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The United States is finally going to do away with pennies.

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NewTime
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30 May 2025, 12:26 pm

The last US penny will be minted in 2026. It is about time. Pennies are a big waste.



lostonearth35
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30 May 2025, 1:28 pm

We got rid of pennies in Canada years ago.



funeralxempire
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30 May 2025, 3:10 pm

At this rate America will also have successfully adopted the metric system by 2400.


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30 May 2025, 4:55 pm

But what about those souvenir penny presses?

*Fun fact ... Australian 1c pieces are cupro-nickel and will BREAK an American penny press.



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30 May 2025, 4:57 pm

NewTime wrote:
The last US penny will be minted in 2026. It is about time. Pennies are a big waste.

Not really, it costs like $70m a year to make the pennies and automated machines for dealing with change have been around for decades.

People like to badmouth pennies, but all that's going to happen is that people are now going to have to work out rounding things to the nearest nickel. Nothing about this is going to improve things to any substantial degree.

I do think that it will happen eventually, just because over time inflation leads to fewer and fewer things being priced to the nearest cent as that becomes less and less, we're just not really there yet.



funeralxempire
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30 May 2025, 5:08 pm

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
Not really, it costs like $70m a year to make the pennies and automated machines for dealing with change have been around for decades.

People like to badmouth pennies, but all that's going to happen is that people are now going to have to work out rounding things to the nearest nickel. Nothing about this is going to improve things to any substantial degree.


That's really not a downside at all. It's hardly been noticeable here.

Quote:
Penny no longer produced as of 2012. After 4 February 2013 pennies no longer distributed by banks. Cash transactions are rounded to the nearest $0.05. Electronic transactions are still completed to $0.01.


What's the point of spending $70 million to make less than $70 million worth of pennies?


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30 May 2025, 7:32 pm

Meanwhile in australia we are debating getting rid of the 5c coin. It never ends.


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31 May 2025, 4:26 am

lostonearth35 wrote:
We got rid of pennies in Canada years ago.

I didn't know that. Canada stopped producing them way back in 2012.



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31 May 2025, 4:59 am

I used to have a glass boot that was brimming with half pennies

I couldn't spend them because they became obsolete

I reckon I could easily have bought about 200 penny chews with that


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31 May 2025, 9:27 am

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
NewTime wrote:
The last US penny will be minted in 2026. It is about time. Pennies are a big waste.

Not really, it costs like $70m a year to make the pennies and automated machines for dealing with change have been around for decades.

People like to badmouth pennies, but all that's going to happen is that people are now going to have to work out rounding things to the nearest nickel. Nothing about this is going to improve things to any substantial degree.

I do think that it will happen eventually, just because over time inflation leads to fewer and fewer things being priced to the nearest cent as that becomes less and less, we're just not really there yet.
Doing away with pennies will give buisnesses another excuse to raise their prices by rounding everything up to the nearest nickel when charging customers while rounding down to the nearest nickel when paying their employees. I wouldn't be against doing away with pennies if the federal minimum-wage would be raised slightly as well as slightly increasing Social Security & other government benefits to offset the increased inflation. The money saved by not minting pennies should be put into government assistace programs.


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MatchboxVagabond
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31 May 2025, 11:25 am

funeralxempire wrote:
At this rate America will also have successfully adopted the metric system by 2400.

Why would we go any more metric than we are now? It's a terrible system for anything other than science and medicine. It makes nothing easier and uses inconvenient measures.

There's really and truly no actual benefit in switching to such an arbitrary system.

I've lived under the tyranny of the metric system and it's s really impractical system for most purposes.



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31 May 2025, 11:32 am

funeralxempire wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
Not really, it costs like $70m a year to make the pennies and automated machines for dealing with change have been around for decades.

People like to badmouth pennies, but all that's going to happen is that people are now going to have to work out rounding things to the nearest nickel. Nothing about this is going to improve things to any substantial degree.

The point is that you then have printed available for change. $70m is an absolutely tiny amount in terms of the federal budget. Anything much under $15bn isn't really worth thinking too much about as that's $1 per person per week for the year m $70m isn't even a rounding error.

There's no reason to discontinue the penny while people are using it. People act like it's the 1/10 RMB notes in China that have so little value that nobody uses them. The penny is still in active use
That's really not a downside at all. It's hardly been noticeable here.

Quote:
Penny no longer produced as of 2012. After 4 February 2013 pennies no longer distributed by banks. Cash transactions are rounded to the nearest $0.05. Electronic transactions are still completed to $0.01.


What's the point of spending $70 million to make less than $70 million worth of pennies?



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31 May 2025, 11:53 am

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
At this rate America will also have successfully adopted the metric system by 2400.

Why would we go any more metric than we are now? It's a terrible system for anything other than science and medicine. It makes nothing easier and uses inconvenient measures.

There's really and truly no actual benefit in switching to such an arbitrary system.

I've lived under the tyranny of the metric system and it's s really impractical system for most purposes.
Teen Titans Go explained this :lol:







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31 May 2025, 12:59 pm

I think we should keep the pennies. I like precise answers (I am an Aspie!).

I think complaints about how pennies cost more than a penny to manufacture overlook that they can be reused.

Plus, apparently, some people like to hoard pennies. Surely their more-than-a-penny cost can be offset by the interest that would've accrued on the idle pennies.

But, mainly, I like precise answers.


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31 May 2025, 1:16 pm

MatchboxVagabond wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
At this rate America will also have successfully adopted the metric system by 2400.

Why would we go any more metric than we are now? It's a terrible system for anything other than science and medicine. It makes nothing easier and uses inconvenient measures.

There's really and truly no actual benefit in switching to such an arbitrary system.

I've lived under the tyranny of the metric system and it's s really impractical system for most purposes.


Also apparently the whole world has gotten behind on something. No country has adopted metric time as of yet.



MatchboxVagabond
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31 May 2025, 1:21 pm

nick007 wrote:
MatchboxVagabond wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
At this rate America will also have successfully adopted the metric system by 2400.

Why would we go any more metric than we are now? It's a terrible system for anything other than science and medicine. It makes nothing easier and uses inconvenient measures.

There's really and truly no actual benefit in switching to such an arbitrary system.

I've lived under the tyranny of the metric system and it's s really impractical system for most purposes.
Teen Titans Go explained this :lol:







I know the metric system, I've lived under it's tyranny, students in the US are taught it and I used it extensively in college before moving overseas. The metric system is one of the dumbest ideas ever for use outside of a few niche situations. All of the units are incredibly arbitrary, most of the time the arbitrary units are not of a convenient size and the things people trot out as justification for it being "easier" are things that people very rarely do. I was honestly shocked that at no point in the years that I lived overseas did the metric measures improve on anything I was doing. Much of the time it was break even, and when it wasn't, the US customary measures won out every single time.

This isn't a case of Americans being ignorant, this is a case of other countries either not having an enforced set of measures or being too small to get get things produced in the local measures.

And this does tie into the debate over the penny, the US was one of the first to adopt a metric set of currency, because that made sense. Arguably, a base 12 system of currency would have been more better, but we've collectively decided to use base 10 numbers in most situations.