The idea of the US mint no longer making pennies is in the news, but it’s not a new idea.
On July 19, 2006, Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona) introduced legislation to get rid of them. On my radio show that day, I spoke with Jeff Gore of Citizens For Retiring The Penny, who said we don’t need the one-cent coin anymore, especially since it costs more than a penny to make a penny.
I asked Gore what we’d do with all those prices that aren’t right at the five- and ten-cent marks, what corporate America thinks of the plan, whether any other countries have done this, and more. Listen to the conversation here.
Today, nineteen years later, with apps like Google Pay and Apple Pay, not to mention smart credit cards, fewer people are carrying currency of any denomination — and then only paper bills. A lot of banks won’t accept coins of any kind anymore. Ours told us the reason was it no longer has a coin-counting machine and it isn’t worth having its tellers sorting and counting them by hand.
In my house, we don’t even have the coin cup we used to drop spare change into, so we can’t make rolls of them like when my daughter was young (which I wrote about here).
Here are a few listener comments I received after my conversation with Gore about retiring the penny…
From Steve:
It costs the government about 1.5 cents to make a penny. Until we eliminate it, here’s what the government should do — Stop making pennies. Instead, offer to buy our pennies from us for 1.25 cents apiece. This would reduce the government’s cost of producing pennies by 20 %. For a 25% premium, I’d happily empty my penny bins.
From Fred:
I was working at Misawa Air Force Base in Japan (400 miles north of Tokoyo) about 10 years ago and went into the PX to buy groceries — they had already stopped using pennies and just rounded up or down. It was no big deal there. It would be no big deal here.
From Tim:
Why must the US Mint continue to strike new pennies? Aren’t there enough pennies in circulation already, or do they wear out? I mean they are metal and they do not experience physical stress like an aircraft or engine. What would be the cost of producing the penny on a three or four year cycle?