US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year • Hacker News Board

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#11

Post by mystified5016 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

beAbU wrote: post #9

joshstrange wrote: post #8

In high school, 17 years ago, I wrote a DBQ (document based question essay) for an AP test about why pennies were a huge waste to the economy. Both in cost to some, keep in circulation, and just dealing with for businesses/consumers. It’s past time we did away with the penny and honestly the nickel shouldn’t be too far behind. Really anything less than a quarter seems like more trouble than it’s worth at this point.…

With Trump trying his very best to devalue the dollar, you think it's wise to do this now?

You very much don't understand how this works.

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#12

Post by mystified5016 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 12:21 PM UTC

Honestly inflation is such that any denomination less than a full dollar is almost worthless.

The only application of fractional currency in modern USA is in making every price end in 99 cents for stupid reasons. Everyone has been conditioned to mentally round up any price to the next dollar.

There's nearly nothing you can buy today for less than a dollar. There's no point in any smaller denominations.

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#13

Post by chuckadams » Fri, May 23, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

Cool, now work on the dollar next. Think we can get a dollar coin that lasts more than a year or two? Found a Sacagawea dollar in one of my cupholders just the other day, took me a hot minute to recognize what it even was.

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#14

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 23, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

chuckadams wrote: post #13

Cool, now work on the dollar next. Think we can get a dollar coin that lasts more than a year or two? Found a Sacagawea dollar in one of my cupholders just the other day, took me a hot minute to recognize what it even was.

[deleted]

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#15

Post by bbstats » Fri, May 23, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

mystified5016 wrote: post #12

Honestly inflation is such that any denomination less than a full dollar is almost worthless. The only application of fractional currency in modern USA is in making every price end in 99 cents for stupid reasons. Everyone has been conditioned to mentally round up any price to the next dollar. There's nearly nothing you can buy today for less than a dollar. There's no point in any smaller denominations.

Depends on your local cost of living

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#16

Post by euroderf » Fri, May 23, 2025, 1:14 PM UTC

kirykl wrote: post #5

Replace it with a 33 cent coin

Replace pennies, nickels, and dimes with a 12 1/2 cent coin. Eight to the dollar.

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#17

Post by rahimnathwani » Fri, May 23, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

euroderf wrote: post #16

kirykl wrote: post #5

Replace it with a 33 cent coin

Replace pennies, nickels, and dimes with a 12 1/2 cent coin. Eight to the dollar.

When I was a kid, a first-class stamp in the UK was 12.5 pence.

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#18

Post by grues-dinner » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

kirykl wrote: post #5

Replace it with a 33 cent coin

I remembered there was some kind of "more efficient" coin system. I searched for "ternary coins" and "radix coins". Both are some crypto scams. Fun times.

Apparently I misremembered how it worked and it's actually 1, 5, 18 and 25 (or 29) for a 4 coin system: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/change2.pdf

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#19

Post by RiverCrochet » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:48 PM UTC

beAbU wrote: post #9

joshstrange wrote: post #8

In high school, 17 years ago, I wrote a DBQ (document based question essay) for an AP test about why pennies were a huge waste to the economy. Both in cost to some, keep in circulation, and just dealing with for businesses/consumers. It’s past time we did away with the penny and honestly the nickel shouldn’t be too far behind. Really anything less than a quarter seems like more trouble than it’s worth at this point.…

With Trump trying his very best to devalue the dollar, you think it's wise to do this now?

That would mean there would be even less need for pennies or even any coinage, right?

Re: US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year

#20

Post by bluenose69 » Fri, May 23, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

As mentioned in the article, we dropped the 1-cent coin in Canada over a decade ago. Nobody cares. We also dropped the $1 and $2 bills, years back. I'm guessing there will be a $5 coin soon ... but none of this matters much anymore, since people pay for so many things with contactless money transfers.