Then I read the hand-wringing in the NYT — "Trump Orders Treasury Secretary to Stop Minting Pennies/Can he do that? It’s not clear. But President Trump is right when he says that pennies 'literally cost us more than 2 cents'" — because they can't just say Thanks, Trump, thanks for doing what we've known for 40 years we needed to do but we couldn't do because some people whine about the nostalgic and symbolic value of the Lincoln-stamped copper-plated disc.
Unfortunately, one penny costs more than three pennies (3.07 cents at last count) to make and distribute! When I learned this, I lost my mind. Whose fault is this? And who can make it stop? I spent months pleading for answers from government officials, former Mint employees, numismatists, economists, scientists, scrap-metal industrialists, souvenir-elongated-penny machinists, historians, businesspeople, poverty researchers and even Canadians. Everyone said the same thing: Only Congress can retire the American 1-cent coin.
Wait, actually, there is (maybe) good news: Everyone might be wrong. While writing an article about all of this for The Times Magazine, I’m pretty sure I found a loophole buried deep in the forgotten annals of the U.S. legal code that could end this pointless penny plague. I think there is one person in the United States who can unilaterally kill the penny this afternoon if he or she wants to. It’s not the president of the United States....
You're forced to go to the linked article to find the answer to the question. The answer better not be something corny like it's each and every one of us. Let's see. I read it for you.
While consulting Title 31 of the U.S. Code (to see how much annual penny minting was required by law), I came upon a statute outlining general instructions for the apportionment of American coins. “The Secretary of the Treasury shall,” Section 5111 reads, “mint and issue” denominations of coins “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States.” I reread the sentence several times. Groping for a light switch in a bolted room, had my fingers brushed over the knob of an unlocked door? Amounts the Secretary decides are necessary. What if the secretary decided the amount of pennies necessary was zero?
I contacted Christine Desan, a Harvard law professor who specializes in the constitutional law of money. I asked what she made of Section 5111. “The way it reads to me as a lawyer,” Desan said, is that “there’s nothing in here that indicates the secretary has to issue them.” No one I interviewed had mentioned this statute. In fact, every news article, government report and congressional transcript I read — as well as every person I consulted, including former Mint directors — appeared to assume that penny production could not cease until Congress passed a law halting it. But if this interpretation was correct, no law was needed. Or rather, no new law: In passing the statute, a previous Congress — a very, very previous Congress, now confined to the realm of history — had already declared that pennies could stop any time a Treasury secretary wished them to.
It's hard to imagine why the new Secretary of the Treasury wouldn't agree with Trump and align his opinion instantly, before any of us spend too much time trying to figure out if the President can do it on his own.
The author of that NYT article, staff writer Caity Weaver, tried to wrest an answer out of Janet Yellen, but Yellen's people just gave her the runaround. No matter. We have Scott Bessent now.
Posts
99 comments:
All they have is hate.
I remember when a pocket full of change had a delightful jingle. Now it just clicks. Paying sales tax for small cash purchases is all our coinage is good for.
I am pro penny and pro nickel, dammit.
This is a case of problem misidentification. The problem is not the cost of producing the coins. As AVI noted at his site, this idea has floated around for a half-century now and has never been acted upon. To me that's a pretty good indication that as soon as people look at it seriously, they discover it creates more issues than it solves.
The root problem, if you remember back to COVID, is how to keep enough coins in circulation when people don't use them in transactions. A more reasonable solution is that instead of minting coins, we should have a program that gives people a bonus when they turn pennies, nickels, and dimes into banks for recirculation.
What about all those penny press machines at national Parks and landmarks? That was always the best thing as a kid was spending 2 quarters to mash out a penny.
Pennies costing more than a penny just means that there's no seigniorage (profit) in minting them, not that it's a problem. There's no alternative use for pennies so it's not running into the copper problem, where they disappear as soon as they're minted.
Retire the Sasquatch silver dollar too.
How can one now know when a bad penny turns up to pinch a penny and offer a penny for your thoughts?
I think we should have ten years of deflation so that the penny is worth something. Make Pennies Great Again.
[Reposting from the overnight thread. Can we no longer delete our comments?]
If paying with cash, we’ll need an option to round up or down the total unless pricing + taxes align on the nickel. Round down will win the customer’s choice. Curious as to how much cash is changing hands at all.
Once they stopped making dime and above out of silver, and pennies out of copper, it's all just symbolism anyway. Go to a coin shop and buy some old coins and keep them in your pocket to show to young people, or even your fellow oldsters.
John Gorka I see a penny and I pick it up / it's not the money, I could use the luck
Regarding the need for coins -- bring back the Eisenhower dollar. That's an efficient 100 pennies in one. To inspire confidence in its value, it was big as a challenge coin and 10 in your pocket would slap your leg hard with each step. ;-p
The Susan B. Anthony dollar had an...unattractive...portrait and was too close to a quarter in size. The Sacagawea dollar had a weird mother-baby "portrait" and didn't fix the size issue either.
Tangential to this topic, I know, but for the past month big players have been stockpiling gold. Which makes me wonder if the people with inside information and who can afford to employ full time financial analysts are worried that the US dollar is maybe gonna go full Weimar. Maybe if the New York Times focused a little of the national attention on the debt, but they aren't being paid by the government to do that, are they? —If they did? Maybe DOGE would make a lot more sense to the normies being indoctrinated by NPR to hate Musk.
I don't use cash very much any more, but I used to find it useful to carry around a few pennies so as to avoid getting pennies back in change. The worst is when the register rings up something like $10.02 and the clerk insists on giving back $9.98 in change on a twenty (if there's no "Take a penny, leave a penny" dish).
Here is a good age test for you, do you remember first seeing a "sandwich coin"?
Too late. An Obama appointed federal judge has ruled that the Treasury Secretary is not allowed to access or count coins because reasons.
this is CRAZY! i say; as long as we're keeping ha'pennies in makes NO SENSE to be getting rid of pennies!
What's THAT? the US Mint stop making half pennies in 1857?
never mind
As proof of the downside of eliminating the penny I direct your attention to Canada. It eliminated the penny in 2012. Now look at what a mess it is.
Trump should advocate breathing so the progressives would go around holding their breath.
If you drop a penny it isn't worth the labor to pick it up!
I'm so old, I remember when the coolest thing was to put a penny on a railroad track. Cool beans.
In the movie “Death Wish,” Charles Bronson begins exacting his vigilante justice with a sock full of quarters.
I always thought a sock full of nickels would be better and cheaper, especially if the sock ruptures, as I think it does in the movie.
But Paul Kersey is a successful NYC architect, so he can splurge.
I'm 100% with Trump in getting rid of the Penny and agree with with Althouse that it also makes sense to get rid of the Nickel. Most Western countries have taken similar measures. Shops round off to the nearest acceptable number and of course it wouldn't matter for those paying with a credit card.
And while we're at, get rid of the one dollar bill and replace it with a coin. The five dollar bill should be theb lowest.
When we were stationed in England, the USAF didn't bother to transport pennies to the UK bases - it wasn't economical. This was in the '80s, when people dealt much more in cash, so perhaps it was a bigger deal then than it would be now. Of course, since it was a military facility, there was no sales tax, so it was easy just to set the prices in increments of 5 cents.
Is there any reason not to "pause" minting of pennies (and sure, nickels, why not?) and see what happens, before we eliminate our ability to produce them altogether?
I pay cash for most personal services (food service, hair cuts, etc. as opposed to electricity, gas, telephone) these days. I round to the nearest dollar when including tip. What I have found more annoying is the dollar quickly becoming less a factor than the two dollar. I heard efforts to end the penny for decades. I agree it needs to go with the nickel. I’m not opposed to the dime, either way. Things can still be purchased for a quarter. Not many things, but some things.
I think if you are on the fence about this, I have a litmus test. If you saw a penny on the ground, would you still bend down to pick it up? A nickel? A dime? What you would be willing to pick up to save (not just because you a do gooder that would pick up every scrap of trash), then I would understand that you perceive its value.
Let's see what France is doing. Do they still produce those pathetic little centimes? If so then we should def stop with the pennies already.
Paying for gasoline at $x.xx9 could be an issue if one doesn't use plastic. What's with that .9 cents anyway?
“I have a litmus test. If you saw a penny on the ground, would you still bend down to pick it up? A nickel? A dime?”
Yes, I pick up all pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. What’s a matter with you people.
I always ponder now if I see a penny on the ground, daring me to pick it up. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Back in the day, of course, a penny bought a piece of bubble gum. What's a piece of bazooka cost these days?
You ponder? Pick up the damn penny!
Imagine if Daniel Penny defended himself and others on the NYC subway with a sock full of... pennies . The NY Post would have dubbed him the "Penny Vigilante."
And here's what I mean about the rupturing sock. Since it didn't rupture later in actual use (above), maybe Paul Kersey did change the mintage - or the sock?
I pick up pennies, but for luck, not for their monetary value. And I put 'em in my shoe, which is difficult in a climate where it's reasonable to wear flip-flops about eight months of the year.
I’d like to see more dollar coins minted and eliminate the $1 bill. Make $5 the smallest denomination bill.
1. If they stopped printing so many dollars, pennies would be worth something.
2. Does Congress care? Maybe they can just pass a(nother) law allowing the Treasury Secretary to stop the production of pennies, and the country can move on while the question of authority remains unresolved.
I'm still tryin to figure out why the sock full of quarters ruptures only when Charles Bronson hits a comfy chair?
"Trump=Bad" is a way of life for many followers of the digital masters.
I miss the "reply" function. It should not require a separate -- and SEPARATED -- post to point out that the ***.9 price for gasoline is related to a time, decades ago, when the total price was about 25 ¢/gal, of which 2.9 cents was the federal tax.
In similar news, gasoline hasn't had tetra-ethyl lead in hlf a century, but is still sold as "unleaded".
When I was stationed in the UK before they decimalized their currency, we were not allowed to have US pennies. The US penny was the same size and weight as the UK sixpence, which at the time was their equivalent of a dime. The penny worked as a sixpence in vending machines.
Anyone upset at the Canadians? They haven't had pennies for a while, now.
Bart Hall said: "In similar news, gasoline hasn't had tetra-ethyl lead in hlf a century, but is still sold as "unleaded".
Bart, there is still lead in aviation fuel.
Until inflation comes down and a penny can actually buy something.. well. Sad thing is this is how the Centavo (yes the Peso used to be a buck in Mexico) is gone. The Peso is now the cent in Mexico... do we want the US Dollar to become a cent???? Well?????
We need to balance the budget and stop inflation.. we actually need some DEFLATION.
To the primary topic, yes, indeed, shit-can the penny. 2009 should logically have been the final year, for Lincoln's 200th.
Canada got rid of pennies years ago and all the check-out tills have a rounding function built in so that the recorded transaction matches what was paid.
Whilst we're at it, it's long past time for the 50-cent piece to go. Nobody uses them. For anything. And they don't make change any easier.
More importantly, Canada scrapped "paper" dollars 40 years ago, and the coins are not only vastly more durable -- decades, not months -- but actually quite a bit more convenient, because they don't stuff up your wallet or blow around. The two-dollar denomination has long been popular in Canada, as well as New Zealand and Australia, and all three nations use coins for 2$ as well. Works great.
To the primary topic, yes, indeed, shit-can the penny. 2009 should logically have been the final year, for Lincoln's 200th.
Canada got rid of pennies years ago and all the check-out tills have a rounding function built in so that the recorded transaction matches what was paid.
Whilst we're at it, it's long past time for the 50-cent piece to go. Nobody uses them. For anything. And they don't make change any easier.
More importantly, Canada scrapped "paper" dollars 40 years ago, and the coins are not only vastly more durable -- decades, not months -- but actually quite a bit more convenient, because they don't stuff up your wallet or blow around. The two-dollar denomination has long been popular in Canada, as well as New Zealand and Australia, and all three nations use coins for 2$ as well. Works great.
2012 Canada got rid of the penny. 2013 Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party. 2015 he became Prime Minister. Slippery slope folks. Slippery slope.
I don’t believe it. This is another case of the Feds being stuck in “this is the way we always did it” models. If the composition of the penny needs to change then change it. Make it out of tin or better yet plastic.
"A dime for your thoughts?"
I don't know, it sounds kind of weird. But then again, so does "That and ten cents will get you a cup of coffee."
@Bart Hall
1. We got the point the first time.
2. How about if the government stops printing money. I have zero wish to go the way of Australia or Canada. (I don’t know anything about New Zealand except that Australians make fun of them) First they come after your pennies, then they come after your guns.
My GenZ coworkers hate dealing with cash entirely. I still have the muscle memory from my youth making change, so it's a fun skill to practice. That said, I think the quarter should be the only coin
@Howard: That’s half the fun of paying with cash - watching the young ‘uns examine every coin. Some of them have to read the value on the coin because they’re unsure. Don’t deprive me of such a simple pleasure.
And lets abolish sales taxes on groceries and any purchase amounting to $20 or less. That will radically reduce the demand for pennies, dimes, and nickels. Furthermore, let's writes some laws that will discourage the practice of pricing products in less than whole dollars to make them seem cheaper, for example, instead of $19.95 for a leather belt, make it advantageous to raise the price to $20 even.
A penny costs 3.07 cents to make (at least that much - I am not sure if this is total cost or just material cost per penny). America mints between 5 and 16 billion pennies per year. This means that we lose between $153.5 and $491.2 million per year on pennies.
A nickel costs 13.78 cents to make (same caveat) and we make between 70 million and 1.57 billion nickels (70 million was last year, which was abnormally low). So another $9.65 to $216.3 million lost.
Plus, think of the environmental benefits in not having to mine, transport, and then mint all these metals into coin-shaped objects.
I'm not so poor that finding a quarter means the difference between eating and not. I figure a little kid finding the dropped coin will get more joy of it than I will, so I leave lost coins be. And if it's bigger bills, the owner might come looking for it.
A penny costs 3+ cents to make. A nickel costs almost 14 cents to make. Why don’t we get rid of pennies, make penny sized coins, maybe coat them in something silvery to distinguish them from “copper” pennies and call them nickels? Then we’re making nickels for less than the cost of a nickel. That should buy us some time
Joe Bar writes, "Bart, there is still lead in aviation fuel."
Small air-cooled motors also like leaded fuel.
So glad that Trump is focusing on the important stuff, like pennies and plastic straws and whatever the hell else pops into his addled brain. Be careful about mentioning nickles. Next Trump will be going on about how, back in his day, maybe back in the days of McKinley when the U.S. was last great, nickels had pictures of bumble bees on them.
"A penny costs 3+ cents to make. A nickel costs almost 14 cents to make. Why don’t we get rid of pennies, make penny sized coins, maybe coat them in something silvery to distinguish them from “copper” pennies and call them nickels?"
People who earn their livings with vending machines will complain. If we want to reform the coinage, we need to figure out a way to keep the weights the same, maybe with polymer-coated lead, or perhaps a moldable polymer that chemically includes lead or iron within the molecular structure.
It's only a matter of time before Trump includes in his "weave":
We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...
In similar news, gasoline hasn't had tetra-ethyl lead in hlf a century, but is still sold as "unleaded".
Leaded gasoline wasn't banned in the USA until 1996 according to Grok.
I'll miss the penny rolling novelty machines at tourist traps.
I only pick up pennies that are heads up. They are the lucky ones.
France hasn't had centimes since 1999. They do have 1 cent euro coins, but they are considered trash. Stores often just round to the nearest 5c. 1 and 2 euro coins are actually useful. There are no 1 euro notes.
We haven't even approached the limits of what can be done with hydrocarbon polymers. Up to now the emphasis has been to reduce weight and increase durability. Give the chemists a new goal, durable plastic currency.
Mark said...
So glad that Trump is focusing on the important stuff
Oh he is focusing on plenty of important stuff. This is just chaff thrown into the wind to distract fools. It also has the benefit of being a good idea and saving money.
Trump should advocate breathing so the progressives would go around holding their breath.
@Kevin, you could be onto something! He should give it a try.
Our own addled brain has chimed in. Ho-hum.
James K said...
I think we should have ten years of deflation so that the penny is worth something. Make Pennies Great Again.
[Reposting from the overnight thread. Can we no longer delete our comments?]
Had same problem with Firefox (and could not access comments on some sites).
Open Althouse in Chrome, no problems.
2/10/25, 6:47 AM
Ahh the days when you could buy penny candy. Made a penny worthwhile.
Eliminate pennies. Sure. But I'll bet a lot of people immediately start keeping them, So, during the transition to penniless sales we might have a yuge shortage. For a temporary "fix" the Treasury could offer, for a limited time, $0.02 for every penny turned in - you'd be shocked at the number of people with that jar full of pennies. It would save millions while we transition out of the penny biz.
FWIW all pre-1982 pennies - Lincoln Memorial on the back (with rare exception) have more than a penny worth of copper. It's illegal to melt 'em down, but I've kept a few.
“Furthermore, let's writes some laws that will discourage the practice of pricing products in less than whole dollars to make them seem cheaper, for example, instead of $19.95 for a leather belt, make it advantageous to raise the price to $20 even.”
Yes, let’s do this. Because we don’t have enough laws as it is. Then let’s hire another bucket full of bureaucrats to monitor how merchants price their wares.
"[Reposting from the overnight thread. Can we no longer delete our comments?]"
Click on the trash can icon.
The trash can icon no longer exists for me.
Looks like VA Lawyer Mark wants to pretend nothing important is being handled by the Trump admin.
Yes, he is apparently dumb enough to actually believe claims like that will somehow survive scrutiny as the New Soviet Democraticals scream to high heaven and are liteeally calling for large scale violence in the streets.
Althouse blog already has a Dumb Lefty Mark but VA Lawyer Mark is doing yeoman's work in trying to create a matching pair.
I use plastic for everything. Don’t think I’ve touched a coin in years.
Let Trump do all the stuff nobody has had the political capital to spearhead. It's risk and guilt free, call it the Trump Dispensation.
If not now, When?
In the past I've lost the trash can icon in the old, separate comment mode because, even though I'm signed in on the same Google account, seemingly Blogger didn't recognize the device as the one that left the comment.
Ann Althouse said...
"Click on the trash can icon."
No trash can icon for me - I tried 3 different browsers, including chrome. Is there some setting I can change?
Keeping the penny and the nickel long past the point where there was positive seignorage is just stupid. It would be the equivalent of having a coin called the 10th of a penny in 1972. Inflation shifts the utility of of the digits to the right of the decimal point towards zero. Althouse is correct get rid of the nickel, too. In 50 years we can get rid of all the coins and make the dollar bill that age's "penny" equivalent.
With the penny and the nickel gone, the size and the value of the dime will finally merge. So aesthetically pleasing.
That is sort of how Trump thinks but replace "aesthetically pleasing" with "big and beautiful." It's also how Musk thinks, if you take beautiful or aesthetically pleasing to refer to the solution of a mathematical or engineering problem.
I'm not so sure. All this to-do about statues and base names and now we're talking Lincoln and Jefferson off coins (leaving only Washington and FDR)? Aren't prices going to go up if we get rid of the penny? And can the president really do that on his own?
What happened to the JFK half dollar? I haven't seen one since the last century. Have young people even ever seen one? Even some older people think $2 bills are fake.
So Mark can google old Simpson's scripts.
One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Were you dead, or living under a rock, or in a coma or suspended animation for the last four years?
Have you ever f-ing heard a Joe Biden speech?
Google "I got hairy legs that turn blond in the sun" or "I love little kids jumping on my lap."
Mark, just because operates with a higher bandwidth than you do isn't a terrible thing.
“No trash can icon for me”
I only use my phone and only one browser. I sometimes get the trash Icon and sometimes I don’t. When there’s a “more” to a post and I click on that, then I always get the trash icon. Also, when I click on a post so only that post shows up rather than the whole blog, then I get the trash icon. Maybe try that?
Jaq said...
"A dime for your thoughts?"
I don't know, it sounds kind of weird. But then again, so does "That and ten cents will get you a cup of coffee."
You can still get a cup of coffee for 5¢ at Wall Drug. But it's not much as coffee goes and it's a long drive, unless you live in Wall.
"Aren't prices going to go up if we get rid of the penny? "
Why would they go up?
I always pick up pennies. It's manna and you invite karmic peril by refusing it as too inconsequential. My one superstition.
What's the point about whether it costs more or less than one-one hundredth of a dollar to fabricate a penny coin? A penny is worth a penny because the government says it is. It's just a marker. If you could make a profit by melting down penny coins and selling the resulting ingot to (say) a metals recycling company, there might be a point. But you can't.
Parking meters in my Los Angeles suburb no longer accept dimes or nickels, much less pennies. Putting quarters in the meter won't work at the next suburb over. In not so beautiful downtown Pasadena you have to use an app on your phone to pay for street parking.
Lived a year and a half in Australia, which has no circulating one-cent coin. When a cash tab comes to something ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7, the bill is rounded down to the next unit of five cents. The customer pays the extra cent or two when the tab ends in 3, 4, 8 or 9.
I looked at some of our shopping receipts, and it broke even. I returned to the states opposed to the penny and in favor of roundabouts.
It should almost be like its own social media channel of old people trying to understand the Super Bowl halftime act.
Which I think is part of the point of the Halftime act.
To just make at least one third of the country go like, what's going on? What's he saying?
I don’t think anyone over sixty enjoyed it
At my age, the amount of aspirin and/or scotch that I have to consume to counteract the effect of bending down to pick up a coin means that those coins are going to stay where they are.
When I was in Costa Rica, the prices were in whatever the Costa Rican currency was, but they preferred the Yanqui dollar. They never made change--if the dollar amount was even close they took the nearest lower dollar and returned the excess dollars. I would say "Gracias" and they would say "De nada," and then I would give them the next dollar as a tip. They really like Americans in Costa Rica.
I think the way this will work is that pennies will become scarce, because they are handed out as change, but people don't recirculate them so much and they collect in penny jars in millions of home. Something could happen to bring that supply back in circulation. Some reward or belief in helping solve a perceived problem. But if that doesn't happen and the scarcity continues, people will just accept prices being rounded off to the nearest 5. No one will care. Pennies will just be an annoyance. You'll prefer the rounding, even if the person giving the change rounds $0.04 down to $0.00.
I feel a little sorry for the sector of America that feels that whatever Trump does must be good.
As for the penny, one less coin for him to put his face on I guess. The guy's so selfless.
"... Can't they at least celebrate his action eliminating the penny?" No, they can't Professor, because they're the New York Times which means they are an extreme leftist Trump-Derangement -Syndrome suffering bunch of schmucks.
I've lived in countries that have gotten ridden of low value coins. The way it worked was that the Govt. gave notice that after a certain date the small coins would not be used and vendors would round to the nearest acceptable amount. Leftover coins could be handed in to banks for an extra year. After that the coins were souvenirs. No problems with this sort of transition.
It's interesting how no one talks about "fiat currency" in this context any more. Twenty or more years ago, every time someone would talk about shutting down penny production, someone else would talk about decoupling currency from gold and silver exchange.
Amexpat: You stole my thunder. I've been advocating eliminating the penny and the dollar bill for ages, but for some reason the 5 treasury secretaries who are so concerned that we continue to pay fake invoices weren't listening to me. (All they had to do was stop down at the corner tavern on any Friday night)
"31 USC SUBTITLE IV, CHAPTER 51, SUBCHAPTER II: GENERAL AUTHORITY
From Title 31—MONEY AND FINANCE SUBTITLE IV—MONEY CHAPTER 51—COINS AND CURRENCY
SUBCHAPTER II—GENERAL AUTHORITY
§5111. Minting and issuing coins, medals, and numismatic items
(a) The Secretary of the Treasury—
(1) shall mint and issue coins described in section 5112 of this title in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States;"
So, if the Secretary of the Treasury determines the "amount... necessary" is zero.... he can stop minting pennies.
I leave it to you whether you think this is a good idea. But knowing the applicable law seems like a reasonable starting point.
So glad that Trump is focusing on the important stuff, like pennies and plastic straws and whatever the hell else pops into his addled brain.
Yeah. Because that's all Trump's been focusing on.
Do you write stupid things on purpose or does it come naturally?
Nevermind. I read your next comment.
It comes naturally.
“I say get rid of nickels too. Let the dime be the smallest coin — not just physically but denominationally.“
Nickels aren’t much needed, only to make change for 5 cents or 15 cents. Every higher amount can be done with dimes and quarters. 30 cents is three dimes, 35 cents is a quarter and a dime, 65 cents is a quarter and four dimes, etc.
If would be awkward to get rid of the nickel and make 10 cents the lowest denomination without also getting rid of the 25 cent quarter, which is the most popular coin. The hated half-dollar coin weighs the same as 5 dimes, so that would be no help.
The coin problem should be taking care of itself, since the use of cash for purchases is much reduced with credit cards, debit cards, and payment by mobile phone. The lowest denomination ever minted by the federal government was a 5 mill coin (half a cent). Some states made their own 1 mill pieces to assist in the collection of sales taxes.
Federal law still provides for mills, 31 U.S.C. 5101: “United States money is expressed in dollars, dimes or tenths, cents or hundreths, mills or thousandths. A dime is a tenth of a dollar, a cent is a hundredth of a dollar, and a mill is a thousandth of a dollar.”
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