Money isn’t everything

It seems like it’s become fashionable to be of the opinion that the penny is worthless and should be abolished. I’ll admit: it does seem a little wasteful to consider it worth one cent when the copper itself would be worth more melted down. But the fact of the matter is, few pennies are only used for a single transaction. If it costs the federal government $0.0125 to produce $0.01 of value to the economy, that’s bad. But if each penny is used in 500 transactions over its lifespan, then each $0.0125 spent to produce a penny spurs $5.00 in economic value.

In my opinion, if any coin should be discontinued, it should be the nickel; it does nothing the penny can’t do in terms of economic value and its sole purpose is to remove a whopping four net coins from my pocket, at most. Whoop-dee-doo.