Executive Order to stop minting cents

There's not really any reason you'd need significantly more nickels to make up the difference if everything is rounded to the nearest nickel; just as now the most you'd ever have to give to someone per transaction in either direction is one. There's not really any evidence that if pennies didn't exist we'd need more nickels. Canada got rid of their penny and it didn't require them to mint more nickels to make up the difference (the only thing that increased demand on nickels is when they stopped putting nickel in them, but that's been the case since 1982, the last year their nickels actually contained nickel).

Nickels cost more to mint than their face value too btw, roughly 8 cents each last I checked. Either eliminate them too or make them out of something cheaper.

 

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So stop making cents and use the zinc to make the nickels.

 

That's one of the questions they're hoping will be asked later, or not at all.

They're certainly leaving no stone unthrown.

 

There are some who would argue this has already happened...

 

I've been watching this cryptocurrency started out in November 2024 at 54 cents a share I'm going to wait for it to drop another dollar then I'll spend thousands

edited

 

Any yet, they minted 1.4 BILLION in 2024. They're going somewhere.

 

Good riddance. My Lincoln cent collection ends in 1982 with the exception of the copper issues in 2009. I use cash in just about every transaction but don't look twice at any Cent dated 1983 and newer. They all go into a jar and brought to the bank when the jar gets full.

 

All I can say is it's about time. Talk about inefficiency and waste of taxpayer's money. What company would make a product that costs more to make than they can sell it for? The cent and the nickel have no real buying power anyway.

 

It might stimulate collector demand as it did in 1857 when the large cent when by the board. The trouble is the mintages are so huge for the modern dates that the price increases there might minimal.

 

with the cost of everythang these days. the one cent piece is no longer nes.
think about it how much stuff is under a dollar at a dollar store, going the way of the five and dime stores of 60 years ago.

 

https://pennies.org/doge-misses-the-mark-on-penny-post/
The group that published this is obviously biased, but raises points that are easy to have already suspected:
1. Erroneous Cost Calculations: DOGE’s claim conflates data by using the combined cost of producing both pennies and nickels.
2. Nickel Production Losses: Without the penny, the volume of nickels in circulation would have to rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions. Since each nickel represents a significantly higher loss per unit, this would drive up overall production costs for the government.
3. Unfair Mint Accounting Practices: The Mint’s accounting methods have unfairly inflated the reported cost of the penny.

If the claim is to be doing something good for the taxpayer, then let's get an accurate accounting of the whole picture. Otherwise it smells like it's agenda-driven.

 

They used their math skills, unlike some in this thread.

In USA...dollars and cents per gallon...



In Canada...cents per litre...




So 259.9 cents per gallon in USA (we don't have a coin with a face value of 0.1 cents let alone 0.9 cents).

So 202.9 cents per litre in Canada (they don't have a coin with a face value of 1 cent, or 0.1 cents let alone 0.9 cents).

Learn anything about how to use your math skills yet?

 

Certainly the administration has plenty of staffers that research the authority before any announcement gets made. Some pertinent information I found where Congress has legislated rules about minting is in Title 31 of United States Code Sections 5111 and 5112. It says "The Secretary of the Treasury shall mint and issue coins... in the amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States" and "The Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue... a one cent coin..."

I didn't come across any Sections that say the mint must produce cents. So if the President orders his Secretary of the Treasury to stop producing cents in an Executive Order, either the Secretary does it or gets fired.

So it looks like bye-bye US one-cent coin.

 

These people are lobbyists for the zinc industry. In other words taxpayers fund those who "lobby" Congress just as we pay for everything else.

Suffice to say that their math and logic are convenient. Notice they never use the terms "toxic little slugs" either.

 

Zinc is still toxic and a coin with the volume of a nickel contains enough zinc to kill any 35 pound mammal including babies and toddlers. Zinc still corrodes and is still going to look like garbage as soon as it gets into circulation. Zinc nickels are still going to cost about 6c each to produce and like a dime before 2030.

There are better alternatives.

 

long overdue, an excellent decision 3 cents to make one cent, now thats just crazy !

 

About 30+ years overdue! There is nothing about the existence of a 1 cent coin that makes sense. Even alternative metals/plastic/etc. would be an exercise in futility and waste.

Inflation ate the cent decades ago, they serve no practical purpose in 2025, most people don't even want them back in change. In the past 20 years they've been more of an annoyance than useful (except to collectors). This is long overdue!

 

Really not any different than when the 1/2 cent was eliminated.

 

As I said, let's get an accurate accounting of the whole picture first. It costs way more to mint nickels than cents, and now you have to mint more nickels. It has to be better thought out than this.

 

Maybe. Not in our time though, perhaps.