America Needs the Penny Now More Than Ever

At this point, civility in America—if it ever actually existed—is history. White House officials are being heckled and harangued when they go out for dinner by citizens enraged over the detention of migrant children in cages. Abortion rights are in mortal danger thanks to the retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court and the nomination of far-right jurist Brett Kavanaugh to replace him. Overturning decades of legal precedent protecting a woman's right to choose may take a while, but in the meantime, the rule of law is in deep shit anyway. Republicans in Congress and the president himself are constantly hamstringing or just threatening to blow up the Mueller investigation entirely, and Donald Trump is pardoning famous people or people famous people told him to care about seemingly every week. Also: America's alliances are in complete disarray, with President Trump throwing rhetorical grenades at friendly embassies in unhinged interviews with tabloids and then lying about them.

There's more, but you get the idea.

With all of that going on, it might seem like a silly time to think about the penny, the one-cent coin everyone has too many of or doesn't know what to do with or find too filthy to actually hold in their hands. But as Quartz recently reported, the US Mint lost $69 million manufacturing the mostly-zinc coins last year. This is not a novel development: It has long been that case that pennies (and mostly-copper nickels) cost more to make than they retain in value, thanks to the price of the commodities (precious metals) in play and shipping fees, among other things. Nonetheless, every time reports emerge about the amount Uncle Sam spends producing extremely low-value coins, a small but shrill crowd whines at length about the need to purge our monetary system of the allegedly wasteful, antiquated symbols. America just passed huge tax cuts for the rich that will cost the government trillions and generally waste a ton of money in Washington, on everything from defense boondoggles to sexual harassment payouts for members of Congress, the latest version of the ostensible logic might go. Why not save where we can?

To which I reply: Love it or leave it, asshole.

OK, so it's not the Vietnam War, I'm not a reactionary vet named Ron Kovic, and there are actually a lot of reasons to feel enraged or ashamed to be an American right now. But with so many of key institutions and cultural pillars in decay—or worse—now is not the time to make war on America's coinage. I don't know about you, but when I raise children in a country that has no labor unions and has no friends anywhere else on the entire planet, I'd at least like to be able to point to the 16th president of the United States of America and recall a time when patriotism meant something. Halting production of the penny wouldn't cause them to go extinct, of course—there are many billions in circulation. But with the trend toward cashless businesses and Apple Pay and other currency-free acts of commerce, it's fair to wonder if the next generation of American youth would even be aware of the beautiful brown sight that is a freshly-minted American penny.

Besides, there are all sorts of delightful activities that simply cannot happen without an insane oversupply of pennies. Flattening them beneath a moving train without getting electrocuted or run over in a classic dose of summer Americana. Spending hours rolling them into small paper rolls after amassing them for reasons you cannot really comprehend. And of course, discovering a stray penny in your pocket that allows you to pay exactly $1.51 for a small bottle of orange juice after a night of too much drinking—God, that feels good. (A pro-penny-abolition type might jump in here to say: "Dude, the price would just rounded down to $1.50, that's the whole point!" To which I reply: I want that feeling of randomly discovering a penny in my jeans pocket, sir.)

I'm not alone. Polling has consistently shown over the years that most Americans want pennies to stick around. And while it's popular these days to decry the ignorance of Americans on matters large and small, sometimes the safe, conservative answer is the correct one. Partisan polarization has reached crisis levels. The economy is a nightmare for working people whose incomes are flat even as unemployment has reached record lows and the stock market is trading high. The possibility of the next president being even more destructive to key American institutions is real. With so much of the system we take for granted at risk, why fuck with something that basically works? After all, the money lost in nickel and penny production is made up for by dimes and quarters costing less to manufacture than they're worth. And while I generally advocate efficiency in government, given the billions we spend on insane military toys and subsidizing extra islands for a few hundred American families at the top of the pyramid, throwing money at the simplest and most basic building block of American commerce is a no-brainer.

Think of it as an investment in the national character at a time when it's in dire need.

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