^{Chapman’s News & Ideas} His Two Cents’ Worth: The Penny Is Useless

Discovery Institute Board member Edmund Moy is quoted by The New York Times in an article entitled “America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny,” (September 1, 2024), noting that he tried, as the Director of the U.S. Mint from 2006 to 2011, to retire one of the oldest, and surely the tiniest, members of the American currency.

Even back then, he told Times’ writer Caity Weaver, he advised Congress, “I’m losing $90 million a year in pennies . . . You guys need to pass a law forcing me to change it.”

Well, you know how busy Congress is; they didn’t do it. Ever.

You see, pennies are just in the way of commerce, so everyone tries to avoid them, meaning the Mint has to pay to create more of them. They not only clog up our transactions, but they also pile up unspent in our dresser drawers and behind our sofa cushions, forever unspent.

How old-fashioned are you? Would you stop on the street to pick up a penny? If you are old enough to think you should do so, you probably are too old now to bend over and do it.

Pennies go back to Merrie Olde England. The phrase “a penny for your thoughts” appears in Sir Thomas More’s book, Four Last Things, in 1522.

Well, if a penny wasn’t worth much five hundred years ago, what’s it worth now?