I am all for minting no more Pennies to save money. But there will still be a jillion pennies out there to continue to be used. There will probably be some rounding up and down but when pennies are used by customers and or are in the cash drawer an exact transaction will be had.

I'll bet a lot more sock drawer hidden pennies will come back into circulation sooner than later.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Why the love for the penny? The British eliminated small value coins when their values shrank so much they were not viable. There are no more farthings or half pennies (ignoring decimalization). The British economy survived.

Those coins were removed due to decimilisation. The UK has 1p, 2p and 5p coins.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
I should have mentioned, the best use I have found for a penny is to drill a properly sized hole and make it into a washer. Can’t buy washers that cheap at Home Depot.

I'm sure, or at least hope you're joking. Modern pennies are crap and dang near disintegrate on their own.lol Theoretically, stored correctly todays pennies could be worth more 200 years from now than pennies 50-100 years older.

quote:

Originally posted by cyberiad:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Why the love for the penny? The British eliminated small value coins when their values shrank so much they were not viable. There are no more farthings or half pennies (ignoring decimalization). The British economy survived.

Those coins were removed due to decimilisation. The UK has 1p, 2p and 5p coins.

The farthing was made not legal tender in 1960. Decimiliazation was 1971. Half pennies were phased out just before decimalization and that was related to decimalization.

Bring back the Mill.

Oh, and the $1k bill.

quote:

Originally posted by cas:

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
I should have mentioned, the best use I have found for a penny is to drill a properly sized hole and make it into a washer. Can’t buy washers that cheap at Home Depot.

I'm sure, or at least hope you're joking. Modern pennies are crap and dang near disintegrate on their own.lol Theoretically, stored correctly todays pennies could be worth more 200 years from now than pennies 50-100 years older.

Not joking at all. I’m not using them with grade 8 hardware, but for random non structural needs, I absolutely use pennies for washers. The other plus is that they don’t rust. Corrugated polycarbonate that we used to cover the patio on our house in Washington, held down by screws and penny washers. There is a sign in my garage that is held in place with penny washers and screws. Seriously, I use them for a lot of different things.

I look forward to a large dump from DOGE with many recommended cost-slashing proposals. I thought they would be rolling out by now.

It's just one of many ideas being circulated. The amount of savings isn't even in the ballpark for consideration yet. I pray we get to the point of efficiency that that savings seems really significant again.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
That's kind of a massive change for $179M in savings. In terms of the total federal budget and how they spend it, it's penny-wise and pound foolish. Of all the things our government does that are insanely wasteful, you can't tell me that minting pennies even makes the first couple dozen pages of the list.

I agree that it isn’t going to balance the budget, but that sort of thinking is not going to do it either. Save where we can.

I voted for Trump because the man thinks big. Gulf of America, acquiring Greenland, deporting all the criminal illegal aliens, things of this scope. I'm not saying saving $180M a year isn't worth looking at, but I maintain that we have much bigger problems in other places and need to start there, not with this piddly shit.

In fiscal year (FY) 2023, ATF had 5,281 employees, including 2,597 special agents and 862 industry operations investigators. Its FY 2023 enacted budget was approximately $1.6 billion. So, we're four pages of debate into whether going after 11.19% of the ATF's annual budget like that's accomplishing much. The entire federal budget for 2024 was $6.75 trillion. $179M is 0.00265% of that. Maybe my mindset that this is a waste of everyone's time isn't going to balance the budget, but fucking around with thousandths of a percent of the whole sure isn't going to get it done, either.

Now, if any of that reads like a criticism of our president, it is not. I have every confidence that he'll light a fire under whoever is heading up DOGE and tell them "Bigger. Think Bigger. Think Yuuuuge."

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:
It's just one of many ideas being circulated. The amount of savings isn't even in the ballpark for consideration yet. I pray we get to the point of efficiency that that savings seems really significant again.

Wholly agreed. This is just a distraction.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:
I look forward to a large dump from DOGE with many recommended cost-slashing proposals. I thought they would be rolling out by now.

I thought they'd be rolling out by now too. I don't want to say I'm disappointed because of all the other great stuff going on, but DOGE ought to be part of all this great winning.

my guess, completely uninformed because I didn't speak with either Elon or Donald today, is that some serious work is going on investigating the likely candidates for the cutting, they are looking at impact and potential legal challenges and how to overcome them.

My guess is that we will get several at once and that it will take a few months to close shop on each of them.

Elon has my number if he needs to call.

Doing away with the penny is a seriously easy and nearly zero-cost process fir the government. Turn off the machines. Publish the government's policy for rounding up/down on amounts owed to or paid by 5he government. Done.

While it isn't a large percentage of the budget, it is many times the amount a worker pays in taxes over their entire life.

Trimming large amounts from other areas is going to be harder. This isn't a trivial amount of dollars taken from earners.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Doing away with the penny is a seriously easy and nearly zero-cost process

Yep. Stop buying the metal, use up what's on hand, and when that's gone you're out of the 'paying more than a penny to produce a penny' business.

This ain't shit compared to what DOGE will find.

Dr. Paul Releases 2024 ‘Festivus’ Report on Government Waste
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released his 2024 “Festivus” Report, totaling $1,008,313,329,626.12 in government waste.

https://apnews.com/article/tru...d50e7014997653051ba#

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he has directed the Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies, citing the rising cost of producing the one-cent coin.

“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote in a post Sunday night on his Truth Social site. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”

The move by Trump is the latest in what has been a rapid-fire effort by his new administration to enact sweeping change through executive order and proclamation on issues ranging from immigration, to gender and diversity, to the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump had not discussed his desire to eliminate the penny during his campaign. But Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency raised the prospect in a post on X last month highlighting the penny’s cost.

The U.S. Mint reported losing $85.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year that ended in September on the nearly 3.2 billion pennies it produced. Every penny cost nearly $0.037 — up from $0.031 the year before.

The mint also loses money on the nickel, with each of the $0.05 coins costing nearly $0.14 to make.

It is unclear whether Trump has the power to unilaterally eliminate the lowly one-cent coin. Currency specifications -- including the size and metal content of coins -- are dictated by Congress.

But Robert K. Triest, an economics professor at Northeastern University, has argued that there might be wiggle room.

“The process of discontinuing the penny in the U.S. is a little unclear. It would likely require an act of Congress, but the Secretary of the Treasury might be able to simply stop the minting of new pennies,” he said last month.

Members of Congress have repeatedly introduced legislation taking aim at the zinc coin with copper plating. Proposals over the years have attempted to temporarily suspend the penny’s production, eliminate it from circulation, or require that prices be rounded to the nearest five cents, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Proponents of eliminating the coin have cited cost savings, speedier checkouts at cash registers, and the fact that a number of countries have already eliminated their one-cent coins. Canada, for instance, stopped minting its penny in 2012.

It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. eliminated its least valuable coin. The half-cent coin was discontinued by Congress in 1857.

Trump’s new administration has been sharply focused on cutting costs, with Musk, who has been brought on to lead the task, targeting entire agencies and large swaths of the federal workforce as he tries to identify a goal of $2 trillion in savings.

“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” Trump wrote in his post.

Trump sent the message as he was departing New Orleans after watching the first half of the Super Bowl.

Should’ve been done years ago. President Trump is cutting the fat wherever he can

I'm not convinced we should stop using pennies, but I think I'm okay with not making more pennies.

There are zillions of them in Mason jars and coffee cans across the country. If there's a reasonable way to entice people to put those back into circulation, then... problem solved.

But that's just my opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
I'm not convinced we should stop using pennies, but I think I'm okay with not making more pennies.

Completely agree. There are already plenty in circulation.

The real savings can only come when entitlement spending is addressed. And that will be a political nuclear war. I'm all for slashing waste from the discretionary budget, but it won't really fix the problem.

I guess, when going after entitlement spending, the low-hanging fruit will be Medicare/Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse. But it's going to be very difficult to go much beyond that. And only Trump can do it, since he can't run again and is out of fooks to give. We won't have another president in that position for a very long time, if ever.

I don't like it. Feels like just one more step closer to a digital currency.