178
Pennies Are Trash Now | The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies.
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
178 points (84.5% liked)
News
35692 readers
2790 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
the fuck do you mean there is no plan?
stop making pennies. transactions in cash can be rounded to the nearest five cents. pennies are still legal tender
the fuck else do you need to do about it?
too bad nobody nearby has done anything like this recently, and could be studied
Canada phased out the penny from 2013-2013. It was an adjustment, but it was not chaos. Pennies of certain periods are still taken as legal tender and accepted by banks.
Per Wikipedia:
"Cash transactions in Canada are now rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 cents.[54] The rounding is not done on each individual item, but on the total amount, with totals being rounded to the nearest multiple of 5, i.e., totals ending in 1 or 2 round down to 0, totals ending in 3, 4, 6, or 7 round to 5, and totals ending in 8 or 9 round up to 10.[54] This is typical of cash rounding methods (not specific to Canada). While existing pennies will remain legal tender indefinitely, those in circulation were withdrawn on February 4, 2013.[55][48][56]
Based on technical specifications provided by the Mint Act, only pennies produced from 1982 to their discontinuation in 2013 are still legally "circulation coins".[57] The Currency Act says that "A payment in coins [...] is a legal tender for no more than [...] twenty-five cents if the denomination is one cent."[58] Nevertheless, once distribution of the coin ceased, vendors were no longer expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases and were encouraged to round purchases to the nearest five cents.[59] Goods can still be priced in one-cent increments, with non-cash transactions like credit cards being paid to the exact cent.[60] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(Canadian_coin)
I wish the USG had published guidelines and regulations prior to discontinuing manufacture, like the Canadian government did.
It's unclear that rounding prices is legal everywhere in the US, particularly rounding up against the consumer in areas with preexisting truth-in-pricing regulation in place.
Eliminating the penny is good. The way the USG is doing it ensures the maximum chaos.
The article is about what to do with all the actual physical coins. I would assume the treasury will start gathering them and scrapping them. The old copper coins can be recycled easy enough as there's plenty of demand for copper, but I have no idea what they'll do with all the zinc (copper plated) coins. Apparently they don't know either as there isn't any plan in place.
Supposedly when the mint decided to start pulling the 1943 steel cents from circulation years ago they ended up dumping a bunch of them in the ocean to get rid of them. Some people consider that an urban legend but perhaps that could happen.
Steel was still steel. It would likely take more work to pack those on a ship and unload them in the ocean than just dumping them in a giant crucible and turning them into sheet or bar stock for industrial consumption.
This isn’t true. There’s transportation and refining costs. Steel being so cheap and considering the opportunity cost it absolutely could be cheaper to just use new steel and sell/trash/give away old shit.
Also depending on the price could have actually been less steel than they were worth, so selling/smelting would actually give out more cash than scrap value.
There are some wrinkles, like I think 10 states make it illegal to round to the nearest nickel on cash transactions. Normally this sort of thing might be accompanied by guidance or even a regulation to get everyone on the same standard. Under Trump it was done with no fanfare other than his usual "I did that." I think people still expect the old ways, where a muppet might come along and explain it to everyone.
They did stop making them, last week.