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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
- fortran77 11mo agoApropos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8R5QCPUqaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8R5QCPUqaI
- onetokeoverthe 11mo ago[dead]
- hrimfaxi 11mo agoI watched a video on the demise of the penny and its predicament was so succinctly explained: everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them, so we are stuck producing ever more. One news outlet even did an "experiment" where they threw hundreds of pennies on the ground in a city on a busy morning and not one person stopped to pick any up.
- basscomm 11mo ago> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket. That was in the 90's, and I still see it happening today, even though I'm no longer in the retail world.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Retric 11mo agoI’d regularly use quarters in vending machines, but not waste time during a retail transaction.
- Symbiote 11mo agoIn most other countries, since prices are shown including all taxes you can often have the money ready while waiting in line etc.
- guntars 11mo agoAnother aspect of the idiotic "we don't know what your tax is going to be" system (they do know it, actually) is that prices will typically end with .99 and the tax will push it over the next dollar and cause a bunch of change to be returned, instead of a single penny.
- dylan604 11mo ago> but not waste time during a retail transaction. we could just go back to writing checks while we're at it.
- zahlman 11mo agoIt's amazing to me that people consider "saving time while paying money" to be a good thing. I will never "tap" my debit card as long as I have any legal option. Everyone else can wait for me to exercise my consumer rights, by inputting my PIN, verifying the amount displayed on screen etc.
- Retric 11mo agoWasting people’s time is rude here not illegal. Courtesy may seem outdated to some, but it can occasionally come back to bite people. Being overly rude to waitstaff is something I’m concerned with around promotions because of how they might treat people inside the company. Without better information you extrapolate.
- zahlman 11mo ago... How is this related to what I said?
- 11mo ago
- triceratops 11mo agoThat's incredibly bizarre. If I have coins my first instinct is to spend them ASAP so I don't have to carry them around.
- expedition32 11mo agoNowadays I pay for everything with my phone but back in the day I too hated using coins. Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that.
- basscomm 11mo ago> Having to calculate and fish out coins? Ain't nobody got time for that. It's not that hard or time consuming if you actually use your change instead of letting it accumulate. I typically have less than a dollar in coins on my person at any given time because I spent it. If you're paying in cash, you either take time to count the change you're going to spend, or you take time waiting for the cashier to count the change you're going to get. Or you go cashless and avoid the whole thing
- zahlman 11mo agoIt's amazing to me that there are people with this mindset. I enjoy the process.
- zahlman 11mo agoI pay exact change whenever I can. And on the occasions where I can only make (exact change + simple amount), I often get deer-in-headlights looks from cashiers who can't do mental arithmetic and apparently haven't learned how to get the machine to understand payments of more than one physical bill or coin.
- zahlman 11mo agoI legitimately don't understand why people object to this strongly enough to downvote it without comment.
- ssl-3 11mo agoThe majority of the comment was spent on being disparaging towards people who work in retail. (Entering a discussion about that kind of topic can be a pretty sure way to invoke Godwin's Law, so the most sane and civil option is to downvote and walk away.)
- forinti 11mo agoI like using coins because I'm always looking for commemorative coins. It's an interesting investment: you can immediately double or triple your money. Unfortunately, you rarely find them. I also keep the obvious fakes.
- technothrasher 11mo agoThe best unexpected coin I found in the drawer when I was working at a liquor store was an 1844 Belgian 1/2 Franc in with the dimes.
- jwrallie 11mo agoPeople are very lazy to do basic math. I always minimize the coins I am carrying by doing math on my head so that the combined value of a certain coin never exceeds the amount of the next available coin/bill, that way I never exceed the carrying capacity of my wallet. Most people I know just pocket everything and put on a box at home for undetermined time.
- kevincox 11mo agoIt's not even just that. Coins are heavy, large and noisy. Bills are way more convenient and cards even more so. If we could solve privacy issues with cards I would say get rid of all bills. Maybe just keep a few $100s in my wallet in case my cards get declined for some reason.
- mooreds 11mo agoI remember moving out of a place (decades ago). I was the last roommate out, and so was stuck with some of the cleanup (wanted to get that deposit back!). One of the things we had was a ton of pennies (no idea why). I had no room in my car, so I spend a few minutes late at night flinging pennies out onto the sidewalk after a long day of cleaning the place.
- dylan604 11mo agoWould it not have been better/easier for all involved to have just set a container of all the pennies on the street on your way out? If someone really could use them, you're kind of a dick for making them pick them up one at a time, but if they were all together...
- mooreds 11mo agoYeah, in retrospect that would have been better.
- kristopolous 11mo agoI actually do that for numismatic reasons now. After today they will only increase in scarcity. Not that I imagine they'll ever be valuable mind you... I should really just go and get $5 worth somewhere. That would satiate my desires
- dmd 11mo ago> not one person stopped to pick any up. Isn't that the old joke about the economist?
- gniv 11mo agoRandom anecdote: I go to a boulangerie almost daily (as one does here in France). There is one close to me that started charging 12 centimes for slicing the bread. I got annoyed with this and nowadays make a point to take lots of small change from the coin jar and use it. They don't seem to mind.
- m463 11mo agoI use quarters in parking meters sometimes.
- SkyPuncher 11mo agoOnly place I've ever noticed them is the $0.01 pony ride that's been sitting at my grocery store for 30 years. Even they've gotten the hint and simply leave a tray of pennies next to it so people can actually use it.
- cartoonworld 11mo agoThey’re probably doing that so your kid or some kid can use it and leave the penny tray because they aren’t trying to make money off of it anymore. It’s just for fun, sounds like a nice gesture.
- SkyPuncher 11mo agoYep. That's exactly what is was.
- MarkLowenstein 11mo agoI always pick them up. Every penny buys enough pasta to keep you alive for another 15 minutes. So in case I ever go broke, I've staved off my eventual starvation by 15 minutes.
- comradesmith 11mo agoI like this perspective :)
- hrimfaxi 11mo agoHow did you arrive at this conclusion?
- MarkLowenstein 11mo agoIt was always just an estimate but today I verified it with a chatbot before I made any claim about the time. Caught it in a mistake too, which I untangled by reminding it that food calories are actually kilocalories.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoMany countries eliminated their pennies without chaos or unfair burdens on shopkeepers. In Canada, the process was widely popular after the fact even though newspaper articles prior to the elimination intimated it wouldn't be due to their "both sides" style of reporting. It's indicative of the current US administration that they managed to screw this up despite many examples world wide of how to do it properly.
- terminalshort 11mo agoIf you believe this is going to cause chaos or significant burdens on merchants I have got a bridge to sell you (but I don't take pennies). This quote tells you all you need to know. > The government’s phasing out of the penny has been “a bit chaotic,” said Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents. The pro-penny group is funded primarily by Artazn, the company that provides the blanks used to make pennies.
- zahlman 11mo agoThe same thing happened many years ago with the same company (previously called Jarden Zinc). > Americans for Common Cents is a non-profit lobbying group dedicated to the protection of the one-cent coin. The group is primarily interested in preserving the penny for economic and historical reasons. In 2012, Executive Director Mark Weller was paid $340,000 by Jarden Zinc to discuss issues relating to minting with members of Congress and the US Mint.[41] Weller has acknowledged this funding, saying that “We make no secret that one of our major sponsors is a company that makes the zinc ‘blanks’ for pennies."[42] Weller has testified on multiple occasions before Congress. In 2020 Weller testified that the use of cash protects privacy, provides economic stability and "is a public good" that should not be replaced by mobile money.[43]
- quickthrowman 11mo agoUnfair burden?? I think you’re blowing this out of proportion.. Credit card fees are 2-4%. Rounding to the nearest nickel costs at most $0.02 (1,2 round to 0; 3,4 round to 5) It is cheaper for the merchant to round to the nearest nickel for any transaction of one dollar or more than it is to pay CC merchant fees.
- Analemma_ 11mo agoHonestly nickels and dimes, and maybe even quarters, should go too. It's ridiculous that we don't have $1 and $2 coins in widespread circulation in the US (we have a $1 coin but nobody uses it).
- JohnFen 11mo agoI'd mourn the loss of the quarter. I use those quite often. > (we have a $1 coin but nobody uses it) Because they keep designing it in the stupidest way, making it easy to confuse with a quarter. I don't know why they do that. That said, I do prefer paper $1 bills over coins. Paper is lighter and easier to carry. But I'd only slightly grumble if we replaced it with a reasonable coin.
- terminalshort 11mo agoIt's a completely different color than a quarter.
- JohnFen 11mo agoThat doesn't help if you're in dim lighting or have vision problems.
- 45764986 11mo agoIf you have vision problems, US currency is totally unfriendly to you. Unlike other countries, which have bills of different sizes, all the US currency bills are the same size, so getting change as a blind person is basically relying on the honesty of whoever is behind the counter.
- JohnFen 11mo agoAbsolutely true. It's one of the several crazy design problems with US paper currency.
- terminalshort 11mo ago
- MrHeather 11mo ago>But with 20 million customers a year, and 17% of them paying with cash, the policy will eventually cost Kwik Trip a couple of million dollars a year, McHugh said. If we figure two-fifths of cash transactions need to be rounded up and the store is losing an average of 1.5 cents each time, their expected losses would be around $2,000, yeah?
- patch_collector 11mo ago20m customers * 17% * 4 cents * 'x' transactions per customer = $136,000 * x I suppose this makes some sense. In a worst case situation, if every customer makes 10-20 transactions per year, and they always round down the maximum possible amount, they would lose millions per year.
- tengbretson 11mo agoIn many parts of Wisconsin the value of `x` could very easily be 100+, so I'd say this checks out.
- pavel_lishin 11mo agoIf we make the maximally pessimistic assumption that every cash transaction would require rounding down four cents, that's 68,000 customers per year times four cents, which is $136,000 per year. A more reasonable assumption that half of transactions require rounding down cuts that in half, I suppose.
- delecti 11mo ago> Kwik Trip, a family-owned convenience store chain that operates in the Midwest, decided to round down cash purchases in stores where it hasn’t been able to find pennies. They're rounding all cash transactions down to the nearest nickel, so an average of 2 cents per transaction, 3.4 million customers, gives me $68,000 assuming each "customer" makes a single transaction per year. If they mean that there are 20 million unique customers, not 20m transactions, then the a long tail of customers who make frequent small transactions in cash could make their claim check out.
- drsopp 11mo agoOo, I'd like to get a roll of these. But I live in Norway.
- UltraSane 11mo agocould get rid of dimes and nickels as well.
- 45764986 11mo agoYes. I used to work at a movie theater, where all transactions were to the nearest $0.25 because it made it easier for the kids like me behind the counter to count the change and not lose track... seemed sensible at the time and that was 20 years ago.
- guywithahat 11mo agoIt would be cool to remove the hundredth place in general; just dimes and half dollars, although I don't see that happening any time soon
- didgetmaster 11mo agoMany are reporting this as if failing to mint new pennies each year is going to produce some kind of shortage. There are billions of pennies sitting in drawers or jars in homes across the nation (I certainly have one with about a thousand pennies in it). I doubt anyone who needs a penny will be unable to find one within the next 100 years.
- JohnFen 11mo agoMost of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change. Personally, I think stores should just start setting prices to avoid the need for pennies, but that would be too easy, I guess.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- knollimar 11mo agoIf your sales tax rate is 8.875%, what do you price a banana at to avoid change?
- randerson 11mo agoThis problem is easily solved in countries that use VAT
- knollimar 11mo agoIt really isn't; it's just acceptable to accumulate this rounding error I'm implying in those countries. Which is fine, but should be acknowledged.
- carlosjobim 11mo agoYou price it including sales tax. Sticker price is final price.
- nayuki 11mo agoWe eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination_coins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly cotton paper), colorful banknotes (instead of all green) that are easy to distinguish, $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills).
- simonw 11mo agoThe linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution: > Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.
- delecti 11mo agoIf the US properly got rid of pennies (instead of Trump just doing another end-run around congress, by ordering the Mint to stop making them, on shaky legal ground), the legislation could easily supersede those state laws.
- taylodl 11mo ago[flagged]
- throwawaymaths 11mo agoWhat exactly is the law? Can you show me the statute requiring the treasury department to coin pennies?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
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- bob1029 11mo agoI wonder how long of not minting new pennies it would take for the average collectible value of the existing stock to reach break-even again. I feel like pennies fall out of circulation at a very high rate compared to other denominations.
- firefax 11mo agoCan any coin collectors let me know what, if any, effect this may have on the collection of steel pennies I have secured in my bunker in the woods?
- ireflect 11mo agoFinally! Here is a delightful article from NYT from last year on this topic. Truly fascinating and bewildering. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/magazine/worthless-pennies-united-states-economy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0k8.HP2F.m0bpQMfc3y55&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/magazine/worthless-pennie...
- bigbadfeline 11mo ago> Finally... NYT from last year... Truly fascinating and bewildering Yeah, really bewildering, happiness inflated by inflation.
- FergusArgyll 11mo ago> When Robert Whaples, an economist at Wake Forest University, published an article in 2006 about the imperative to eliminate America’s 1-cent coin, he received a personal note: “Get it done, and you will deserve the Nobel Prize!” Everything makes sense now...
- thayne 11mo agoI'm a little worried this will encourage vendors to increases prices up to the next 5 cent mark, which will cause inflation that we really don't need more of right now.
- timbit42 11mo agoIn Canada, most prices still end in 99. You still pay to the cent if you're paying with a debit or credit card, which the vast majority of customers are these days.
- phantasmish 11mo agoGas stations price to the tenth of a penny per gallon. There is no 1/10 cent coin. Works fine.
- warmwaffles 11mo agoThat's because the law requires them to charge that extra 9/10. It's silly.
- phantasmish 11mo agoIt doesn’t require it. There may still be (I dunno) fixed per-gallon taxes in the tenth-penny-per-gallon range, but stations aren’t forced to handle it the way they do.
- lbourdages 11mo agoThis has not been an issue in Canada. There is sales tax, which basically randomizes the last digit.
- hnburnsy 11mo agoFinally, can we next stop making dollar bills and add a two dollar coin.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mannyv 11mo agoAnd the people rejoiced!
- throw0101d 11mo agoSo Obama wanted to wanted to ban the penny, but it was deemed illegal to do so and efforts to get rid of the law requiring it did not pass: * https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/10/trump-us-mint-penny-coins/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/10/trump-us-mi... * https://www.local3news.com/obama-wants-to-retire-the-penny-but-can-it-be-done/article_105723fa-86c9-5b2d-b562-197997c9c3cd.html https://www.local3news.com/obama-wants-to-retire-the-penny-b... It's not that keeping the penny around is (necessarily) a good idea, but that there are, you know, laws, and people (including the President and cabinet folks) should kind of follow those laws. So has the law been amended to not require the minting of the penny anymore? * https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-order-scrap-penny-make-cents-expert/story?id=118654681 https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-order-scrap-penny-make-cent... * https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292082/trump-penny-mint-treasury https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292082/trump-penny-min... Is there some 'new interpretation' that has been 'found' that allows Sec. Treasury to not mint pennies? Or is this change one made by fiat / executive order? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_States#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Sta... There's only semi-consideration been given to this; the retailers want official rules passed on how round should be done * https://www.rila.org/focus-areas/finance/main-street-businesses-urge-swift-congressional-ac https://www.rila.org/focus-areas/finance/main-street-busines... For example, one subtly: > Ensure rounding for cash customers does not violate terms of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The SNAP program sensibly requires that SNAP customers cannot be treated differently than other customers.2 These provisions prohibit treating SNAP customers less favorably or more favorably than other customers. That means that rounding the price of food for a cash customer in either direction risks creating a violation of SNAP regulations for stores that participate in the SNAP program.
- mattnewton 11mo agoYou already know the answer.
- kevin_thibedeau 11mo agoThe president is now immune to obeying the law and can pardon all of his stooges.
- Amorymeltzer 11mo agoSome interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately: >Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). >In addition, the law covering the federal food assistance program known as SNAP requires that recipients not be charged more than other customers. Since SNAP recipients use a debit card that’s charged the precise amount, if merchants round down prices for cash purchases, they could be opening themselves to legal problems and fines, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for NACS. >“Rounding down on all transactions presents several challenges beyond the loss of an average of 2 cents per transaction,” Lenard said. “We desperately need legislation that allows rounding so retailers can make change for these customers.”
- phantom784 11mo agoFor the SNAP law, could they just round down SNAP purchases in the same way to be compliant?
- mattnewton 11mo agoThey probably will, but that means a POS software update on a tight deadline.
- wongarsu 11mo agoIt's not like pennies just cease existing. You just can't buy them from the mint anymore. I bet if you give customers an easy and free way to deposit change or to turn it into larger denominations you easily get enough pennies to delay ther update a couple years
- mattnewton 11mo agoThere are a lot of solutions, as everyone has mentioned. The problem is not hard, it’s “what color to paint the bikeshed” territory. But we’re still having to solve a problem on a tight deadline based on a tweeted proclamation with no federal legislature specifying exactly what solutions are allowed and what solutions conflict with existing law.
- CheeseFromLidl 11mo agoDid anyone ever make a simulator for pennies hitting the floor like in the top video?
- ck2 11mo agoWell no, apparently ANY President now has almost ANY power so the next President could order a new penny made with their face on it sure they could, look at the east-wing and tell me what limits of power a President has
- mattnewton 11mo agoAny Republican president maybe. The Supreme Court and a Fox media circuit would never let the opposition ignore congress like this.
- oldpersonintx2 11mo ago[dead]
- Night_Thastus 11mo agoI'd say screw it, get rid of nickles and dimes as well. Quarters can stay, for now. It's a complete waste of money and time continuing to mint such low-value currency. It can't be used for just about anything. Unfortunately, I do see the problem with part of this. For a handful of items where it does matter, it will force people to use cards more if they want to avoid rounding. And the card providers already have a choke-hold on retailers, and the whole thing is basically a scheme that funnels money from the poor to the wealthy via interest and fees on the consumer, interchange fees, and rewards programs.
- datadrivenangel 11mo agoBut add a $3.50 coin so that we can strongly incentivize coffee to stay below a certain price.
- rustystump 11mo agoAlso for the memes…
- datadrivenangel 11mo agoIt would be exceedingly funny is 75% of the value. Maybe make it be a $3.33 coin?
- binarymax 11mo ago$0.67 coin is on the way
- nostrademons 11mo ago$0.666. Half the population would think it's the mark of the beast, the other half rounds up to 6-7.
- redfern314 11mo agoand the third half of the population thinks it's egregious that a repeating fraction has been truncated!
- grishka 11mo agoRussia eliminated all kopeck coins years ago and anyone hardly noticed. Seemingly the only place you could still see any is a bank. Retailers usually round down to whole rubles if you're paying in cash.
- paxys 11mo agoToo early to say "ever", considering there has been no act of congress on this matter and the penny continues to be legal tender. The decision to stop minting it is a (legally debatable) executive order, and the next president or even the current one can change their mind about it tomorrow.
- aDyslecticCrow 11mo agolets hope not. This is long overdue and should pose relatively little issue compared to most other recent questionable executive orders. stop minting and stop accepting is commonly separated to allow adjustment. so likely a later president will just add the second phaseout step.
- dawnerd 11mo agoI agree it's time to follow Canada and the rest of the world but it needs to be done through congress, not executive orders. It needs to have a proper framework for migration and laws for how payments are rounded.
- Waterluvian 11mo agoI don’t believe we actually have a law that dictates how to round in Canada. There’s just a government recommendation. I get that the U.S. is a much lower trust culture, but is it really necessary? The rounding is only for cash transactions.
- aDyslecticCrow 11mo agoI think stores will adjust their prices pretty quick if they cannot even aquire pennies to give as change. So no law should be needed. you may need to stipulate a grace period during which stores are still obligated to take pennies, to slowly shake them out of circulation without every American needing to visit a bank for cashing in. But its also possible that isn't needed either. In the 2nd half of the phaseout you may need a proper marketing campaign to remind people to cashe in before expiration. (common when other countries update their physical currency). But that is probably the job of a different sitting president anyway so whatever. Heck, is this actual something that congress have say over? It wouldn't surprise me if this was actually up to the federal reserve to decide, and they seem on board.
- chiph 11mo agoLike many people, I throw my change into a jar when I get home. One time I only kept pennies and used an old apple cider jug. Turns out that a gallon of pennies is worth almost $55 [0]. And that carrying a heavy glass jug filled with pennies to the Coinstar machine is very anxiety inducing. Speaking of which - the Coinstar machines near me will give you several options for redemption. Some of which have been Amazon and Home Depot e-gift codes that have no redemption fee. [0] A potential worthless interview question...
- randomtoast 11mo agoYou probably could have made $150 if you had melted the coins and sold the copper instead.
- arantius 11mo agoA penny is less than 3% copper (since 1982).
- deafpolygon 11mo agowe don’t have “pennies” in the EU anymore
- estimator7292 11mo agoI'm now seeing signs in stores begging people for exact change due to a "penny shortage" Seriously? You can't give up 4 cents per transaction to round to a nickel? Fuck, round it up for all I care, 5 cents is worth approximately nothing today.
- dbcooper 11mo agoNick Mullen should be the guest of honor at this event.
- dlivingston 11mo agoHa, didn't expect to see a comment about Mullen on HN. Saw him live in Boston a few months ago. Very cool to see the C-Town boys blowing up in popularity.
- mmmBacon 11mo agoI’m old enough to remember being able to scrounge around the house for pennies and heading down to Gracie’s corner store so I could buy some Swedish fish. They were 1 cent each. Gracie counted them out and put them in a small paper bag for you. A major score was finding a dime or quarter on the street. When the Whatchamacallit first came out they were 25 cents!
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 11mo agoThere's something about getting rid of Honest Abe on coinage that seems... sadly appropriate for the current climate. At least he's still on fives.
- ezfe 11mo agoStep one: make all items cost an even five cents after tax. step two: when making price adjustments like discount, round the effect to the nearest five cents. Step three: charge everyone this amount
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoIt's been useless baggage for decades. The even saner approach would be to fade-out an order of magnitude of currency every century. The math checks out.
- TheJoeMan 11mo agoDo any other countries have/had “penny squish” souvenir machines? You put in 2 quarters + a penny, and it stamps a design onto the penny. My favorite souvenir, small, cheap, can keep in a booklet, and many landmarks have the machines. There are a few machines that take a $1 bill and use a fresh penny blank internally.
- WorkingDead 11mo agoOur money is being depreciated at a rate of 3% per year and up to 25%-30% during the last inflationary cycle and is now to the point where coins are nearly useless. At the current trajectory, the one dollar note will also be obsolete in our lifetime.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- codyb 11mo agoAs much as there's a lot of reasonable arguments for ending the minting of the penny, the method in which this president waves his hands and fundamentally changes things such as our White House, our currency, our trade policies, our universities leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and it's hard to support even sensible decisions this authoritarian regime makes.
- halapro 11mo agoThe fact that you'd need to even mint them in 2025 is mind boggling. Why isn't there a law that stops minting coins that cost more than their values? You'd think they would have figured this out by now?
- gwbas1c 11mo agoIMO: 1: The price posted should be the price you pay. (Include all taxes, fees, gratuities, ect.) 2: The price posted should be a multiple of $0.05, $0.10, or $0.25 Problem solved.
- shevy-java 11mo agoHmm. I actually still like coins and paper money. However had in the EU, I don't like the 1 and 2 eurocent at all. These are just pointless really. I'd like a 5 euro coin and a 2 euro paper instead.
- cachius 11mo agoThis is just what the head of the bavarian mint Reinhard Riffel said recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlwvnQnJAtg&t=840s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlwvnQnJAtg&t=840s Quote in German: Aus unserer Sicht, das überrascht viele, wenn ich das sag, würde es Sinn machen, die 1 und 2 Cent Münzen abzuschaffen und durch eine 5 € Münze zu ersetzen. Lästig empfinden die meisten Menschen eigentlich nur diese braunen Münzen, weil die einfach keine Kaufkraft haben. Die liegen im Portemonnaie, aber man kann dafür nichts kaufen. Man kann bestenfalls die als Rückgeld nutzen. 1 und 2 € Münzen werden europaweit dieses Jahr [2025] so viele gemacht wie noch nie. Warum ist das so? Weil sie eine Kaufkraft haben, weil die verwendet werden und weil die nicht als lästig empfunden werden. Münzen sind für den Steuerzahler massiv günstiger. Ne 5 oder 10 € Banknote in der Herstellung oder in der Beschaffung für den Bund kostet in etwa so viel wie eine 2 € Münze, aber die 2 € Münze hält 20 Jahre und die 5 € Banknote hält 3 Monate. [...] Gerade die 5 und 10 € Banknoten sind extrem in Zirkulation; drei maximal sechs Monate, da sind die durch. Kann man sich ausrechnen, wie viel der Staat sparen würde, wenn man jetzt eine 5 € Münze einführen würde und die 5 € Banknote ersetzt. Translation to English: From our point of view, which surprises many when I say this, it would make sense to abolish the 1 and 2 cent coins and replace them with a 5 euro coin. Most people actually only find these brown coins annoying because they simply have no purchasing power. They lie in your wallet, but you can't buy anything with them. At best, they can be used as change. This year [2025], more 1 and 2 euro coins will be produced across Europe than ever before. Why is that? Because they have purchasing power, because they are used, and because they are not considered a nuisance. Coins are much cheaper for taxpayers. A €5 or €10 banknote costs about as much to produce or procure for the federal government as a €2 coin, but the €2 coin lasts 20 years and the €5 banknote lasts 3 months. [...] The €5 and €10 banknotes in particular are in extremely high circulation; they last three to six months at most. You can calculate how much the state would save if it introduced a €5 coin now to replace the €5 banknote.
- zahlman 11mo agoThe last ever American penny (as the article text clarifies). Don't any other countries with a "dollar" use the same name for their 1-cent pieces? > The penny costs nearly four cents to mint, more than the coin’s worth. Wow. I think it was only something like 1.5c (in the local market) when Canada gave up on them.
- axiolite 11mo agopenny-rounding “imposes a tax of $3.27 million Canadian dollars from consumers to grocery stores on a yearly basis in aggregate https://economics.ubc.ca/news/penny-rounding-profitable-for-canadian-grocers-ubc-vse-student-research/ https://economics.ubc.ca/news/penny-rounding-profitable-for-... eliminating the penny would require producing more nickels to “fill the gap in small-value transactions.” But nickels suffer from a similar “seigniorage” problem: the 2024 U.S. Mint report said the five-cent coins have a unit cost of 13.78 cents each. https://time.com/7215870/trump-us-penny-mint-costs-one-cent-coin-debate-explainer/ https://time.com/7215870/trump-us-penny-mint-costs-one-cent-...
- whimsicalism 11mo agoi think ~5 cents per capita is a fine price to pay to never have to think about pennies again
- kevincox 11mo agoEspecially since the lower cost means that we would save more than that 5 cents in taxes. (Well money is fungible so not really, but that money would be spent for some other government service.)
- wasabi991011 11mo agoCool research, thanks for being one of the few to bring substantial arguments to this discussion. For your first point, I would like to add the next sentence for context: "That means that a typical grocery store would receive an additional estimated $157 in revenue just from rounding." I feel like this is negligible. Also, for the nickel, the seigniorage ratio is 2.something, isn't that lower than the penny? I think there's a decent chance that removing the penny would still be a net benefit for the mint.
- more_corn 11mo agoI’d give you my 2c on the matter but now with the scarcity of a penny I’m not sure how to calculate the value.
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- permo-w 11mo ago"Last-ever" seems premature to me. I don't think the odds that there's a redomination or Trump decides he likes pennies are that low
- thordenmark 11mo agoCan't retailers just price everything to the nearest $.05 to begin with so there is nothing to round? I guess tax percentages screw that up. Nevermind.
- clarkmoody 11mo agoCan we stop changing our clocks twice a year as well?
- water9 11mo agoWhen will they create a $200 bill or bring back the 500? I feel like the 50s is the new 20.
- jrmg 11mo agoIn other countries that have eliminated pennies, was it done with more planning and advice from the government? It strikes me as uniquely American (perhaps uniquely Trumpian) to just stop making them and let whatever happens happen with no detailed planning.
- sequoia 11mo agoGas prices are frequently in fractions of a penny. This never matters because they round. Yep, rounding, in the real world, and the nation has not imploded. As pointed out by others Canada does this already and it's no issue.
- gblargg 11mo agoAnd whenever tax is added it's usually a fraction of a penny as well. Rounding has been with us for a long time.
- mulmen 11mo agoThe argument that we should stop minting them because they cost more to produce than their face value falls flat for me. A penny is not a single use item. The cost of production must be depreciated across the thousands of transactions in which it is used and then compared to the economic benefit of its existence. It may be true that the economic benefit of a penny is less than the production cost but I don’t see anyone making that case. What will it actually cost the US economy to stop minting these coins? How long will they remain in circulation until they are no longer accepted for payment?
- foxglacier 11mo ago> the final coins pressed will be auctioned off and that the actual last pennies put into circulation from the US Mint were struck in June. Seems like this is a stunt to extract a bit of money from collectors. I kind of wonder if collectors really value coins/stamps/etc. that were specially made to target the collector market and didn't even exist in the natural world. Feels icky.
- reboot81 11mo agoMy country quit using our (then) lowest denomination coin 32 years ago. Also worth 1/100 of a USD.
- bentt 11mo agoSo what you're telling me is that pennies are the new bitcoin. Fixed supply.
- gblargg 11mo agoExcept they're backed by something of value (worth even more than a penny).
- geophile 11mo agoThis is a very minor but pleasant surprise. An action like this is beyond what I thought the US government (my government, sadly) was capable of. It is kind of puzzling to me that this issue, like every other one, didn't get politicized, with right wing talking heads bemoaning progress of any sort, appealing to the good old days, when America was great, the days that MAGAs want to return to. It's a good start. Now let's do metric.
- chuckreynolds 11mo agoGood. BYE. lol.
- I_dream_of_Geni 11mo agoThe mighty penny is dead. Long live the penny!!
- joshe 11mo agoI, for one, favor having a .1 cent piece, a third the size of a penny about the size of a shirt button. Because San Francisco sales tax is 8.63 and something the costs 1 dollar is really 1.083. And I would like 91.7 bach cents when I give 2 dollars.
- kazinator 11mo agoThat seems weird. I mean, if you decide to abolish the penny, you just do it cold turkey. You don't set a date in the future and the continue making them, so that the last penny is accompanied by fanfare. > Trump announced via social media in February that he instructed the Mint to stop making the once-popular coin, citing the cost of production. So between February and today, they just ignored the order? What justified the pennies produced between February and November? Those pennies were necessary, and still cost-effective, but going forward, the penny as such is no longer necessary?
- retrocog 11mo agoDebasement through inflation steals from workers, pensioners, and savers. On the other hand, its great for big business and big government. The money illusion fools many people into believing they've gained (ie real estate) when in reality, they've lost purchasing power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_illusion
- jedberg 11mo ago"What are we going to do about the rounding problem?!" INCLUDE TAX IN THE PRICE, then you won't have a rounding problem! The common argument against that is "but there are so many tax jurisdictions" One, Europe has a bunch too and has solved this, and two, it would only apply to in person cash transactions. You should be able to figure out the tax rules for the one specific place the transaction is taking place.
- rkomorn 11mo agoCall me cynical but I don't at all believe the issue is tax jurisdictions or anything related to complexity. It's that it's easier to show a price of $0.99 and have the consumer pay $1.08 (for example) than either show a price of $1.08 and have the consumer pay it, or show a price of $0.99 and have the consumer pay $0.99 and "lose" 7 cents (because your price was $0.92 before taxes). Pre-tax price is lower and sells better than post-tax price.
- jedberg 11mo agoThat wouldn't apply if everyone included tax in their prices. In this case, the item would just be $1.10. If the business really thinks they will lose money by pricing over a dollar, then yes, they would have to take that hit. But they are already taking that hit if the "real value" is $1.02 for example. It's just a price/demand curve. They would simply have to optimize it differently.
- rkomorn 11mo agoThere's a reason everything is priced at some variety of .99, 99.99, 999.99, etc: it sells better than 1.08, 108, 1080, etc. My point is getting the consumer to eat the sales tax on top is just a wise trick by US businesses, and nothing to do with complexity.
- jedberg 11mo agoThat's been debunked. Every consumer just auto-rounds in their head. Companies keep doing it because of tradition more than anything else. It is a wise trick, and exactly the job of government -- to prevent the public from getting tricked by businesses.
- rendall 11mo agoWe should mint ₥ills. Really lean into useless currency. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_(currency)
- WalterBright 11mo agoI remember going to the drugstore and buying two pieces of candy for a penny each. I added a third for sales tax. The cashier handed back the penny because the tax didn't kick in until 10 cents.
- WalterBright 11mo agoI have a couple glass jars full of pennies. I think I'll just give them to the thrift store.
- tonyhart7 11mo agoso its an NFT now???
- axus 11mo agoPenny-wise and pound-foolish.
- paulddraper 11mo ago> The penny costs nearly four cents to mint, more than the coin’s worth. To be clear, coins and bills are used far more than once. I would even go so far as to say they are re-used hundreds of times.
- donatj 11mo agoI've got a ridiculous question, but hear me out. Pennies have more zinc in them than they are worth, right? Did the penny have any sort of stabling force against inflation… a sort of "Zinc Standard" as it were? Civil libertarians are always talking about how moving away from gold coins, and later moving away from the gold standard that backed the non-gold coins is the root of inflation. If gold can have such an effect, why not zinc?
- I_dream_of_Geni 11mo agoThe mighty penny is dead. Long live the penny!!
- kragen 11mo agoCopper pennies weigh 3.11 grams. Copper is currently US$10987 per tonne https://www.metal.com/en/prices/LME_CA_3M https://www.metal.com/en/prices/LME_CA_3M so a copper penny is worth 3.4¢. This is a surprisingly low number to me; I would have expected it to be closer to 10¢ or 20¢, since presumably it was about 1¢ of copper when it was still copper. By comparison, a silver dime (90% silver, 10% copper) is 2.268 grams, and silver is US$1486.77/kg https://www.metal.com/en/prices/201102250392 https://www.metal.com/en/prices/201102250392, so the dime contains about US$3.03 worth of silver. From the point of view of an 18th- or 19th-century person, for whom the purpose of the mint was to certify the value of the precious metal in the coin by stamping it, the dollar has lost 29/30 (97%) of its value since minting of silver coins ended.
- darknavi 11mo agoPennies are not 100% copper any more. Mostly zinc.
- kragen 11mo agoI know. The non-copper pennies also don't weigh 3.11 grams. Dimes aren't silver anymore either.
- anamexis 11mo ago> From the point of view of an 18th- or 19th-century person, for whom the purpose of the mint was to certify the value of the precious metal in the coin by stamping it Was that the purpose of the mint? That would imply that the relative value of silver vs. copper was static.
- kragen 11mo agoIt was, yes. The varying relative values of metals was in fact a huge problem for mints for many centuries. The problem was sometimes resolved by refusing to mint any but the priciest metal, and at other times by the values of different coins such as shillings and sovereigns varying relative to one another.
- pfdietz 11mo agoA penny contains about .6 cents worth of zinc, so this was going to happen sooner or later.
- nickpinkston 11mo agoIf only Trump could get the daylight savings and the metrics system updates done too.
- randyrand 11mo agoI'm not sure why the article says this is so hard for retailers to figure out. They already round. When they apply 7% sales tax to a $1.99 purchase, what do they charge you? $2.1293? Obviously not. Just do whatever they already do.
- jeremyjh 11mo agoThe article mentions several practical and legal issues, and your comment does not address any of them. Also, "whatever they do" currently is rounding to two decimal places - that doesn't help us here. I'm not saying the software changes required are challenging, but I'm sure there are lots of POS systems that are not properly maintained anymore that will cause issues for a lot of smaller merchants.
- randyrand 11mo agoMy comment is meant to be high level. If you want a specific solution: 1. use a POS that supports rounding to the nearest 5 cents 2. ignore laws written assuming the penny is in production. they obviously need to be updated. judges are not idiots.
- jeremyjh 11mo agoAh - the "trust me bro" defense. How does that protect you from the legal costs of malicious prosecution? Even if you win it will cost you.
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- randyrand 11mo agoNo it's the "penny is no longer in production" defense. Look, if you own a business do whatever you want.
- techblueberry 11mo agoI think we should issue a new dollar that’s 10x the value of the current dollar, and / 10 the value of everything. I mean it wouldn’t make a substantive difference, but psychologically, I think it would feel better if the mean value of the house in the US was 52k instead of 522k, and I could start carrying cash again and have 100 bucks not go by in like 2 fast food orders.
- tvb12 11mo agoWould it feel better to see your bank account and pay checks shrink by 90%?
- techblueberry 11mo agoYes, my brain like to think about weird things, and this for some reason is one of those weird things I like to think about, maybe it's just me, but my brain kinda likes small big numbers over big big numbers. Maybe because mentally it's like a giant fraction reduction across the entire economy.
- janalsncm 11mo agoRounding seems to be a non issue to me. We already round: a 5% tax on something that costs $5.99 is technically $0.2995 which will be rounded to $0.30. If there are no pennies you round to the nearest 5 cents. If there were no coins, you would round to the nearest dollar.
- jxramos 11mo agoWhat would it take to shift the balance of inflation to restore the purchasing power of the penny? Just out of curiosity how does a government and a people and their economy go the other direction?
- alright2565 11mo agoDeflation is an economic disaster. The Great Depression, for example, was related to deflation.
- jxramos 11mo agoI don’t know one way or another but what specifically are the pain points of deflation and how do those compare to the never ending inflation? I’ve lived under inflation all my life, it’s a slow creeping nearly sub threshold insidious process that erodes the value of money. Buy what is life like under deflation, is there pain but ultimate correction to a sane state? It feels like there is no correction to inflation.
- alright2565 11mo agoIn Japan it is known as The Lost Decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades There is no "sane state" that is eventually reached, it is always painful. For Japan, it took the financial innovation of negative interest rates to finally address it.
- jonstewart 11mo ago10 for 1 split on USD.
- jameslk 11mo agoSalami slicing stimulus package
- tomcam 11mo agoI am uneasy about it for no logical reason. I have an emotional attachment to pennies because as a not rich kid in the 60s, even finding a penny brightened my day. Back then they sold "penny candy", for example a roll of Smarties, and it was actually a penny. There were maybe half a dozen options. You absolutely could bring a buck in and get hundred pieces of candy, modulo the 6% sales tax in SoCal. Middle school in the mid 70s: a penny rolls around the corner and I pick it up. A school bully and his friends taunted me at length. They'd launched it hoping I'd do exactly what I did. I just thought to myself, one day I'll be a fucking millionaire and you'll still be a squib. That came true. I am damaged enough to be smug about it to this day. The next year that same kid and his friends beat me up, giving me a TBI, a permanent hole in my memory, and what apparently was a new personality. Twenty years later he was found dead in a dumpster. When I heard about it I did not weep for him. That is of course my defect. I am not proud of my perpetual grievance. I saved spare change in jars until my 50s, and every once in a while took them to the bank and bought something cool, or just took them out and played with them with my kids. So for me pennies are some kind of odd little vestige of control over my life. Completely inane, I get it. They're annoying af and too expensive to manufacture. Everything's electronic anyway these days. I'll miss them though.
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoIt's absolutely bonkers how long it took the US to get rid of the penny.
- shmerl 11mo ago> Some merchants plan to round prices to the nearest nickel, often a penny or two more Prices should never have been set to this dumb #.99 pattern anyway. It's one of the most annoying things.
- abstractspoon 11mo agoA classic example of - the less important something is, the more people will have an opinion
- J_McQuade 11mo agoAbsolute bullshit title. The USA has stopped making one-cent coins, and they don't even call them pennies in any meaningful way. The "last-ever" penny will not be minted until that final coin has been minted by: The United Kingdom Gibraltar Man St Helena & Ascension Island Guernsey The Falklands and probably a good few of others I've forgotten. Like Jersey.
- arlattimore 11mo agoIn 1990, Australia stopped minting 1c and 2c coins & rounding to 5c. It worked out just fine. Everyone move on.
- alvinveroy 11mo ago[dead]
- tppiotrowski 11mo agoI remember thinking there's a small arbitrage opportunity in countries that don't have pennies and nickels. In NZ I believe stores round to the nearest decimal (.02, .01 => .00 and .03, .04 => .05). They lose on some sales but gain on others. However, they don't round if you use a CC. Here's one for the FIRE folks: if it rounds up, use a CC and if it rounds down use cash. Use all those pennies you save using your CC to retire 3 minutes early.
- cjwilliams 11mo agoDimes and 50 cents only please
- paulmooreparks 11mo agoWhat I've seen in places that eliminated .01 coins is that the .05 coin begins to be the one that everyone hates. I remember walking around Amsterdam several years ago with pockets full of .05 coins, and the same thing happens now in Singapore. They tend to get dumped into self-checkout machines in grocery stores.
- everdev 11mo agoIf they're stopping production of the penny because it costs more to mint each one than each is worth, that's a stupid reason. Why does everything have to be about making money? Can't we just have useful things without worrying about how profitable they are?
- mwcz 11mo agoWe do lots of things that are unprofitable, and we should probably do more than we do. But they should be things that bring non-monetary value into the world. Pennies do not bring non-monetary value into the world.
- didip 11mo agoWe should stop printing physical money and just start making payments digitally everywhere.
- stevage 11mo agoIt's so strange to start with "stop minting pennies" but not "stop pennies being legal tender". But then as an Australian it also seems very weird to even have pennies in circulation. We ditched ours in the 80s.
- varenc 11mo agoIt'd certainly make less sense to stop them being legal tender if you're still minting them. Also in Australia, while no store would accept the old pennies, I had thought they were still legal tender in the sense that banks would still accept them and allow you to deposit the old pennies?
- stevage 11mo agoYes. I'm not sure if legal tender is the correct term but yes. Many stores now do not accept cash of any kind.
- nixpulvis 11mo agoI mean, it makes numbers weird if you can't have less than a nickel. Tax could be designed to ensure prices are in increments of 5¢. And interest rates, etc. Rounding to whole numbers feels more natural to people than rounding to 5¢. But ultimately it's the same thing.
- stevage 11mo agoThe way you're framing this sounds like no other country has ever gone through the process of removing their 1 and 2 cent coins. Many have. It's fine. None of this is a problem. It does work better if there's a bit of planning though.
- nixpulvis 11mo agoI wasn't trying to frame it that way. I have never had to deal with this personally, so that's just how I see it. It's not a big deal, and people have been ignoring it for years with gas. It's just going to be more obvious in some cases now for us in the US. I'll be curious to read the psychology behind how things are priced in response to this. Will $9.99 fade in favor of $9.95 more. All and all, the upsides of stopping wasting resources on pennies outweighs all the minuscule downsides, but it's still curious.
- OwlGoesHoot 11mo agoFinally, something I can get behind
- nixpulvis 11mo agoI'm surprised nobody has mentioned Banker's Rounding in here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45223778/is-bankers-rounding-really-more-numerically-stable https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45223778/is-bankers-roun...
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- _wdfs 11mo ago[flagged]
- voidfunc 11mo agoCrappy riff on Ass Pennies sketch
- amypetrik8 11mo ago[flagged]
- ycombigrator 11mo ago*American
- BobbyTables2 11mo agoEven the IRS doesn’t mind rounding to the nearest dollar. Let that sink in…
- martin82 11mo agoThis sounds it will be a milestone recorded in the history books in the chapter of the accelerating downfall of the US empire into hyperinflation...
- jedimastert 11mo agoThe US is not even close to the first modern country to move away from single cent coins, and there are many examples of others that don't have "hyperinflation", for example the Netherlands, Italy, and Canada. People have been talking about getting rid of the penny for decades.
- ruetheday 11mo ago[dead]
- opentokix 11mo agoOh no! What will DIY-people use now to make the ugliest floors known to man?
- listic 11mo agoSometimes, they return. Recently, I read a post by an online musician friend that someone made a tip of 5 rubles with a banknote in Armenia - too low a sum to bother exchanging it in a foreign country. I was perplexed [1] because I don't recall ever [2] seeing such banknote - the lowest I remember seeing was 10 - and found that yes, it was introduced in 1998, discontinued and withdrawn from circulation in 2001 due to inflation and apparently reintroduced (maybe briefly?) in December 2022/January 2023. I don't know why. [1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-post-soviet-russia-when-was-IqezCRGgS36XPAmwlLS6tw#0 https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-post-soviet-russia-when-... [2] I am Russian; born in 1977 and left the country in December, 2022.
- mikhailfranco 11mo agoThe lowest value coin still in use is the Uzbek Tiyin (0.01 UZS). So 1,200,000 Tiyins to the USD.
- amelius 11mo agoAt this point I'm surprised our president doesn't force the exclusive use of cryptocurrencies.
- computerthings 11mo ago[dead]
- syngrog66 11mo agoWe do NOT know it will be the last-ever penny minted. Untruths like that grind my gears. Especially in the US of 2025 where we are awash in a sea of lies, stressful incitement and hype (all by intent, by bad actors.)
- nektro 11mo agoin a certain timeline this would be our warning inflation is getting out of hand...
- balderdash 11mo agoWhy can’t we do a reverse split of our currency? Print new dollars and change and on some date new dollar is the effective currency and you can trade in 10 old dollars for one new dollar?
- kedikedi 11mo agoTurkey did it some years ago (2005). Removed six zeroes and named it something like “new lira”. Then named it back to “lira” after most of the old money is out of circulation. 20 years later, I think some more zeroes are available to be removed :)
- fred_is_fred 11mo agoWhat would the net outcome of this be besides smaller denominations having more value?
- sota_pop 11mo agoDangit, now I’ll have to start buying fuses for my electrical panel.
- FarmerPotato 11mo agoRemoving pennies from retail is a software job at least as time-consuming as: Y2K or converting to Euro (yes, as a US programmer, it gave me a lot of work and missed holidays.) For one, think of all the POS systems stuck on old firmware. These are the details. Sure a lot of "easy" solutions come to mind.
- TrnsltLife 11mo agoTime to start chopping nickels into pieces of five.
- antibull 11mo ago[dead]