Last year, the United States Mintpressed the last penny.
Penny preservationists warned that the death of the one-cent coin might seed dire consequences: coin shortages at checkout counters; confusion over how to pay bills not ending in zero or five; and higher prices, as greedy retailers beganrounding everything up.
Yet, apart fromscattered penny shortages, American society appears to have survived the loss of its least valuable coin.
The question is logical: PresidentDonald Trumpkilled the penny because the government lost money every time it pressed one. Nickels are money-losers, too.
In fact, nickels are bigger losers. The Mint spent 3.69 cents making every pennyin 2024. For every nickel, the government spent 13.78 cents, a loss of nearly 9 cents per coin.
Add it up, and the government lost about $18 million minting pennies in 2024. On the nickel, the Mint lost $85 million.
“The argument for getting rid of the nickel is that it costs more to produce – quite a bit more, actually – than its face value,” saidDavid Smith, an economist at Pepperdine University.
Nickels cost more to make because they are larger than pennies and made ofcostlier stuff: 75% copper and 25% nickel. Pennies look like copper but are – or were – actually made mostly of zinc.
Ridding America of the penny “was a no-brainer,” saidRobert Whaples, an economist at Wake Forest University wholong arguedfor ditching the coin.
“We’ve got rid of the penny, and I think we should have,” he said, “because the value of the penny was so small, it wasn’t really worth our time to use it.”
Source: Drudge Report
