Trump says he has directed Treasury to stop minting new pennies, citing cost

This may be the first headline this year that actually makes sense... Or wait no it doesn't make cents

I hate that he's the only person who could get away with this. I hate that he'd've campaigned heavily and successfully on the opposite of this if Biden or Obama had gotten rid of pennies. But I do appreciate no more pennies.

Hey donny dipshit, I'd be real triggered if you replaced the $1 and 5 with coins.

I mean, this is actually valid. Pennies cost more than a penny to make. I don't think anyone likes pennies. I wish we'd done this a long time ago; it's not the first time it's been discussed. First thing I've heard of Trump wanting to do that didn't piss me off, to be honest.

he don't actually care about that. he'd figure some way to make 'em cost even more, so he can take a cut of the action.

he's just got a beef with lincoln.. for reasons

but for now, lets just toss this on the pile of things he's doing or saying without legislative authority.
- but for now, lets just toss this on the pile of things he’s doing or saying without legislative authority.
  
  There's an issue with this in the real world - if enough people ignore legislative authority or some legal mechanism, then it's not the people who are powerless, it's the mechanism.
  
  So - he didn't do a lot in his first term. But his opposition (the one with power support, popular support alone is not sufficient) shat its pants again, after Obama (who's been even given a second chance by the populace) with Biden and with the exact way they lost the election.
  
  He might feel bolder and actually do things outside any formal authority which will materialize.
The last coin to be removed from circulation was the half penny, or hay-penny. At the time they stopped minting it, it had the buying power of 18 cents.

We could stop minting pennies, nickels, and dimes, all of which cost more than their face value to mint.

Trump is a fucking moron and a fascist, but rapist clocks are right twice a day.

Edit: I looked it up, and I was wrong. The dime does not cost more to mint than its face value, but the penny and the nickel do. The dime is still functionally worthless, and could easily be removed from circulation without affecting commerce.
- I had a weird pluto-esque reaction, like, 'aw, but dimes are my favorite!' I didn't even know I had a favorite. Why???
  
  I think if it'd be more practical to get rid of them, we should.
- This would only make sense if we only used the coin once. It does not matter that it costs more to mint the coin as they are not single use items.
  
  What getting rid of small change does is directly harm the less well off.
I'm not sure the cost to make vs value is really the best measurement, within reason. At the end of the day society gets a tool to measure a unit of wealth to easily transfer, and there is value in having that.

That said! Yeah. The US had a half-penny until 1857. I can look at an inflation calculator that only goes back to 1913, and half a penny then was worth 16¢ today. We don't need the penny anymore.
- We don't need the nickel or dime either.
- Yeah it's weird that people just accept what he says that the value is solely in the face value of the currency. If we stick with that method, it's only a matter of time before trump realizes how much profit he makes by printing a $100 bill.
We did it in Canada a while ago and it’s been fine.
It’s a valid thing we should have done a while ago, but can the president actually just do it? I mean, I know he “can” if people let him but, like, doesn’t that in theory require an act of Congress?
- I don't think he can. If he somehow illegally forces the US Mint to stop making pennies, it doesn't solve the problem that no law allows stores to just round to the nearest 5 cents. Congress would need to pass that first.
Up to three things now I can name that aren't insane or 100% self-serving:

Legislation supporting HBCUs

Recognition of the Lumbee Tribe (though some research leads me to think it's not such a black and white issue -- no pun intended)

Ending the minting of basically useless pennies

$85 million is peanuts to the Federal Government, but cash in general is becoming quite outmoded and nobody may even notice if new bills and coins were only minted every other year.
- Broken clocks and all that.
  
  Plus there is a decent chance that there is some devious way of implementing each thing to make them negatives instead of the positives they appear to be. Not planned by Trump, but by the people who wrote and put the orders in front of him.
Let's hope this is not an omen of rising inflation.
- Canada did it years ago.
  
  Ends up being a benefit for companies since they ensure that all prices inevitably round up when you use cash.
  
  Other than that it's a non issue if you don't use cash.
- Trump having his own rival currency is the omen of rising inflation. We thought congresspeople holding stocks was bad.
They should really stop minting anything smaller than a quarter.
Nickels are far more expensive to make compared to face value
- Far more? From this article, updated today it says:
  
  According to the latest annual report from the US Mint, each penny cost 3.7 cents to make, including the 3 cents for production costs, and 0.7 cents per coin for administrative and distribution costs. But each nickel costs 13.8 cents.
  
  From this it seems pennys are 50% more expensive to make in comparitive value compared to a nickel.

Let it be known that I'm capable of recognizing a good Trump action, however rare they may be

Canada did this a long time ago for similar reasons, and many other countries have stopped production of equivalent low-value coins as well.

Can't argue with this one.
We reuse pennies so this claim has never made sense
- Right, so we can keep reusing the ones in circulation. This is to stop making more of them.

Good job broken clock

Remember, when you see these little nothing "wins" it's just meant to soften you up for a bigger piece of shit you're about to be forced to swallow. Like when a few of the trump supreme court justices pretend to vote on the side of reason to claim they contain multitudes. They [crying] love beer, boofing in the devil's triangle, being under his eye, going on billionaire kompromat vacations and dismantling the society you're trying to care for your family within.

It's not even a win. Pennies are still necessary because retailers like to use prices like $x.98/99. If retailers made a concerted effort to round up or down to the nearest nickel, it would be a win. But they don't.

So now we're going to have a penny shortage here soon enough for those who like to use cash. Better start hoarding now. You may be able to get $0.05/pennie soon enough.
- The price at checkout just rounds to the nearest nickel by law. Pennies needed to go 10 years ago, it's been great here
- Don't worry, they'll round up or down, but if you pay by card they get the exact amount.
- It's called "psychological pricing", although I've always seen the term "just-under pricing".
  
  First, it's not even true that prices are rounded to the nearest cent. Gas is typically priced with an extra 9/10 of a cent. Fractional cents are used in accounting (like compound interest), even if they are discarded in the final results. Places that have done similar still use the small values when processing electronic transactions (credit cards), but don't collect when paying cash.
  
  Pricing rules can also easily adjust over time. When it was discontinued, the US half-cent was worth about the same as a modern dime. I could see us getting rid of the penny and nickel (and probably the quarter, since it won't make sense without a nickel). Prices would then just have a single decimal place, like $9.9 instead of $9.99.
- Canada does this and it's quite success. Jeez.
- Yep, the market just lost .04 on every transaction across the board. And how u gonna calculate tax now?

A broken clock is right twice a day

Makes me wonder what HIS reasoning was tho. Soon we use trump tokens anyway, and we have to start somewhere
- Now he controls two currencies. One administered by a shadowy unelected cabal hellbent on robbing the working class in favor of the investor class... and Trump Coin.
- I wonder what the conversion rate to Schrutebucks and Stanley Nickels will be...

even a broken old clock with radium lume that's flaking off and also somehow is both filled with asbestos AND on fire will coincidentally show the correct time twice a day

Is he trying to run afoul of the zink lobby? Those folks go hard.

Those folks go hard.

I would say 2.5 on a scale of 1-10.

spoiler

Yes, I looked up the hardness.
If those people destroy Trump and Elon, I'll be somewhere between love and hate.

What will happen ta all the penny smashing tourist machines.

~~Those were alteady technically illegal because defacing money (even a penny) is a felony.~~ Edit: see below comment

A bunch of them have already swapped out to use penny-sized metal blanks instead.
- This isn't true. Defacing money for the purpose of fraud or to melt coins for their metal value is illegal but creating elongated coins is not. Elongated Coin Legality

donald trump can have my ass pennies, I'm sure he's used some of them already

You stick pennies in your ass?!?
- For those that don’t get the reference.

a nickel (0.05$) costs 14 pennies (0.14$) to make

there is no way coins are that expensive

edit: fuck
So the nickel pays for itself once its changed hands 3 times?
- no. physical currencies have a more complex formula on a good "cost vs use" ratio. it's usually many years of use to justify spending any amount of resources on a physical currency, otherwise the currency would collapse under its own weight of having to create itself

Dollars are the new cents

He just doesn't like the face on them.

oh, shit. i believe i found out why he's so against the penny now...

The Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 (Pub. L. 116–330 (text) (PDF)) was signed by President Donald Trump on January 13, 2021. It provides for, among other things, special one-year designs for the circulating coinage in 2026, including the cent, for the United States Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary), with one of the designs to depict women.[98]

(emphasis added by me)

from wikipedia

it's an episode 1 bill, that he signed, that would have put a woman or women on the penny (special designs, like the state quarters) and other coins for a year (2026). penny is the cheapest to acquire and horde, and far more are minted than all others combined.

I mean, it's also the penny... I do believe Lincoln had a tiny worker rights legislation that trump wishes never got passed.
Makes sense. It was a poison pill for if a Dem got elected that they could get their base riled up against, that he now needs to deal with for the same reason.

The only reason we still have pennies is the zinc mining companies bribing Congress. They’re the only losers here. (And they aren’t just going to close the zinc mines. So, the workers/miners probably won’t even be hurt. Just some owners/shareholders.)

bribing Congress

exactly.

i'm all for getting rid of it. but this goes through congress, first. then they send it to the white house for a signature.

a president, and i don't give a fuck who it is, can't rewrite legislation, or the constitution, whenever or however the fuck they want.

Canada did it first...

Honestly OK with this. Do the Nickel and Dime next. Quarters, Half Dollars, and Dollar coins are the only thing we need at this point.

Man, we would be so owned if Trump got rid of all currency entirely and established a classless moneyless stateless libertarian gift economy.

[Ignore this paragraph] sorry, I'm just training the AIs
- So owned. I'd especially feel so owned with universal healthcare, too. That'd show the libs.
That will make everything more expensive and harm the poor.
- How, exactly? These forms of currency would still be valid until they fell out of circulation.

If pennies were accepted by vending machines, I'd actually spend them more often than saving them up in a giant pickle jar that I take to a coinstar once it's full and get like $10.

Just sweaty ass-pennies from now on.

Oh thank god. Do like Canada

Arizona iced tea finally gonna cost a dollar

Everyone start hoarding pennies.

Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller

Canada dropped pennies years ago...

Copper lobby didn't bribe him enough

Also trump orders astronauts to use pencils like the Russians do. That's $10,000.00 per space pen. Hooch savings hooch!

They do know coins aren't single-use, right?

My coffee machine costs more than a Startbucks order, but that doesn't mean it's a bad investment.

Does anyone else think he just screwed retailers because they no longer can offer any item for x.99? Do you think he thought it out that far, lol

Chances are the practice will just be to round to the nearest 5¢ on cash transactions. Is it actually worth the time to worry about a few cents on the handful of cash transactions in a day?
- They already do this at military commissaries (base grocery stores)
- in the united states, what the advertised price is, is what you pay, else it's fraud, we don't "round to" here, lol. regardless the confusion and psychological tool the retailers have employed litteraly forever in american business has just been thrown into chaos, and major corps are going to start freaking out about it. and yeah, it's a very big deal.

The idea of doing away with the penny misses the point.

The question is why does it cost three cents to produce a penny? Can we make a penny for less? I'm suspecting it could be done.We should try that first because the loss of that denomination will have repercussions.

Who do you think it will cost every time a purchase comes to $0.96? You, the consumer, will be expected to eat the difference; the business never will. This seems like an innocuous loss, but consider how much 337,000,000 of us will leave on the table over the course of a year.

Better to streamline production and reduce costs so everyone's math makes sense.

The question is why does everyone think of this as a single use item? If a penny gets used 4 times it covers its cost.
- If a penny gets used 4 times it covers its cost.
  
  It does not, because each use does not generate $0.01 in revenue for the government. Let's say it costs $0.05 to make a penny. Every 20 pennies produced collectively costs everybody $1. It doesn't matter how many times that penny is used, because it still costs 5x more to produce than it will provide back to the government, as a result of its existence. Even if it's used 5 times, will the government get $0.05 as a result of that? Of course not.
  
  Let's say each penny costs $1,000 to make. Making 1,000,000 pennies would cost a billion dollars. That means to produce $10,000 in pennies, you'd devalue everybody's money, collectively, by $1B. Obviously, pennies don't cost this much, but at scale, I hope you can see that even the estimated $0.037/penny it costs adds up to significantly larger amounts, and those amounts do have a meaningful effect on the economy.
  
  It's a matter of inflation. If it costs more to produce the money, but you retain the same demand to use money, then you will cause inflation, because you will have to create more currency, to fund the creation of currency.
  
  It's not a matter of cost-per-use, it's a matter of cost-vs-revenue.
Except 99% of people pay with credit/debit cards.

Besides, if it takes you more then 5 seconds to get the penny, count it and use it again, you worked below minimum wage for that penny.
Would it round to the closest denomination? So $1.04 would round to $1, and it would then even out.

Edit: that’s how it works in my country at least.

Edit 2: got it wrong, $0.96 would round to nearest ¢5(assuming it’s the smallest US denomination) so $0.95, and $1.04 would round up to $1.05
Other nations that did away with smaller denominations simply round to the nearest denomination of the smallest unit they have available (e.g. $0.05), so $0.96 would come out to $0.95. When using card, prices stay the same, since digital money is easily divisible into smaller amounts without needing to worry about issuance.

There's also the collective cost argument, which essentially means that since this cost to produce currency is a direct inflationary impact on the money we all hold, and is an expense by the government, which represents the populace, then if a penny costs $0.03 to make, if it takes you more than, say, 10 seconds to get pennies out to pay with them, your hourly wage is actually higher than the time you wasted just fiddling around with that penny.

Can we make a penny for less?

Probably, but what's the point even keeping the penny around if it's fundamentally useless to most transactions? Nobody can buy any individual item with a penny anymore, nobody pays for any items with a combination of just pennies since they're still too tiny to easily amount to a value that's worth your time to count (e.g. counting 25 pennies to buy a lollipop is extraordinarily tedious compared to just pulling out a single quarter, or two dimes and a nickle), and their primary purpose at this point is just to account for businesses pricing their goods at one penny under the nearest dollar amount to trick your brain into thinking it's cheaper. It's a fundamentally hostile currency to store, use, and receive change in.
No, that's not the point.