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cranky908canuck

Also commented in a duplicate thread: No fan of DT, but this one does make sense (CAN chucked pennies years ago).

If I read the article cited below correctly, penny minting has a smell of lobbying in a safe quiet corner:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/magazine/worthless-pennie...

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Whether or not it’s a good idea doesn’t mean that it’s good to bypass the legislature.

These initiatives are more about trying to assert absolute authority in people’s minds more than anything else.

By choosing something that people might agree with he is subtly getting the public to allow him to have unchecked authority in other areas.

someone in his camp is smart/devious/slick enough to advise him to test his autocracy by skipping the rules on things that are already obvious before moving on to skip the rules on more dubious and unpalatable endeavors

I would liken it to testing the electric fences in different sectors like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, starting with the sections that are hidden from cameras by bushes, before knocking down the ones out in the open.

Don’t forget that upcoming national crisis that will require us to forgo having any rule of law.

I don't think it's "testing autocracy"; it's just getting a lot of things done as fast as possible. Trump made a lot of campaign promises.

Contrast it with Labour over here in the UK, who've "only" been in power 6 months, and the difference is incredible.

It's Stephen Miller's take on a strategy out of Steve Bannon's playbook - Flood The Zone.

I'm not saying it's legal, but I don't think the motivation is testing limits.

That's exactly what the strategy is meant for. It's meant to overwhelm.

Legislature could have done this, the issue hasn't crept up on us. Unforunately, the system is broken (it can't identify and get support for clear wins).

I agree that government is all about setting, following and self-modifying rules, but that takes cooperation.

The legislature hasn't attempted since John McCain, but he also wanted to replace 1 dollar bills with coins. Perhaps trying to make too many changes at once.

The discussion only resurfaced in 2023 when the US mint released a report about the high cost to produce pennies. No legislative efforts had been introduced since that report.

From the NYT:

While consulting Title 31 of the U.S. Code (to see how much annual penny minting was required by law), I came upon a statute outlining general instructions for the apportionment of American coins. “The Secretary of the Treasury shall,” Section 5111 reads, “mint and issue” denominations of coins “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States.” I reread the sentence several times. Groping for a light switch in a bolted room, had my fingers brushed over the knob of an unlocked door? Amounts the Secretary decides are necessary. What if the secretary decided the amount of pennies necessary was zero?

I contacted Christine Desan, a Harvard law professor who specializes in the constitutional law of money. I asked what she made of Section 5111. “The way it reads to me as a lawyer,” Desan said, is that “there’s nothing in here that indicates the secretary has to issue them.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/briefing/the-penny-us-cur...

I can't read the article you linked so I'm not sure if it mentions this, but IIRC one of the reasons for ditching the penny in Canada was that it cost more than a penny of copper to make a penny out of copper.

Now when we buy something we get told a rounded-off price (e.g. $3.72 is told to us as $3.70) but if we pay digitally (i.e. by card) then we get charged the exact amount.

Exactly. When this first came down, many Canadians (including me, true confessions) had their petty quibbles at the till about rounding (ok the rounding was sometimes wonky, hence the petty quibbles). Most of us have got over it.

> but IIRC one of the reasons for ditching the penny in Canada was that it cost more than a penny of copper to make a penny out of copper.

That's true for all coins, otherwise it would be an infinite money hack

Isn't that backwards? If a penny contains more than a penny's worth of copper you can make "infinite" money by exchanging some money for pennies, smelting them down into copper, selling the copper for more money than you exchanged in the first place, and repeating the process until you're as rich as Bezos.

The overhead of obtaining a large amount of pennies and smelting them likely makes the whole operation unprofitable, besides being illegal for defacing currency.

> That's true for all coins, otherwise it would be an infinite money hack

The government can print money if it wants to; it's just a bad idea.

This is not correct. Most US coins (other than the cent and the 5 cent nickel) cost much less to make compared to their face value. For example, it costs just a bit less than 6 cents to make a dime, and just shy of 15 cents to make a quarter [0]. The "profit" that the government makes via minting coins and printing currency is known as seigniorage [1], and is reflected in the government's budget as revenue.

[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/5136331-how-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

Making fewer pennies means needing more nickels. Which have an even larger loss per unit: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/business/cost-to-make-penny-n...

Why would we need more nickels? Transactions will end up being rounded to the nearest nickel, which will end up being a dime on one side or a nickel on the other as the smallest necessary coin. Seems like it all evens out.

Both will be used more, the issue with the nickel is that it costs around 14¢ to make one.

I'd have to see a mathematical proof as to why nickels or dimes would be used more, I don't actually think that's the case.

The only logical argument I can imagine is that people are using stacks of 5 pennies now routinely instead of nickels. But personally I never see that happening.

All of the "more nickels" noise is being paid for by the penny copper supplier.

The penny is mostly zinc. It's only 2.5% copper.

Interestingly, the nickel is 75% copper -- so copper suppliers would strongly prefer to ditch the penny if it meant making more nickels.

Keep going! We only need the quarter.

We need to stop minting pennies and nickels. We could stop inflation by restoring the gold standard but nobody seems to mind inflation that much.

Getting rid of pennies/nickels sure, but where does the gold standard come in?

You want to tie the economy to a material that doesn't capture economic growth and which also has its remaining stores in areas of the world not owned by your nation?

If Google wasn't lying to me with its response, the current USA gdp is over $20 trillion, and the US owns around $200 billion in gold.

Wouldn't tying gold to the current economy either devalue the dollar or inflate the current value of gold before locking the country into a state of economic stagnation?

A lot of new orders make sense, just not the important ones.

Which ones make sense?

Honestly just googled and couldn't find one :)

Something in the line of removing two separate buttons to flush a toilet, different words of course just to illustrate the impact (negligent).

But I also found one important order that does make sense: stop UNRWA funding. Don't remember any other though that would make sense.

Why does removing two seperate buttons to flush a toilet make sense to you? I grew up in Canada which always had one before moving to England in the early 2000s where I first encountered two buttons and thought it was weird but 25 years later it makes a lot more sense to have different levels of water usage available.

Likewise, I absolutely do not support Trump and his administration, but among him, Musk, and even RFK Jr, there are policy choices that I do support; they just tend to get drowned out by the cacophony of terrible choices.

Honestly, when looking back at the accomplishments of any administration, you'll likely find more things you agree with than disagree with. Presidents get a lot of ideas passing across their desks, generally posed by their subordinates. It's usually one big smear that overshadows it all (e.g. starting a never-ending war in the Middle East, implementing an extra-judiciary drone assassination program, ravaging the scientific institutions that help to make this country a hub of innovation, etc)

I guess we're lucky if we only get one smear?

Not very uplifting but maybe realistic?

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