It Is Time to Finish the Job

The United States has always changed its money reluctantly, and for most of two centuries that reluctance has been a virtue. Currency works because people trust it, recognize it without thinking, and know instinctively what to do with it. A system that changes constantly forfeits all three. But a system that never changes stops being a design and becomes an accumulation of historical accidents, and American coinage passed that point some time ago.

In 2025 the U.S. Mint suspended production of circulating pennies after more than 230 years. The arithmetic had become impossible to defend: the Mint reported a production and distribution cost of 3.02 cents for a one-cent coin, and projected roughly $56 million a year in reduced material costs from stopping. Nothing was confiscated and nothing was invalidated. Existing pennies remain legal tender, they remain in circulation, and they will keep turning up in drawers and pockets for years. What ended was the manufacture of new ones for ordinary commerce.

That decision is usually described as the retirement of an obsolete coin, which undersells it. It is the first official admission in living memory that a denomination can outlive its purpose. Having made that admission about the penny, the country has no principled reason to stop there.

A more rational system is available.