General Discussion

...really doesn't mean anything does it?

When a penny falls in a hole never to be seen again, the government just lost a 3.69 cent investment into something it had promised a value of 1 cent to a consumer--so a theoretical 2.69 cent loss when it goes out of circulation since the government will never have to pay out that 1 cent it promised. But when a 1 dollar bill falls into a fire pit or a shredder, the government just made a theoretical 95.9 cents since they only lost 4.1 cents for something they promised to give the consumer $1 for.

Theoretically, 36 pennies have to be lost to even out the gain made on the loss of one dollar.

When you expand that to factor in that a $100 bill only costs 11.3 cents to make, you have to lose 3,713 pennies to offset the gain made on the loss of a $100 bill that some billionaire decided to light his Solo Stove with because it's cool.

None of this actually has to do with what it costs the government to produce the currency. And besides, that money the government spent made money for someone and some company, and it produced tax revenue from all of the employees of that company. Those employees bought things in their communities; and so on. The truth is that the government probably didn't actually "lose" anything on that investment. Just ask the people with the jobs supported by it.

We certainly don't hold bullet production for the U.S. military to the same standard. Defense contractors make a damn fortune producing ordinance and nobody ever asks what the ROI is on giving the military unlimited opportunities to produce shrapnel.

The truth is that the penny--and the nickel and the dime for that matter--is worthless as a denomination. And once vending machines stop taking quarters they will be a burden to carry too.

A penny in 1960 had roughly the buying power of a dime today because of inflation. At the very least, as denominations lose their buying power to the level of a higher denomination over time they should logically be phased out.

But the bigger issue is going to occur when the government pushes to phase out currency altogether. Cash can be exchanged without the ability of the government to track it, and at some point that's just not going to be acceptable to a government that wants to know about everything you make and everything you spend.....

* https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm