Pennies

Goodby to the penny? FWIW, the argument that it costs more to make it than it is denominated at isn't quite as compelling as it seems--the question isn't how much it is denominated at but how much value it provides to the people who use it. Is is worth more than 3 cents to be able to break prices down to the penny over the lifetime of the coin? If almost everything is going debit or credit, maybe not. OTOH there are good reasons for not wanting every transaction to be electronic: fragility and the risk of 3rd party control of transactions.

Althouse cited a NYT article that noted that although the Treasury is mandated by law to produce coins, the number is at the discretion of the Treasury Secretary, and the number could be 0.

How the mighty are fallen. A penny used to be about a day's wages. But 1600 years of Royal coining dropped the value by orders of magnitude.

I hadn't known that Isaac Newton floated the idea of copper pennies.