Reports of Penny's death are not greatly exaggerated.
This time, the American penny will experience a timely demise, two centuries after it first began circulating as legal tender but became junk in the modern economy.
The U.S. Mint on Wednesday will strike the last of the Philadelphia coins first issued in 1793. The Mint has long lost its luster among Americans given the huge decline in its purchasing power.
A staggering number of coins still circulate like tender, whether in cash registers or in a child's piggy bank. The Treasury Department estimates there are 300 billion one-cent coins still in circulation, which is three times the number of stars that can be observed in the Milky Way galaxy.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered the US to stop minting pennies, criticizing them as too expensive a currency to mint. Last year it cost nearly four cents to produce every penny, a money-losing enterprise that some critics say perfectly illustrates the federal government's wastefulness.
“For too long, the United States has minted pennies that literally cost us more than 2 cents,” Trump wrote in his newspaper. February social media post in the middle of the Super Bowl. “This is so wasteful!”
The Treasury expects to save $56 million a year by eliminating penny production. However, Americans can still use their pennies as they wish. throw them away as some do.
Still, Trump's decision to phase out the coin is causing headaches for retailers who still rely on the coin to provide accurate change to customers. National Retail Federation warned that retailers lack guidance on how to round up their transactions because federal and state laws prohibit it in many cases.
Bills have been advanced in Congress that would allow retailers to round up or down their transactions to the nearest five cents.
