6 ms·

US to Stop Producing Pennies in 2026

43 points by bdev12345 1y ago

gnabgib 1y ago
Discussion (36 points, 2 months ago, 25 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069037
- svieira 1y ago
  The 12 1/2 cent coin suggestion is brilliant and deserves more discussion, so I'm bringing it back up here. For those who don't know, the US Dollar was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real which was often broken into eight pieces to make change (hence, "pieces of eight" and "two bits"). Might as well bring it back while inflation lets us be nostalgic.
bediger4000 1y ago
I'm not against the end result, but I was taught that we lived in a Republic, not a dictatorship. This should have been done legislatively, not by executive fiat.
- Amezarak 1y ago
  Did Congress mandate the production of the penny? Or was the authority over what coins are produced (and how many of them) given to the Treasury?
  - bediger4000 1y ago
    I think that's a bit beside the point. We all use physical money. An executive that respected the vox populi would leave this for the legislature, where everybody has elected representatives that can debate, wheel-and-deal, and act on that voice of the people. There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.
    - Amezarak 1y ago
      The President is also an elected representative. This isn't beside the point: if it's not legislatively mandated, this is American democracy working as designed. If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.
  - lp0_on_fire 1y ago
    As I understand it congress mandates which coins _can_ be minted and their specifications (denomination/physical size/markings/etc) then leaves it up to the Secretary of the Treasury to determine how many need to be produced to meet demand.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Diti 1y ago
  If the USA was a dictatorship, I don’t think you would be able to criticize your government on the internet.
  - cute_boi 1y ago
    It isn't dictatorship, but it is turning into dictatorless dystopia
  - voxl 1y ago
    At what point in the rise of Hitler do you think people stopped posting anonymous criticism about Hitler? Because I'm going to bet never.
    - Diti 1y ago
      I didn’t know there was internet censorship at Hitler’s time, preventing people from talking about the dictatorship. Can you back it up with a source? I think you might have to use a LLM to find one. As for my claim (that people in a dictactorship wouldn’t be able to use the internet), here’s an example of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...
      - BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
        Weird choice of example when there are so many relevant examples happening right now. Even worse the US is currently suppressing speech and actions that protest foreign countries (and our support for them). Anti-BDS laws should surely be unconstitutional yet they stand. Detaining and deporting legal residents for their speech. Pulling unrelated funding from universities for not policing student speech. The US isn't particularly good about press freedom either.
- bradac56 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - NoFunPedant 1y ago
    1. The states never had the right to secede. U.S. Constitution, Article VI: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Article I, Section 10: "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation .... No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War ..." It is abundantly clear in the records of the Constitutional Convention, the text of the Constitution, the debates on ratification, and the Federalist Papers that the intent of the Constitution was to create a supreme national government, not a league of states. 2. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the authority to regulate currency. Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power ... To coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof ..."
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > We stopped being a republic after the civil war removed state rights to secession A republic is a government where elected representatives make laws. The right of sub-national units to secede isn't a part of the equation, as far as I know. I mean a republic could have a constitution where states have the right to secede. Wikipedia tells me the USSR is one such republic. But that's not part of the definition.
- tomcam 1y ago
  Interestingly, it's actually being done properly: * The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative) * That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc. * Delegating this is well within the power of the executive That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.
  - ImprovedSilence 1y ago
    Very incorrect, the US constitution states "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" Congress, not the executive. And the supreme court has ruled that power to be exclusive source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/ALDE_00001066/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,Weights%20and%20Measures%3B%20.%20.%20. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...
ruralfam 1y ago
While visiting New Zealand in the 90's I had my first encounter with no pennies. Everything was rounded up/down. Was an initial shock that came to make tons of cents (intended). Glad the US is doing this.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  If it's like Australia, it's not that everything is rounded up/down, it's the TOTAL. Although when Australia introduced it, a number of retailers got fined for rounding everything up, or for rounding every individual item. And only for cash. For card, it was still the exact amount.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
From Canadian experience, this is one of those things where the opponents of the change are much louder, appearing much more numerous than they actually are. In the end this was a widely popular move.
- monsieurgaufre 1y ago
  I agree. From what i’ve seen, people use debit/credit cards / their phone, so the rounding doesn’t even occur.
  - alberth 1y ago
    That might be true for middle & upper class, in a developed country. Not everyone though is that fortunate.
    - umeshunni 1y ago
      ~90% of payments in China use a phone: https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ ~50% in India: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-india-as-more-than-50-of-shoppers-use-digital-wallets-to-shop/ https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-... ~60% in Brazil: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-brazils-mobile-shopping-surge/ https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-br... Similar trends in Africa, though exact numbers were harder to find: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlikely-global-leader-in-mobile-payments-yes-really https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlike...
      - alberth 1y ago
        Thanks for confirming that less than 100% = “not everyone”.
mk_stjames 1y ago
This triggered a thought which led me to doing a quick calculation that I haven't done in years... So, modern pennies are just copped plated zinc. But up to 1982 (barring some small interruptions like the 1943 steel penny) they were 95% copper. There was roughly 2.95 grams of copper in each penny. Current copper prices seems to be approximately $12.31/kg or $0.0123/gram. That is about $0.036 per pre-1982 penny. Round down to 3 cents/penny to account for recycling costs. If you took all pre-1982 copper pennies you could out of circulation yourself you could make a 3x return! (I have no idea how many pre-1982 pennies are still in circulation and it seems like this isn't public knowledge. Something tells me this endeavour to recycle them, as an individual, would never be fruitful. Also... my memory is that there is some question of legality in destroying currency en masse...)
- Neywiny 1y ago
  I recall there being people who hoard buckets of copper pennies for this exact purpose. You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose, so they have buckets and buckets waiting for the law to "change" (pun intended).
  - rufus_foreman 1y ago
    >> You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose To educate people about the strength and resiliency of markets.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    > You can't melt them down Sure you can, you just have to find an unscrupulous copper merchant to sell it to. Not a difficult task - they've been around for thousands of years.
    - dehugger 1y ago
      The oldest recorded profession?
      - 1y ago
somanyphotons 1y ago
I wish they would get rid of all coins - just issue smaller denomination notes if you really must have them.
dlcarrier 1y ago
Great, now we just need to discontinue the dime, and make dime-sized nickels, or discontinue the nickel and quarter and bring back the half dollar, and we'll have a sensible coin system. When we discontinued the half penny, it was worth far more than a dime is now.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Just quarters.
dataflow 1y ago
Why is this controversial? To me it makes perfect cents.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Alas, some have more dollars than cents.
fred_is_fred 1y ago
Let's do nickels and dimes too.

43 points by bdev12345 1y ago

Discussion (36 points, 2 months ago, 25 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069037

svieira 1y ago
The 12 1/2 cent coin suggestion is brilliant and deserves more discussion, so I'm bringing it back up here. For those who don't know, the US Dollar was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real which was often broken into eight pieces to make change (hence, "pieces of eight" and "two bits"). Might as well bring it back while inflation lets us be nostalgic.

bediger4000 1y ago

I'm not against the end result, but I was taught that we lived in a Republic, not a dictatorship. This should have been done legislatively, not by executive fiat.

Amezarak 1y ago
Did Congress mandate the production of the penny? Or was the authority over what coins are produced (and how many of them) given to the Treasury?
- bediger4000 1y ago
  I think that's a bit beside the point. We all use physical money. An executive that respected the vox populi would leave this for the legislature, where everybody has elected representatives that can debate, wheel-and-deal, and act on that voice of the people. There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.
  - Amezarak 1y ago
    The President is also an elected representative. This isn't beside the point: if it's not legislatively mandated, this is American democracy working as designed. If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.
- lp0_on_fire 1y ago
  As I understand it congress mandates which coins _can_ be minted and their specifications (denomination/physical size/markings/etc) then leaves it up to the Secretary of the Treasury to determine how many need to be produced to meet demand.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Diti 1y ago
If the USA was a dictatorship, I don’t think you would be able to criticize your government on the internet.
- cute_boi 1y ago
  It isn't dictatorship, but it is turning into dictatorless dystopia
- voxl 1y ago
  At what point in the rise of Hitler do you think people stopped posting anonymous criticism about Hitler? Because I'm going to bet never.
  - Diti 1y ago
    I didn’t know there was internet censorship at Hitler’s time, preventing people from talking about the dictatorship. Can you back it up with a source? I think you might have to use a LLM to find one. As for my claim (that people in a dictactorship wouldn’t be able to use the internet), here’s an example of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...
    - BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
      Weird choice of example when there are so many relevant examples happening right now. Even worse the US is currently suppressing speech and actions that protest foreign countries (and our support for them). Anti-BDS laws should surely be unconstitutional yet they stand. Detaining and deporting legal residents for their speech. Pulling unrelated funding from universities for not policing student speech. The US isn't particularly good about press freedom either.
bradac56 1y ago
[flagged]
- NoFunPedant 1y ago
  1. The states never had the right to secede. U.S. Constitution, Article VI: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Article I, Section 10: "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation .... No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War ..." It is abundantly clear in the records of the Constitutional Convention, the text of the Constitution, the debates on ratification, and the Federalist Papers that the intent of the Constitution was to create a supreme national government, not a league of states. 2. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the authority to regulate currency. Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power ... To coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof ..."
- triceratops 1y ago
  > We stopped being a republic after the civil war removed state rights to secession A republic is a government where elected representatives make laws. The right of sub-national units to secede isn't a part of the equation, as far as I know. I mean a republic could have a constitution where states have the right to secede. Wikipedia tells me the USSR is one such republic. But that's not part of the definition.
tomcam 1y ago
Interestingly, it's actually being done properly: * The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative) * That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc. * Delegating this is well within the power of the executive That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.
- ImprovedSilence 1y ago
  Very incorrect, the US constitution states "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" Congress, not the executive. And the supreme court has ruled that power to be exclusive source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/ALDE_00001066/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,Weights%20and%20Measures%3B%20.%20.%20. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...

ruralfam 1y ago

While visiting New Zealand in the 90's I had my first encounter with no pennies. Everything was rounded up/down. Was an initial shock that came to make tons of cents (intended). Glad the US is doing this.

FireBeyond 1y ago
If it's like Australia, it's not that everything is rounded up/down, it's the TOTAL. Although when Australia introduced it, a number of retailers got fined for rounding everything up, or for rounding every individual item. And only for cash. For card, it was still the exact amount.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

From Canadian experience, this is one of those things where the opponents of the change are much louder, appearing much more numerous than they actually are. In the end this was a widely popular move.

monsieurgaufre 1y ago
I agree. From what i’ve seen, people use debit/credit cards / their phone, so the rounding doesn’t even occur.
- alberth 1y ago
  That might be true for middle & upper class, in a developed country. Not everyone though is that fortunate.
  - umeshunni 1y ago
    ~90% of payments in China use a phone: https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/ ~50% in India: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-india-as-more-than-50-of-shoppers-use-digital-wallets-to-shop/ https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-... ~60% in Brazil: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-brazils-mobile-shopping-surge/ https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-br... Similar trends in Africa, though exact numbers were harder to find: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlikely-global-leader-in-mobile-payments-yes-really https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlike...
    - alberth 1y ago
      Thanks for confirming that less than 100% = “not everyone”.

mk_stjames 1y ago

This triggered a thought which led me to doing a quick calculation that I haven't done in years... So, modern pennies are just copped plated zinc. But up to 1982 (barring some small interruptions like the 1943 steel penny) they were 95% copper. There was roughly 2.95 grams of copper in each penny. Current copper prices seems to be approximately $12.31/kg or $0.0123/gram. That is about $0.036 per pre-1982 penny. Round down to 3 cents/penny to account for recycling costs. If you took all pre-1982 copper pennies you could out of circulation yourself you could make a 3x return! (I have no idea how many pre-1982 pennies are still in circulation and it seems like this isn't public knowledge. Something tells me this endeavour to recycle them, as an individual, would never be fruitful. Also... my memory is that there is some question of legality in destroying currency en masse...)

Neywiny 1y ago
I recall there being people who hoard buckets of copper pennies for this exact purpose. You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose, so they have buckets and buckets waiting for the law to "change" (pun intended).
- rufus_foreman 1y ago
  >> You can't melt them down unless it's for an educational purpose To educate people about the strength and resiliency of markets.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  > You can't melt them down Sure you can, you just have to find an unscrupulous copper merchant to sell it to. Not a difficult task - they've been around for thousands of years.
  - dehugger 1y ago
    The oldest recorded profession?
    - 1y ago

somanyphotons 1y ago

I wish they would get rid of all coins - just issue smaller denomination notes if you really must have them.

dlcarrier 1y ago

Great, now we just need to discontinue the dime, and make dime-sized nickels, or discontinue the nickel and quarter and bring back the half dollar, and we'll have a sensible coin system. When we discontinued the half penny, it was worth far more than a dime is now.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
Just quarters.

dataflow 1y ago

Why is this controversial? To me it makes perfect cents.

aspenmayer 1y ago
Alas, some have more dollars than cents.

fred_is_fred 1y ago

Let's do nickels and dimes too.