Letter: Save the penny, kill the nickel

Published: 02-02-2025 6:00 AM

 

Billionaire cryptocurrency charlatan Elon Musk has now set his sights on literally the most worthless object he can find: the penny. The argument for eliminating the penny is that it costs four cents to mint one. However, the point of minting coins is not to make money (pun intended). The point is to facilitate commerce. The fact that billions of pennies are minted and absorbed into the economy every year would seem to demonstrate that the penny serves that function. If the penny were eliminated, it’s more than likely that prices would be rounded up to the nearest nickel. This small addition to the price level would be felt most acutely by those with the lowest incomes. It would make more sense (pun intended) to eliminate the nickel, in that the cost to mint one is fourteen cents. Eliminating the nickel provides three times the cost-effectiveness of eliminating the penny, but it does so without giving merchants an excuse to tack a couple more cents to their prices.

James Cole

Concord

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