Traveling to the U.S. for vacation, I waited in line at a gift shop to buy a scenery picture for a souvenir. When it was my turn, I pulled out a $5 bill and paid. The cashier handed me my change: one penny. I looked at it and thought: What am I going to do with one penny? It has no value and will forever be lost in my wallet. I shrugged and simply threw it away.

For a long time now, the penny has seemingly lost its purpose. The whole point of a penny is to facilitate exchange; however, it fails at even this simple purpose. Due to inflation, the value of the penny has lost all buying power. Most pennies end up lost because they aren’t even worth the time it takes to toss in a jar for later. You will have to store 55 pounds of pennies just to get 100 dollars. No one wants to take valuable time to count those silly cents when paying. It is estimated that the time wasted on counting out pennies can cost one billion dollars for the entire U.S. Thus most businesses refuse to accept the tedious form of tender as payment at all, making the penny worthless.

Despite their ineffectiveness, the U.S. Mint still produces millions of pennies each year. This may not seem like a problem, but, according to The United States Mint, the manufacturing cost for one penny is 2.72 cents, and the Mint is losing nearly $70 million each year. This doesn’t even include the cost of labor and distribution. Ridiculous, right? We are creating a coin where the metals used are more valuable. Especially when you think about how this wasted money could be spent on other valuable programs that would better serve society.

Removing the penny is not impossible, in fact, the U.S. Mint had a great opportunity to remove the penny entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses encouraged online shopping and contactless forms of payment to minimize the spread of the virus. Cash and coins basically stopped circulating in the economy. According to National Purchase Diary, 82.1% of all retail transactions are made using a credit card in the U.S. amid the coronavirus. Since we are on our way to the inevitability of a cashless economic system, it seems silly to continue making dollars altogether, let alone the penny.  

The evidence is clear: the penny is doing more to hurt the economy than to help it. We are wasting our money and time on a coin of the past, a world with less inflation. The penny should no longer be produced. Period.