Should the US Change Metal Coins? (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: It may be time for the United States to rethink how the smallest parts of its monetary system — the penny, nickel and dime – are made. According to a report this week from watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office, since 2006 the prices of metals used in coins have risen so much that the total production unit costs of the penny and nickel exceed their face value resulting in financial losses to the U.S. Mint.

Comments

Penny

[itamblyn]

We got rid of the penny here in Canada. It was no big deal. I've hardly noticed the difference.

Re:Penny

[WegianWarrior]

Here in Norway we been removing less useful (meaning coins of little practical value) coins for years: - The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74 - The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84 - The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92 - The 50 øre coin was withdrawn May 1st 2012. So while I can still recall putting a 5øre coin in my piggy-bank, there is now no coins circulating that is worth less than 1 Norwegian krone... but you know what? The wast majority of Norwegians pay by card anyhow, and the prices has not changed with the smaller coins going away. If you pay by card, you pay the exact amount. If you pay cash, it is rounded up or down to the nearest coin-value.
For those curious; after the retirement of the 50 øre coin, a purchase of 9.49 kroner is rounded down to 9.00 while a purchase of 9.50 kroner is rounded up to 10.00 - unless you pay by card, in which case you pay the exact sum owed. Off course it helps that the VAT is already added to the price listed - what you see is what you pay, but there is no reason why it shouldn't work equally well in places this isn't done (something which always boggles me when I'm visiting the US btw).
The US penny today is worth much less than the half-penny was when it was removed from circulation... yet for some reason people oppose removing the penny.

Re:Penny

[Rei]

The whole knives thing is just a red herring. Having a gun or not doesn't determine whether someone is more or less likely to want to kill someone else. But it does make them a lot more effective at it. Which is why they use them. Which is why guns were invented in the first place. They end a life much faster, much more reliably, with much less effort on the part of the attacker, than a knife.

To be more specific, the mortality rate for a treated gunshot wound to the heart is 24,5%, while for a stab wound to the heart it's 11.5%. Stab wounds to the chest that did not hit the heart in the study had a tiny 0.8% chance of death. There are lots of different studies from all over the world, this is just one example: knives are a very ineffective way to kill someone compared to guns. And it takes a lot more work and personal involvement. You're never going to see a situation where someone bursts into a crowded movie theater with a knife and stabs to death dozens of people

Even blunt objects used in assaults cause higher mortality rates than knives.

Re: Penny

[drinkypoo]

You could also take the opinion that the concept of a firearm today is something the signatories to the second amendment could hardly imagine - in 1791,

...cannon were privately owned. And you're bitching about magazine lengths. The breech-loading rifle was the assault weapon of its day. It let you fire faster than the next guy, and nobody was talking about banning it.

The world has changed, why cant people accept that these laws need looking at again?

Because they don't. Those laws are working perfectly. It's the laws that keep people in poverty and which stigmatize mental health issues (by taking away rights) that are broken. People don't kill people because they are happy.

Re: Penny

[DarkOx]

in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.

Except that is by far not all we do. As I recall it did not work all that great in Iraq. We defeated the regular military with those tools but still need quite a lot of infantry with small arms to really 'win' the fight.

ISIS isn't being defeated by American air superiority. Actually that was not working at all until its was done in concert with men on the ground, granted those largely are not American troops yet, but its still men on the ground. If we had to fight a large scale war again we would need riflemen and those would have to come from our citizen ranks in large part.

Re: Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

you would be served by doing a little research on what those things ment when the Constitution was written...

for example well-regulated http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

and the militia was "composed of the body of the people" at least according to the man who wrote the Amendments, George Mason who also penned the "Virginia Declaration of Rights". The first document in American History to concretely outline a series of individual rights as they pertained to the greater good of government. The Virginia Declaration of Rights was the most influential State doctrine and the precursor for the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

National guard units are under dual state/federal control. And pretty much have been since the Militia Acts of 1792, although back then it also took a Supreme Court ruling to allow the federal government to call them up, and states were more assertive in controlling their use back then (though not always successful).

At present, national guard units may be activated by either the federal government or the state. Under SAD (State Active Duty) the governor is the acting commander in chief of the state's national guard units. They can use all of the hardware controlled by the state guard, so long as they reimburse the federal government for any consumables, and can use it for any purpose compliant with the state constitution not explicitly banned at the federal level (such as armed insurrection). Examples of state uses of the national guard are natural disasters, riots and terrorist attacks. The Posse Comitatus act restricting the ability of the federal government to use armed forces within the country does not limit state-controlled national guard deployments.

Re:Penny

[Rei]

8 people in an organized, planned out attack managed to kill 29 people, or an average of 3,6 per person. How many do you think they would have killed if they had access to assault rifles?

It's also worth adding that the Kunming attackers were subdued by a single policeman armed with an automatic weapon.

Re: Penny

[GLMDesigns]

Seriously - you do realize that the military, is made of people, most of whom care deeply about the Constitution. You must hold these men and women in utter contempt if think that they will automatically follow orders to gun down their brothers, fathers, children and cousins.

I guess you haven't heard of sheriff and police organizations who are publicly refusing to obey some of these laws. (This is a constitutional crisis that should be dealt with sooner rather than later).

Re: Penny

[bigdavex]

The Supreme Court disagrees with you.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/su...

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER
. . .
  Held:

        1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2â"53.

                (a) The Amendmentâ(TM)s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clauseâ(TM)s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2â"22.

Re: Penny

[NoImNotNineVolt]

That still doesn't make the US's second amendment unambiguous. But let's not pretend that a militia was something other than what it was.

10 U.S. Code 311 - Militia: composition and classes

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Let's not pretend that the militia is something other than what it is.

Re:Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

and the accountant who was responsible for stocking and emptying the cash registers was busy making sure all the prices ended in 9 cents.

It's an anti-theft mechanism to prevent the employees from skimming the register. If you don't have to open the till drawer to give back change, it's easy to just simply pocket the cash. If you're required to count back the change, it becomes much more difficult, and it also gives you a way to fire shitty workers who can't do basic addition/subtraction when their till comes up short or long.

I pulled him over and asked him if he really wanted to deal with shuffling pennies back and forth between the various registers, as they collected too many or ran low. Because he needed to tally how much each station sold, he couldn't just move pennies from one register to another. He would have to count every single penny he transferred (e.g. trade 100 pennies for a $1 bill).

This is just plain stupid. It's obvious you have no cash handling experience at all.
First of all, you aren't going to accumulate pennies. Far more people will take the change rather than pay with exact change.
Second, pennies are rolled in $0.50 increments, not a dollar. So if you're going to buy pennies from another till, you either just grab 2 rolls for a buck or more likely just swap a couple of quarters.
Third, your clerks should not be buying/selling change between registers in the first place. You should have someone running a "bank", usually the person in control of the safe. If someone needs more pennies, bills, etc. they call that person over to swap the change, just like if they start getting too many large bills and need to exchange some of it for smaller ones.

Re:Why does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the materials are worth more than the coin itself, people will melt it down. Either switch to a cheaper material, or just ditch the coin completely. 1 and 2 cent coins aren't even made anymore in my (Euro) country. A tiny number are made for the collectors, but nobody uses them. Almost every payment is either creditcard or NFC these days. There's days that I don't even have cash on me.

Change is coming. Or rather, going. :)

Make USEFUL Metal Currency!

[Irate Engineer]

Canada has one of the best physical currency systems I've seen. No frigging pennies, transactions rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Means at *worst* you'll have a few pieces of useful silver jangling in your pocket vs a pile of worthless pennies.

Dollar coins are actually useful in Canada. You can put dollar coins in meters, snack and soda machines, etc. vs trying to fold and iron a mangled paper bill to appease the finicky reader. You can actually USE dollar coins there to buy things without getting looked at like a asshole. You can walk into a bar and slap some coins down and buy a beer.

The U.S. would do well if they could actually implement usage of $1 coins in automated kiosks. Very few people use dollar coins because you can't do anything with them here. Machines won't take them. Hell, people often won't take them, legal tender or not, because they aren't familiar with them and think they're getting a wooden nickel or something. If you could use them in machines, more people would use them, more people would see them and realize that they are legit, and then they could be used for lots of small transactions.

And, as a an aside, plastic currency is awesome. Run your wallet through the washer accidentally, or fall out of the kayak on your trip? No problem. In the U.S., you can hold a legally acceptable but worn paper $5 in your hand and be unable to purchase anything from an automated kiosk because somebody ran it through the washer at some point and the reader can't make it out. I'd imagine it is harder to counterfit a plastic bill as well.

This isn't rocket surgery. For a society based on the success of commerce I don't understand why the U.S. makes small transactions so awkward.