Penny Hater! Let the hoarding begin!!

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson speaks out on the possible future of the Lincoln Cent.

"Asked Friday whether he thought the penny should be eliminated, Paulson agreed that it would make sense, saying, 'The penny is worth less than any other currency.' However, he quickly added that he didn't think it was "politically doable" to eliminate the one-cent coin and it wasn't something he planned to tackle in the final year of the Bush administration."

"The Mint produces between 7 billion and 8 billion pennies annually and officials said if they were allowed to alter the metal content in just the penny and the nickel it could save taxpayers up to $100 million."

Here's the rest of the article.

 

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Well it's the legislative branch that gets to decide that, not the executive. To be honest I can't disagree with him... if the penny is not eliminated it should at least made made of cheaper metal. Hmm, maybe time to reconsider the aluminum cent?

Congress will be too busy contemplating the upcomnig election to make any major changes this legislative cycle, so any change if it happens at all is at least a year off. 2009 is already spoken for of course, so it would be at least 2010 before the penny is either eliminated or made of cheaper metal. I think Paulson is right in his estimation that it's not likely to be "politically doable." Not any time soon anyway. I've mentioned before the main reason it would be hard to make any change is that those who have interest in keeping the penny around have more motivation and concentrated political influence than those who would like to see it eliminated... same story for the one dollar bill.

 

One of the candidates actually wanted to do this before he was beamed back onto his spaceship and had to withdraw from the race.

 

I thought Nader was coming INTO the Prez race?

 

Well at least we have a Treasury Secty who can use math.
Lets see, it is worth less than the nickel, and less than the dime,...

 

LOLOL, . :thumb:

The cent will be eliminated, but not real soon IMO. My feeling is it will be eliminated in about 20 years or so, just a guess.

Phoenix

 

penny hater...

he's the other rocket man!

 

I think if it reaches the point it costs say, 5 times what it's worth to mint, it would probably be pretty easy to eliminate. The United States Mint is the only government organization that actually runs at a profit... they lose money every time they mint a penny or a nickel, but the profit on all the other coins makes up for it currently. When it starts approaching the point where the pennies' and nickels' losses cut into the gains of the other circulating coinage too much I think they'll have a much easier case in eliminating them (or at least making them from cheaper metal.) At that point the financial impact argument will be able to overide the argument from those who have in interest in their continuation, such as those in the zinc and copper mining industry...

Ron Paul hasn't withdrawn his nomination yet as far as I know lol... well won't get into politics here but since it's not at all a controversial statement to state Ron Paul is nowhere near a viable candidate, will ponit out that Paul actually would like to eliminate fiat money entirely and get back onto the gold standard. I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing or not... but that's economics, not politics...

 

I hate to admit, but I think cents are pretty much useless, so is everything less than a dime. Think of the dime as the new cent. It has the same purchasing power that a cent did 40 years ago. But to remove the cent and nickel will cause a public outcry that even the Bush administration would not dare cause. Especially in the run up to the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth next year and the commems.

Some of the older Canadian 5¢ coins are now worth 14¢ in melt value, the pre-1981's and the RCM has been contracting with others up there to remove them actively from circulation and get the melt value from them. But I can still find them in circulation, most recently one of the 12 sided 1961 examples with the YH of QEII.

 

South Africa got rid of its 1 cent and 2 cent coins. They did it when it was costing them 11 South African cents to make one 1 cent coin. Keep in mind though that a South African Rand is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 cents Canadian or less.

I think they will keep making cents at a loss, up to a certain point. What that point of no return is - I don't know.

I was wondering why couldn't they do it like South Korea, and make their lowest coin out of Copper Plated Aluminum? For a good example of circulating Aluminum cents see Belize. I believe they have 1 and 5 cent Aluminum coins circulating. I wonder though how the wear is on them over time?

Anyways just some thoughts.

 

Certainly, with the fall of the USD the treasury is going to hold off on chaning anything. I recall something in the news about nine months ago where the Treasury was considering revaluing the cent to 5 cents rather than absorbing the cost of recalling, melting, minting and reissuing the cents.

 

I'm always amazed at how many times this subject comes up and the one really big point everyone makes is how much it costs to produce a cent. Then it is stated how much the government could save by getting rid of the cent.
Since when does our government care about saving money?
Come on. Be serious. When does the government care about how much anything costs? They have this thing called raise the taxes. So you pay more, that is that.

 

ONE party has this thing called raise the taxes...then the guv takes in less. When are they gonna figure that one out?

 

The purpose of taxes is to redistribute income, not pay for government operating expenses.

If the cent is eliminated, everything will round up to the next nearest nickel.

It's amazing that so many people believe that if coinage has value, that is somehow a problem.

It is irrelevant in the long run whether the government pays for things through taxes or debt; both are an equivalent reduction in purchasing power, but people will fight to the death in the mistaken belief that it makes a difference.

The government may be reluctant to eliminate the cent since it is an admission that the inflation they claim not to exist is in fact out of control.

I guess that about covers it.

 

Cents or No sense?

Everyone,

New member and thought I'd offer a possible process to the cent / no cent thread.

Why no just stop producing the cent and let the existing cents in circulation be used? And if the supply of cents ever reaches a point where there are not enough, crank out another ten billion or more with a generic date.

Just my two cents!

EGS

 

welcome to the forums! EGS

 

Don't forget about the Post Office.

 

Yes the Post Office is the other government organization that runs on a profit and the Post Office has also ruined the the commemorative stamp collecting hobby by pumping out more and more commemorative stamps for the revenue to make up for other loses. The same thing is happening at the mint. Where loosing money on the cent so lets make a Howdy Dody commemorative dollar to absorb our looses.

Lou

 

$0.0071102 is the present metal value of a cent date 1982 (83') since they stopped using mostly copper. If I'm looking at this correctly; it's less than a cent.