The penny is such a historically and culturally significant part of American history, yet the House just passed a bill to officially eliminate the coin from the minting process at the U.S. Treasury. According to a report at the New York Post, the bill advanced with “unanimous” support from lawmakers.
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“It’s too expensive to mint,” they say!
While I appreciate the very out-of-character desire to cut net negative expenses…where the hell is this attitude with costs that are actually killing us? When the Treasury minted pennies in 2024, the negative seigniorage was $85.3 million. That’s not chump change, but in the grand scheme of things, it is.
Why worry about $80 million when the federal government is losing hundreds of billions of our dollars to fraud alone, every year? The Government Accountability Office estimates that number is between $233 Billion to $521. What about the trillions of dollars they’re spending each year on new programs, program expansions, and entitlements for a growing number of people, while already in the hole, and not bringing in enough revenue to break even…and my taxes are still sky-high?
Let’s just again visualize how much money we’re talking here:
For context, $1 million in the first image to the left, is packets $10,000 in $100 bills…extrapolated. Note that the trillion is double stacked pallets. pic.twitter.com/xHMpSn5zQ1
— Friends of Science (@FriendsOScience) September 14, 2026
For someone who can only afford to live modestly and brings in a middle class salary, I pay tens of thousands in income and employment taxes each year (over a third of my household income is sent off to the state of Alabama and the IRS).
Just as importantly though…why is the penny now worth less than the cost of minting? Well, those damn politicians in D.C. with their spending habits and obsession with pocket-lining.
“Inflation is made by Government and no one else. … No one of them has the authority to create deposits at the central bank… Only Government has a monopoly of the printing press… Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”
Do we remember who noted that? The late and great Milton Friedman.
What about this quote, speaking on inflation and therefore, a currency’s devaluation? “It is a way to take people’s wealth without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.” Of course, Thomas Sowell.
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Pennies are obsolete when it’s part of a financial system that’s over forty trillion in debt.
We love to rag on Europe—myself included—and rightfully so, for their asinine politics. But at least they can boast that they haven’t spent themselves into such a pit that they had to eliminate their cents and pence.
No longer will we offer a “penny for your thoughts.”
The traitors in D.C. murdered penny candy, along with the penny arcade.
Penny loafers, which were used to hold extra change that could actually buy you something, will now need to make room to hold dollar bills (until those too become obsolete).
Finding a lucky penny on the ground will be a thing of the past.
“Pinching pennies” won’t amount to anything, and truths like “every penny counts” have lost all meaning and reality.
These a-holes have also robbed future generations of the old symbolic tradition of gifting a baby a penny to represent prosperity, and people born after 2025 will not be able to carry a penny for good luck.
Ships used to place a penny under the mast during construction for good fortune, but I guess they’ll have to switch to nickels?
The only time we can get 100% agreement between Democrats and Republicans is when they’re passing bills to bankrupt the American citizenry.
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Why do we tolerate this?
Image generated by ChatGPT.