What is the point of a penny? Most vending machines and parking meters do not accept them, they lose the government about $58 million each year and on their own can not be used to purchase anything, not to mention that each one costs 2.72 cents to make. We do not need pennies.
Even if one were to ignore the financial inefficiencies of the penny, the very process of making the coin is problematic. The mining and processing of the zinc that goes into pennies can lead to water and air pollution with zinc imports only increasing the U.S.’ trade deficit with China.
Physical money altogether is becoming less and less common with there being a 4% drop in cash transactions from 2021 to 2022. Coins and bills are simply seen as too much of a hassle to carry around, especially when given the plethora of alternatives with credit cards and digital payments. The penny is the worst offender when it comes to carrying money with one coin weighing 2.5 grams, meaning that a single dollar’s worth of pennies weighs just over half a pound. For the small amount their worth, especially with rising inflation rates, pennies are simply not worth keeping.
This would not be an unprecedented change with many countries having already gotten rid of their pennies. Just in the U.S., the half-cent was last minted in 1857 with the two-dollar bill being discontinued in 1966, though the former is still in circulation and still occasionally printed. The penny could receive the same treatment: keep them as a valid currency, just stop minting them, or at the very least make significantly less of them.
The arguments for the penny largely revolve around what this would mean for rounding prices. For example, something that would have cost $0.51 would instead cost $0.55. However, this is not necessarily true. In addition to the numerous countries without the penny, when one takes into consideration non-physical payment methods, sales tax and that many transactions involved multiple items, meaning the final price is completely random, this potential price gouging seems like a far less significant possibility.
Pennies are the coins dropped on the ground and left under couch cushions—there is no need for the penny.
