Caity Weaver in the NY Times:
The penny may seem like a harmless coin. But few things symbolize our national dysfunction more than our inability to stop making this worthless currency. . . .
Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them, so that cash transactions that necessitate pennies (i.e., any concluding with a sum whose final digit is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be settled. Because these replacement pennies will themselves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pennies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pennies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pennies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint.
There are about 240 billion pennies in America, many of them sitting in jars. There are so many, and they weigh so much, that the government sometimes worries about what would happen if people suddenly decided to bring them to banks or otherwise use them. We couldn't cope with the resulting logistical nightmare. Incidentally that 240 billion is only a fraction of all the pennies ever minted; most have undergone a mysterious process the government calls "disappearance." The US penny is probably the most widely minted coin ever, and that portrait of Lincoln by far the most widely reproduced work of art.
US officials have been calling on the government to stop minting pennies for fifty years. Everyone with a brain knows this is stupid, but we can't stop.
I think, though, that Weaver is missing the real reason we don't do this. I don't think it is just inertia or lobbying by the company that makes the blanks. I think we don't do this because a minority of cranky Americans, the same ones who keep calling for us to go back to the gold standard, would cry bloody murder and call it a conspiracy to steal our money, probably hatched on Jekyll Island by the Jews who run the Federal Reserve, etc. And nobody in Congress cares enough to risk the wrath of those people.
Just spent hours rolling spare change donated to my granddaughter. I’ve heard some countries are going to a cash card economy. We’re probably headed that way. The savings would be huge. The pro/con issues would make this a long-term transition.
ReplyDeleteI think we don't do this because a minority of cranky Americans, the same ones who keep calling for us to go back to the gold standard, would cry bloody murder and call it a conspiracy to steal our money, probably hatched on Jekyll Island by the Jews who run the Federal Reserve, etc. And nobody in Congress cares enough to risk the wrath of those people.
ReplyDeleteWhat could be more American than idiotically perpetuating an obsolete and extremely wasteful system / tradition out of fear that making sensible changes would offend a very small minority of nutjobs?
"Sorry, Americans! I know it's my job to represent you, and to serve both your desires and best interests, but there's a fraction of a percentage of you who might not vote for me next election if I take action that virtually all the rest of you either agree with or don't care about, so... I'm gonna cover my own ass! God bless you, and God bless America!" - The Average Politician