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

[freeze128]

That's because all those Canadian pennies are circulating here in the U.S.

Re:Penny

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a leader, not a follower, therefore it won't get rid of the penny like Canada did in 2013, no matter how good the idea is.

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practical value) coins for years: - The 1 øre and 2 øre coins disappeared in '74 - The 5 øre and 25 øre coins were withdrawn in '84 - The 10 øre coin ended being legal tender in '92 - The 50 øre coin was withdrawn May 1st 2012.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

[fahrbot-bot]

seriously are you retarded? your argument for not doing it is that it would be doing something other sane countries have already done?

Slippery slope my friend. Lots of other sane countries have universal healthcare and gun control ...

Re:Penny

[Ramze]

Sorry... rational solutions to problems isn't our thing in the USA. I mean... first we'd stop making and circulating the penny, then we'd legalize medical marijuana, switch to the metric system, and finally embrace universal healthcare. That's just crazy talk!

Re:Penny

[DaHat]

Care to define 'gun control'?

The US has plenty of laws on the books at the local, state & federal level... none of which are apparently enough.

I'm still waiting for someone to specify exactly what sort of laws are enough with regards to firearms that they will be happy with that restricts the liberties of law abiding persons.

Re: Penny

[meglon]

The militia, in 1770's was every able bodied men in a set age range (i've heard various, although 16 to 56 comes up most of the time), who were trained in drill and combat by the standards set by congress (that's the well regulated part), with officers appointed by the states. What it wasn't was a bunch of drunk, fat, inbred rednecks playing dress up in camouflage so they could run around with their hands on their dicks playing soldier in the woods because they to big of fucking cowardly pussies to actually enlist and serve this country.

Re: Penny

[silentcoder]

If only wingnuts took the other amendments as seriously as they take the first one... oh and the pre-ammendmented constitution itself...

I've yet to meet one who could name more than one other amendment or had the slightest idea what the actual US constitution says. Like most foreigners, I know it better than you do... but then, since the Iranian prime minister last year proved he knew it better than the republicans in congress this is not surprising.

Without googling - which amendment bans slavery ? Which is the equality amendment ? Or even just - "are these the same amendment" ?

You see - the second does not supersede the others, it is limited by their very existence - like all rights are limited by the very existence of other rights since all rights end where other people's rights begin.

What I find most odd though is that everybody seems to read over the most important part of the second amendment. It states that a well organized militia is essential and this is the justification for a right to bear arms... but everybody flat out ignores the "well organized" bit.

You won't get "well organized" in anything done by a government (and the constitution is - by definition - a matter of government) without lots and lots of regulation.
The second amedment not only *allows* for gun regulation - it outright demands it but nobody every mentions that part or recognizes the significance of that qualifier. It's like you imagine the founding fathers you adore so much never meant to put that in there, like it was a typo before the invention of the typewriter.

Well organized equals regulated and controlled.

Re: Penny

[silentcoder]

Eliot's character in "Leverage" summed up those idiots better than anybody else, ever:

"The difference between you and a real soldier is that you are willing to kill for 'your rights'. A soldier is somebody who is willing to die to protect somebody else's rights".

Re:Penny

[wonkey_monkey]

Give it time. It's only Tuesday.

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

[Xicor]

The reason we have the right to wield guns is not to defend ourselves against other people. It is to defend ourselves against the government. If only the government can have weapons, it quickly becomes impossible to fight for other rights being taken from you.

People say 'you don't need assault weapons to defend yourself', but in actuality, that is exactly what you need to defend yourself against the government.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

Militias were regularly called out for use in the early history of the United States. In no case was it just the president saying, "Hey, everyone with a gun who knows how to use it, come on down and help me out!" They were organized militias, like each state's own mini-army, run by the state's government.

Let's take the Whiskey Rebellion as an example. Washington needed an army to crush the rebellion. He put out a request to states for militia assistance (based on a new federal militia law) and received it from New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Most of the state militia ranks were small (few wanted to serve), so the states put out a draft to flush out the ranks of their militias. These drafts into the militias were enforced by armed soldiers - in the case of Hagerstown, Maryland, a whole 800 of them. Two people got killed resisting the draft into the militias. With the militias' numbers raised to the desired level, Washington then personally marched into "battle" at the head of the militias (each of which had their own state-organized command structure serving under him). After becoming confident that there would be little resistance, he turned command over to the Governor of Virginia (who was personally heading the Virginia militia at the time) to finish the operation.

This is what a "militia" was back in the days when the US was founded: a state-run army, to be called into active service in times of conflict. They still exist - the US National Guard is a direct descendent of the state militias, converted under the Dick Act. Also, obviously, over time the responsibility for provisioning weapons has shifted from the individual to the guard itself, since wars are no longer fought with hunting rifles.

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. If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Pro-gun people should read that as "The founders wanted us to have the right to individually own weapons so that we can be trained to be good soldiers in times of emergency". Anti-gun people should read that as "The founders were trying to prevent any prohibition against state National Guard units from controlling their own weapon stocks."

The reality is that that statement it's a reflection of their world, a world in which the nature of threats and how they were faced was very different than it is today. I think it's pretty absurd to speculate about whether George Washington would have wanted John Doe to be able to own an AK-47 in a world where a national military faces off against other nations with F-16s and stealth bombers.

Re: Penny

[Rei]

Wait a minute, is your argument here that you want to have the ability to fight the US military?

Re:Penny

[vakuona]

The value of currency is not just it's face value. The value of a currency is that it allows people to exchange goods and services.

Ideally, the coins ought to cost more to make than their face value (to discourage counterfeiting), but the value of the metal ought to be less than their face value (to discourage people melting them down for the metal).

Obviously, for notes, it is unlikely that the cost of printing will exceed the face value, but it is a lot harder to forge notes, and we can rely more on counterfeit detection technology. If, on the other hand, someone makes counterfeit coins, those would be much harder to detect (unless we start making some sort of smart coins with built-in counterfeiting technology).

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

[drinkypoo]

If you want to update the language to reflect what we call the militias now, the second amendment would read, "A well regulated National Guard, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Except the whole fucking point of the 2A was to avoid a centralized, standing military! The National Guard is explicitly the kind of thing they were trying to avoid (it's part of the army, there is nothing state-run about it.)

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

[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.

Yes, it's time.

[FrankSchwab]

Kill the penny.
Kill the Nickel.
Keep the dime - the smallest coin will now have the smallest value.
Kill the quarter
Create a new $0.50 piece a bit bigger than a dime, maybe a bit smaller than a penny.
Create a new $1.00 piece about the size of a nickel, maybe slightly larger.
Create a new $5.00 piece about the size of a quarter.

To avoid confusion between new/old, change something mechanical - put a hole through the middle, or make them all octagonal or decagonal.

If you're worried about cost, make the dime and half out of Aluminum. We've given up the concept of any actual value in our currency, so it's time to give up the artificial weight that made them feel like silver.

Don't try to differentiate them by color. As the Sacajawea dollar taught us, after a few years in grubby fingers and rattling around in pockets, all coins start to have the same surface color.

We end up with rationally sized coins, getting bigger as the value gets bigger. We get rid of the small valued paper money, which is also expensive to print/replace.

Re:Yes, it's time.

[dryeo]

Resize all currency (bills) to make them easier for the blind to use

In Canada we just have brail on the notes, which are now made of plastic as another saving, they're supposed to last a longer though not as long as loonies ($1 coin named after the Loon on it) or toonies ($2 coin).

Re:More doller coins and add 2 doller coins

[houstonbofh]

Strippers do. Trust me, never try to "make it rain" with dollar coins.

Why does it matter?

[HideyoshiJP]

I'm curious why the face value being worth less than the face value is an issue. Doesn't the US Mint still own the metals? Doesn't it get used more than once? Can't they melt it down and make more pennies? Japan still makes a 1 yen coin, and doesn't have these issues. Maybe it's time to switch out copper for a less valuable metal.

Re:Why does it matter?

[Overzeetop]

1) Pennies are no longer made of copper; they're now copper plated zinc.

2) The US Mint does not have it's own recycling forges and processing equipment; they purchase materials on the open market like everyone else.

3) Yes, Japan still has yen, made of Aluminum. Everyone there hates them, too.

There's no good reason to go to two decimal places on physical prices anymore. Make a new 50c piece (because the current one is to large/expensive to produce to be practical), stop producing pennies, nickels, and quarters. About the only people that would piss off would be the parking meter folks, and I'm very much in favor of pissing those people off.

Re:Lobbyists

[Rei]

First, you will never get a single vote from the State of Illinois (aka "the Land of Lincoln") to drop the penny because President Lincoln has been featured on the face since at least 1909. So that's 2 Senators and 18 Congressmen who will never vote to drop the 1 cent coin

Maybe they should just find some other currency to honor Lincoln?

Sort of funny how obsessed over Lincoln Illinois is, given that he never set foot there until he was 21. He was born in Kentucky to a family from Virginia, lived there until he was 7, then moved to Indiana where he lived until he was an adult.

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.