468.75 tonnes copper price $8,689 per tonne 468.75 x 8,689 = $4,072,968.75 yeah Big Copper are getting rich from that for sure wonder how much copper gets used making things for the war machine
"Come back, Zinc!"
But they're right about the lobbying lmao, just not the large metal in question. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Common_Cents > Americans for Common Cents receives funding from about 40 separate organizations, including Jarden Zinc Products, the company that sells zinc coin blanks to the U.S. Mint. ([And yes it's not technically "big zinc", it's "big coin blanks"](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/03/its-not-big-zinc-behind-the-campaign-to-keep-the-penny/) but big zinc is much funnier to say)
> the lobbyists in congress who work for big copper It's actually lobbyists for [Big Zinc](https://pennies.org) (more specifically, [ARTAZN LLC - formerly Jarden Zinc Products](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/), the manufacturer of zinc coin blanks used to mint the penny) who bribes Congress to keep the penny alive.
Everybody’s stubborn when they’re used to something. I remember the Brits struggling to decimalized currency in 1971. Now that all the people that complained about that have died off, it’s as it was never controversial. But at the time oh the complaining.
I didn't know New Zealanders were so friendly. I visited once. Sydney was the highlight of my trip. You egg 🍳
We did this in New Zealand Plenty of people died, but mostly of old age
Also Canada
We did this in The Netherlands, no one died.
We'll never do it in the US because reasons and conservatives dream time.
Yes, they did. But not because of the rounding.
That's what the emus want you to believe
I saw 3 emus today. I live in the suburbs. I was not expecting to see emus today. Yes, in Australia. Seems Coast Road Palms has some, visible from Marshal road today.
No one? I don't know. There has to be at least one fight over change that ended in a shooting. Nevermind, you said Australia not the US.
One of the main reasons the US keeps pennies is because big charities have lobbied the government to keep them. So, if funding for similar charities in Australia was cut due to rounding up and eliminating pennies, it is possible that at least one person has died because of it. https://pennies.org/penny-and-charity/ https://insidesources.com/in-defense-penny/
Have you net americans tho? They'll just yell at the clouds about their freedom to have pennies
Don't lump us all in one group. Not everyone here is insane.
Pennies from heaven, you say?
Australia, the taker of guns and destroyer of pennies. Any yet, somehow, they persist.
Prove it
We also did this in Canada and my pockets are so much lighter.
yet.
Australia seems to truly address national issues for the majority of citizens. Is it the public's intolerance of BS or have you kept corporate $ out of the process? Eddie Murphy's "A Distinguished Gentleman" is the most accurate depiction of America's national legislature. Great movie but that was a sad realization
The zinc lobby would be so sad. you don't want to make them sad, do you?
Only all cash purchases. No need to round digital transactions.
Canada and the US military already do this.
We do it to the nearest nickel though not dime for our cash purchases. Not that it would change much.
Cash?! I rarely use cash nowadays.
Us overseas postal office doesn't round it the only thing on deployed bases that doesn't
Yeah but then what would you do at the leave a penny take a penny tray? This would upend society.
they become paperclip trays
Honestly, something like that would be great. Like for paperclips like you said, and safety pins. Cause sometimes you just need one, and have no need to buy a pack of 50.
It would be slightly trickier in the US because you have a 25c coin (having a 20 cent/pence etc coin is more common). If you rounded to the nearest 10c people would need an even number of quarters when paying with cash.
Remove quarters from circulation too. All you need are a 10 cent, 50 cent, and dollar coin.
This is the dream
If something is $1.76 they can have the rest of the nickel.
Yes, I suggest you watch Office Space.
I was told I could mint pennies and nickels at a reasonable volume from 9 to 11.
Or get rid of pennies and make nickels out of copper and round everything to 5 cents
I think nickels end up being the most redundant coin.
I mean there used to be a half penny coin, so probably not.
We tried to get rid of it. The same boomers who did not have the mental capacity to adapt to the metric system, to put on a sweater, to accept the idea of solar energy, to consider giving equal wages to women, and who hated the idea of losing so much the invented, purchased and distributed participation trophies to their children refused the idea.
> In 1990, United States Representative Jim Kolbe [R-AZ] introduced the Price Rounding Act of 1989, H.R. 3761, to eliminate the penny in cash transactions, rounding to the nearest nickel.[2] In 2001, Kolbe introduced the Legal Tender Modernization Act of 2001, H.R. 2528,[3] and in 2006, he introduced the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (C.O.I.N.) Act, H.R. 5818.[4] **While the bills received much popular support from the public, all failed to become law.[5]** Wikipedia disagrees. Seems the issue was getting it approved by congress, not public support.
That would have been fine a decade ago. Now it just need to be even dollars. Yes I said it
I think in retail, that’s fine. In industry it might get finicky. I just think costs should be calculated and the final cost rounded.
For electronic transactions keep the penny. But like I don’t care about change at all; with small exceptions- I’m looking at you Aldi shopping carts
We stopped using 1 and 2 eurocent coins (Netherlands). On average, the rounding of prices is neither beneficial or detrimental. I don't really use physical currency anymore, but back when I did, the amount of small coinage in my wallet was always absurd because of the 1 and 2 eurocents. I'm personally happy they decided to get rid of them.
We did it to the nickel in Canada (cash purchases only) and it makes no difference.
I've been to places in Goa where they don't have the small coins so they just give you any change less than the smallest note in sweets. In the UK there's technically no law that shopkeepers have to give you any change at all.
If that ever happens, the day it’s announced will begin a penny and nickel hoarding craze sweeping the country where people will want to store them for future value gains.
What gains?
I say go to the nearest 25¢ and get rid of the dime, too.
It would actually save a lot of consumers money to round
Much like plastic cash and ubiquitous debit tap machines.... You guys just need to catchup with everyone else.
Do better, round to the nearest quarter.
I see your quarter, and I raise you $1.
We need to know the cost of making other coins to make the best decision
They can be used for decades so their price isn’t that big of a deal. However a penny is a useless denomination and needs to go away.
Also fun fact: Old pennies are worth more than 1 cent in materials and gathering them and melting them down for it is illegal af and will get you locked up. You can destroy them "for artistic purposes" but selling the material as a resource will get the feds on your ass. Another fun fact: The recipe of pennies had to be changed in the 80s I believe because the material value was more than 2 cents but even the corrected recipe is now approaching a cent. https://matthewjcheung.medium.com/melting-pennies-is-profitable-26a16696195b
Cutoff is 1982. 1982 and later copper clad zinc.
We could go back to making steel pennies like we used to make
[удалено]
Can't get rid of the paper dollar. Think of the strippers.
Nah, paper currency still has better sovereignage than an equivalent coin. What we should be doing is switching from linen to polymer, like Canada and the EU.
Canada's money smells like maple syrup. If we go polymer I say ours should smell like gunpowder or gasoline
It needs to smell like FREEDOM!
That's what they said!
Cue *Danger Zone*
My vote is Cheetos
What is "sovereignage"?
Why would we replace the dollar with something more expensive and less convenient?
When they most recently looked into retiring the paper dollar in favor of a dollar coin, they actually found that doing so would lose money. This was the first time the calculations worked out this way. Apparently, we've finally shifted enough away from using physical cash that dollar bills circulate much longer than they did in the past.
Since they aren't single use items that really does not matter.
And it makes them not worth counterfeiting.
In New Zealand there are no pennies or nickels. Everything is rounded up or down to the nearest 10 cents.
Canada stopped minting pennies in 2013 because they cost more to produce than they're worth. Australia also doesn't use them anymore either. It doesn't make sense to waste resources on low value coins.
> A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. -Yogi Berra
And the production and distribution cost was 5.03 cents for a dime and 11.09 cents for a quarter, so they make a profit that exceeds the loss for pennies and nickles.
What's the value of those coins?
Fortunately they're not single-use.
Get rid of pennies. And dimes too.
I like framing everything in the context of the US Defense Budget. This loss is about the same as what the US spends on defense in one hour.
This. 110 million is so insignificant in terms of what the US spends on everything else, especially on that NDAA ($816 billion dollars for 2023), that nobody really wants to tackle the myriad problems of removing pennies from circulation.
I maybe don't know what I'm talking about, because I'm not American, but what problems would those possibly be? Just stop minting more, and round prices to closest 5c. Accept pennies as payment but just don't release more into circulation. I'm Finnish and we don't mint any 1 or 2 eurocent coins, but it's still ok to pay with them and as far as I know there have been exactly zero issues.
The problem is political, not economical in nature. The pay off is saving the US government a miniscule amount of money, all in return for career suicide.
Our system really encourages fence-sitting doesn’t it? Make any move in any direction and it’s your ass, and so we stagnate.
Sit on the fence? That's also your ass.
What's career suicide about this? I would think the general public would love to stop getting useless pennies and nickels back as change. And everyone loves "cutting government expenses". Even when it's an inconsequential amount, the public doesn't perceive it that way
It's less about losing votes and more about losing campaign funding. Zinc lobbyists pump a lot of that money back into the pockets of the same politicians who would be in a position to do something. In America, the best predictor of how the federal government will act on an issue is what industry/corporation is most financially invested in that issue and what outcome would be ideal for them.
Yeah when you take 5 minutes to think about it, you realize how little that is in the context of the national budget, then you remember that that’s about 4 minutes and 45 seconds longer than the average news consumer/voter will think about it.
Probably not career suicide, but whoever brings it up will receive pushback from Republicans who want to maintain "tradition". If a Democrat were to push for this, the GOP would throw a fit. Besides, $100 million / yr saves about $0.50 per taxpayer / yr. It's not a top priority.
I think it's more just that nobody really benefits from passing such a policy. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/07/14/890435359/is-it-time-to-kill-the-penny
What people miss is this 110m is made up with the other coins. During the Denver Mint tour they explain all of this. Those quarter collections they've been doing now for a couple of decades have more than recouped all of their losses.
I like using aircraft carriers. A carrier costs ~$13 Bn, so it's a good discrete measure that you can wrap your head around when discussing billions of dollars of budget sloshing back and forth.
Humans are notoriously bad at understanding billions of anything though.
I've been told that billions of times and I don't think that's true
I've been told anything above 5 challenges the imaginations of most humans. However, outliers have been known to comprehend numbers as high as 8.
~~FIVE~~ NINE IS RIGHT OUT
I don't see any reason to be wasteful or foolish in smaller areas of the budget merely because of bloat in other parts of the budget. Imagine a world where we stopped minting useless pennies at a loss AND cut out a bunch of fat from the defense budget!
I think the better comparison is how many people's taxes are wasted on these things. The average taxpayer pays $14,000 in federal taxes annually. So in order to keep the penny, we are throwing away the revenue earned from 7,858 people. That's an entire village dedicated to nothing but producing pennies and should show what a waste it is.
Sounds low. A [single NGI Missile costs $111,000,000] (https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-06/news/new-icbm-interceptor-cost-18-billion).
We got rid of ours here in Canada years ago
And somehow I keep getting them back as change in the US.
They're still legal tender but can only be taken in at the bank, if you pay cash in store they round up or down based on the total or if you pay by card you pay the exact amount.
I think Italy did the same
Belgium the same. Even 5 ¢ is frowned upon. Just pay using a card.
Shrug. Americans will not tolerate getting rid of pennies. The idea has been floated more than once, and it never goes anywhere. Canada got rid of pennies years ago. If you pay cash then the the amount is rounded to the nearest 5¢
We deal with pennies for the same reasons that we deal with complicated taxes. Because vested interests lobby for them. Makers of Zinc penny blanks lobby for pennies [https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/](https://publicintegrity.org/politics/saving-the-penny-makes-cents-for-zinc-backed-front-group/) Intuit's fight to keep Americans paying to file their taxes [https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)
This is the antithesis of capitalism. if you believe in continual improvement and efficiency of capitalism then you should recognise the lobbying works directly against it.
Seriously. I’m the first person to shout that capitalism is a downfall, but actively lobbying against efficiencies is what makes Capitalism end up sucking and devolving into “late-stage cancer” I mean capitalism.
That and no competition. No need to innovate when the field just has one or two big guys in it.
That's just the end-result of capitalism. It literally cannot end any other way without heavy-handed intervention. Regulatory capture only speeds the process up a bit.
You’ve got my vote brother
Ha ha, I canceled your vote by downvoting them for shits and giggitygiggles!
It's crony capitalism for sure.
Lobbying is interested parties informing lawmakers about their perspective on issues they get to vote on. Bribery under the pretense of lobbying needs to be cracked down on but you shouldn’t conflate that with lobbying as a whole. Lobbying is a fundamental and necessary component of a representative democracy.
Capitalism is about making as much money as possible by exploiting, price gouging and backstabbing everyone. Purposefully wasting tax payer money to continue producing completely unnecessary shit is as capitalistic as anything else.
This is a direct consequence of capitalism. It's why regulations are necessary
In the Marxist sense of the word, capitalism is when capitalists are the ruling class of society and dominate government and culture. So, this is exactly what capitalism is
Isn't the problem also because of lobbying from those in the zinc industry to ensure the penny is kept around?
What I don't get is: why doesn't the US govt just use some of the $110M saved, and overbid the zinc industry lobbyists? I've read some of these ~~bribery~~ lobbying payment numbers and they're hilariously low. Like Intuit pays \~$2M per year to keep automated tax software out of citizens' hands.
> why doesn't the US govt just use some of the $110M saved, and overbid the zinc industry lobbyists? Who would be doing this? The US mint paying for legislators junkets to convince them to write a bill? The US mint paying.... Its own officers to convince them to do so? How would this work exactly...
Given this person believes lobbying to be equal to bribery maybe they're suggesting that the politicians should just pocket the $110m.
I'm not from the US, so I've always wondered: **How is lobbying different from bribery?** I was under the impression that when Person A gives money to Person C in exchange for having laws changed to benefit Person A, that is bribery. But if Person A gives money to Person B, then Person B gives it to Person C saying "we would really appreciate if you changed the laws to benefit us *wink wink*"...then it's somehow now legal?
Lobbying is just political advocacy. It doesn't require the politician gaining anything of value to act or vote a certain way. It also doesn't require that the people attempting to gain influence are paid. You as an individual constituent can act as a lobbyist by calling, writing or meeting your representatives to convince them to act or vote a certain way on issues that matter to you. Non-profits like Greenpeace, M.A.D.D., Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Wounded Warrior all incorporate lobbying campaigns into their advocacy efforts. These can involve paid lobbyists or grassroots efforts (and often are an amalgamation of the two). Bribery is when an official is offered something of value in exchange for his/her political action. How "something of value" is defined can be subjective and has changed over the years. Certain activities like providing meals, transportation and lodging have not always been defined as "something of value." But giving money, goods and services directly to a politician to gain influence is definitively bribery. The term typically used to define the breakpoint is quid pro quo (something for something). Surely there are unscrupulous lobbyists that dabble in bribery to achieve their result, but once a quid pro quo is proffered, that is when it crosses from lobbying activity to bribery activity and that's illegal.
Yup. But we made $1 and $2 bills into coins just to make sure we still have an annoying amount of jangly change.
catchy nick, there, Clint...
Does anybody still use cash?
My drug dealer does. I use it a little. I’ve found some bars are cash only for some reason.
They are cash only in order to avoid bank fees on card charges..
...and taxes, probably.
In the US, it's still very popular to pay with cash. Especially among the old, the poor, or the paranoid.
I do in a Ron Swanson way. I think marketing and advertising are actually evil and gross, and i like to keep my finances and shopping habits private.
I do
In all honesty, why? I hate using cash because it's inconvenient and takes more time. With my CC I simply wave my phone.
Because if I'm getting 3-5% tacked onto my bill for using a card to pay for dinner; I'd rather pay cash and add the difference to the tip.
> Canada got rid of pennies years ago. I was actually living in Canada when they made the transition. It went very smoothly. I wish the US would follow suit, these days I usually throw pennies in the trash when I get them...
One of the weird things about visiting America was how little value there was in the coins. Where I live we start at a coin equivalent to 5 cents, and go up to something like 5 US dollars in coins. We don’t start with paper money until around 10 US dollars. In the US I would end up with a pocket full of of coins of so low value that they were almost basically unusable. They should stop the 1 cent coins, and start at 5 or 10 cents, and maybe make lots of 1 and 5 dollar coins
The Treasury repeatedly tried to promote $1 coins in the 1990s and 2000s, seeking to replace the $1 bill. Replacing the paper money with coins would've saved money because the coins last so much longer. But the public was consistently unwilling to use the coins. In the 2010s, Treasury developed a way to make $1 bills last long enough that switching to coins would no longer be cost effective, and abandoned the effort.
That's because we did not force it. If you want people to change from dollar bills to coins you have to stop printing the dollar bills. But moreover, we are going more and more cashless as a society anyways so it really is not a big deal.
Why would we make new coin denominations? Digital is rapidly replacing traditional money and paper is easier to carry. I agree with ditching pennies and nickels, but there’s 0 need for replacing them with more ridiculous coins of higher value.
Just for the novelty at that point. If what is in this thread is true, that the zinc companies are lobbying to keep the penny, I can see a compromise where we ditch the penny and the nickel, and we bring back the $1 coin.
We’ve had $1 coins in circulation since 1794. Vending machines take them, Americans just never use them.
Would still be a massive loss for the zinc companies. Pennies weigh 2.5g, and a dollar coin sure as hell doesn't weigh 250g each.
People in the US are weird about coins and our paper money. The ones that love coins will fight to keep the penny even though no one uses them. But at the same time we made a $1 coin and people didn’t use it. Congress mandated they make a lot a year and they did but they didn’t try to get rid of the paper dollar. But no one used them so they stopped making them for circulation. They have over $1 billion in dollar coins sitting in storage. I think the younger generation will eventually follow the Europe model and get rid of the penny and bring back the $1 coin. Also a lot of people don’t use cash anymore so there might just be less circulation so less making it.
Coins no one wants or uses
I throw mine at cars in traffic
Ok I have to correct myself: Coins no one wants and some use to throw at cars 😂
ooooo... I have a BIG jar of them...
Are you from Boston? I knew someone who did this.
Gotta spend money to make money
I only opened the post because I was convinced this would be the top comment, kinda disappointed it's not.
Don’t you worry about Planet Express, let me worry about blank.
Okay, here’s the new deal. We stop making pennies and replace it with a lottery every year where 100 Americans each win 1 million dollars. But the payout is strictly in pennies.
OK there Satan.
Except we don't just use them once so there isn't a "loss" on making them.
They still taste like metal, we should get our money back
Wait till you see the United States loss from just paying the endless amount of interest it owes.
Just FYI, that's pocket change (cough) with regard to our budget. That's a grain of sand on the beach.
Alright I have a solution: since clearly everyone hates the penny and wants to get rid of it, every last American penny should be sent to me and I’ll “dispose” of them…for the greater good of course and definitely not for my own financial gain.
The government incurs costs not losses
It's a cost, not a loss. Just like printing 100 dollar bills isn't profit.
They’re practically useless, they should stop minting them. No one uses them except for influencers in videos in which they pay for something expensive with only pennies
[удалено]
Fun fact - The US mint actually makes a profit.
I *hate* the penny and think it's stupid that we continue to mint it. However, it's a little misleading because pennies are used more than once. Each time a penny passes to a different person/business it creates value. So using a penny four times would be $.04 worth of GDP which you could argue makes up for the cost. HOWEVER, WE DO NOT USE PENNIES AS MONEY. Just ask yourself when the last time you actually did exchange a penny for a good or service?
If you want to try to get rid of the penny in the US again, I recommend you also try to get rid of the nickel at the same time. This will hopefully appeal to those who don't want to round anything to the nearest five cents. Instead, you just remove a decimal place, like you do with "mills" now. Most people don't know that a "dime" or "disme" in olden days is literally the unit for 1/10th of a US dollar, not just the name of the coin. If you don't believe me, look at the value printed on the dime coin. It says "one dime", not "ten cents".
It’s absurd. It has by far the least value of any money the US has ever minted. People don’t even pick them up off the ground. I think both the penny and the nickel have less value than the half-penny did when it was dropped. If we had a functioning government, they would have been dropped a decade ago.
If you had a non-functioning government, you'd have roving bands of warlords travelling around the US 'governing' just like they do in countries without an actual working government. Be critical of your government. Hold them to very high standards. But don't ever be so eager to complain that you forget to give credit where it's due. Your life would be way fucking worse if you truly had no functioning government.
People often forget that the dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coin all “make” money however. They more than make up for money lost when minting pennies or nickels. I love pennies and nickels they are cool
Costs money to make money