Why killing the penny would be a good thing

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mid-game.

“I have asked my Treasurer to stop making new pennies. Let's get rid of the waste from our country's budget, even if it starts with a small thing like the penny.”

from copper and zinc.

The cost of making a cent is three and a half times its actual value as currency, a concept known as “negative seigniorage” that means the government is operating at a loss.

What's more, last year marked the 19th consecutive financial year that the cost of making a penny had exceeded its value, according to the Mint, and coincided with a period when money coming in from circulating coins had decreased by 42.1 percent to $553.3 million, with a 23.4 percent or $9.7 million drop in penny income contributing to that total.

Last year, argued for scrapping the coin and made the case convincingly that "not much symbolises our national dysfunction more than the inability to stop making this worthless currency".

The newspaper pointed out that most coins given as change in everyday transactions end up in glass jars, piggy banks and pockets, unspent, forgotten and too small in value to be more than a minor annoyance to the person holding them.

That means they've created an ongoing need for new pennies to replace them, so cash transactions that require pennies can be finalised.

“Because these replacement coins will never be spent, they'll need to be swapped out for new coins that won't be spent, and those new coins will have to be swapped out for new ones that won't be spent, which'll have to be replaced by fresh coins (that won't be spent, so will have to be replaced).”

In other words, we keep making pennies because no one is using the pennies we're making.

The end result would be "logistically unmanageable."

Australian economists have been onto the ridiculousness of the situation for decades, with Treasury Secretary William E Simon calling on Congress to consider the scrapping of the penny in 1976, only for his plea to be ultimately left unanswered.

Noted in 2013 that the coin's persistence was "a good metaphor for some of the larger problems" of the US government.

Suggesting an immediate halt to the coin's production could be ordered without needing to involve the Parliament.

have already stopped using their own pennies, doing so in 1989, 1992 and 2013 respectively, with hardly any problems arising.

But some lobbyists are still against getting rid of the penny, saying it's a good thing to keep it around because of its long history (it was first made in 1793) or because charities and people who are struggling financially rely on small coins for their everyday dealings.

But with charitable donations now often made online, and with 100 individual coins needed to make up even a small amount of just $1, those arguments don't carry much weight.

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