When you are walking down the street and see Abraham Lincoln’s shiny face, what would you do? One may pick it up and pocket it for later use, or may just leave it as the value is of little worth.
As the economy modernizes, physical currency is becoming less utilized in favor of the simplicity of swiping a card or scanning a mobile payment app. Additionally, the rise of inflation devalues the penny, or more accurately, the dollar itself. But as each dollar gains less purchasing power as inflation rises, the penny, worth one one-hundredth of a dollar, becomes even more pointless.
“I don’t use cash because it’s so much easier to scan my phone or card,” said Grace Constantelos ‘26, “and if I do use cash, I don’t worry about finding the exact change in my purse.”
Physical currency is being used less and less today, and when cash is used, people normally do not give exact change. Thus, a person is given back change, and that change most likely sits in coat pockets. In fact, it is much more work to look for the exact coins needed to pay for an item than to give an extra dollar and receive the change back. For example, one may pay a quarter or dime to even things out, but the 99-cent item will probably receive the one cent at change.
What most people do not know is that it takes almost four cents to mint a penny worth a single cent; thus, the penny requires more money to produce than it’s worth. Additionally, about eight percent of all the pennies produced get lost every year. That amounts to about sixty-two million dollars worth of pennies wasted every year, and that does not factor in the extra cost it takes to mint a penny.
The price of a penny, mixed with the fact that so many are lost each year, is not worth keeping them in circulation.
“People just don’t use [pennies] that much,” said Dr. Hogge, AP US History teacher, “and they cost more coin than they’re worth. So at this point, they’re probably not really functional anymore.”
Due to the decrease in usage, the government has decided that they should no longer be used in the money system. Before inflation caused prices to rise decades ago, one could buy a pack of gum or a piece of candy for a cent or two. Now, it is impossible to find something for a penny, or even a nickel or a dime. This is why President Trump has instructed the treasury to halt the minting of any new pennies, thus, the amount of pennies that are currently circulating may be the last pennies produced. This impact, in the long run, will only cause prices to inflate at most four cents, which would not make a significant impact all around.
