When an empire eliminates its lowest coin, it’s essentially admitting its currency is worthless. Rome did it before its collapse — is it the same playbook for America?
"Just as the denarius lost meaning in the late empire, the loss of the penny signals that small denominations of the dollar are functionally useless. "
When has halting the minting of a coin either removed it from circulation or devalued it completely?
Perhaps it as responsible to halt creation of surplus coinage as it is to halt printing of fiat paper currency?
Just yesterday I made a cash purchase with a moderately sized bill and received at least one piece of every lesser sized tender -- coins and bills -- as change. Had I too many coins already, three steps away from that counter was a machine that would have returned bills in exchange for the number of coins I inserted. If the machine had failed, the cashier could have made the same exchange.
Seems like that penny is still in circulation. Maybe when the supplies held privately (or dredged from fountains or mined from seat cushions) run low, we can start up the mint again.
Those who speculate on currency aren't necessarily living in the same world as those who actually use it as legal tender.
Trump did not kill the penny. The Fed did however. Trump merely stated the obvious; if it takes 3.7 cents to mint a 1 cent coin, why are we minting it?
Yeah I’ve been on about eliminating the penny for 20 years. Somehow I failed to think about the nickel and had no idea it costs .13. We’d need to mint more of those if we eliminate the penny. So I’m not sure where to stop at. I’m guessing the dime doesn’t cost so much, so maybe that’s the stopping point.
Just some cursory research suggests the dime runs about $.045 to produce. So that's the logical cutoff point, for sure. But, that would be a disaster if ever implemented, I suspect, especially for those trying to argue inflation is under control and our currency is strong.
It’s a bad indicator for sure. And some people would figure out how to game the system. But I think it would still be a net positive, at least from a minting/deficit standpoint
The history of Roman decline is an interesting parallel to our present day situation but some things are different. For instance, it's a global collapse now with nowhere else we can escape as the planet continues it's destructive course of unsustainable growth and toxicity. There are solutions if we choose to return to a path in tune with nature and curb our species genocidal march to oblivion. I think it would involve limiting our lust for wealth and power.
The ‘managed decline’ of the West is globally orchestrated, and at a supranational level. That’s one point I’d like to make here.
But it’s a good article, and I’m not challenging the article at all. And I’m not going to speculate about who exactly has been orchestrating the decline of the West these past 70-100+ years. I’ll leave that to the “kooky conspiracy theorists” 😂 OK, just one guess here. No, I do not believe that it is any particular racial or ethnic or national group orchestrating the undoing & reversal of the Great post-WW2 Middle Class Expansion. Instead, I’m an ‘equal opportunity hater,’ so collectively I refer to the sociopathic Ruling Class as just that: sociopaths!
(They don’t think & feel like you & I do.)
And suffice it to say “corruption,” same today as in the Roman Empire. Corruption is the problem, not the size & scope of the military.
Apparently, US obesity costs more nowadays than the US military does 😳 And add to that soon the impending crushing tsunami of Millennial & GenZ autistic children, who will overwhelm whatever’s left of Medicaid & Medicare after the Boomers chew through it like a plague of locusts.
At least a properly executed imperial war fighting economy generates an ROI for the motherland. In contrast, you get no ROI on obesity & autism, just a communistic make-work health “care” industry 😔 that will collapse under its own weight (i.e. corruption) (pun intended).
But poor health is just *one* of many problems (i.e. corruption) that threaten to financially bankrupt the US nation & US empire.
One last point I’ll make here - and thanks again for letting me think out loud (for letting me Scream Into Void here 😂). I’ve heard the British criticize us Americans for comparing ourselves too much to the Roman empire, and for worrying too much that our USA will collapse in a similar fashion (i.e. corruption).
The point is that when i made the decision ten years ago to (run away from my lot in life in the USA 😂) move my family of seven back to my wife’s native Tokyo-metro, I was taking a cue from History (Roman empire, British empire): sometimes a niche lifestyle in one of the empire’s far flung colonies is way, way better than life back home in the motherland 😔
Just for one example, my family eats a couple dozen eggs a day. I’m not sure exactly how many eggs we eat, and I’m not sure what the price of eggs is 👍🙂 but there’s a good chance that the money we spend on eggs each month is similar to what we pay each month for the single-payer health care system. That’s it! Our socialistic (not communistic! 😡) health care here in Japan is no more expensive than that 👍🙂
If I hear someone call Social Security and Medicare "entitlement programs" one more time, I'm going to lose my mind. Calling the "entitlement programs" is a way for those in congress to put the blame for their horrific mismanagement and theft of the dollars every working American has contributed to both programs with money that systematically leaves their paychecks before they even see it.
SS and Medicare are a contract between the citizen and the government to provide income and health care to senior citizen retirees and the physically disabled, who would have no means of supporting themselves at retirement. Ever hear the term "poor house?" They existed before Social Security.
The fact is that the politicians have used the Social Security as their personal piggy bank to pay for their god awful spending addictions for their forever wars, among other expenditures that do not benefit anyone except themselves and the corporate oligarchs.
When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, Social Security was deemed solvent until 2050. So like everything else government touches it eventually falls to the taxpayer to reward irresponsible behavior of our "elected representatives" by giving them more of our money.
That is a practice of waste, fraud, and abuse that comes to a screeching halt once DOGE dives into these and other programs. What has already been revealed is just the tip of the iceberg.
Only thirteen years behind the Canadian penny. Not that Canada was ever a super power, even though it's mineral rich landmass and fresh water supply would say different. Kind of like another tax , let's just round up...
"Just as the denarius lost meaning in the late empire, the loss of the penny signals that small denominations of the dollar are functionally useless. "
When has halting the minting of a coin either removed it from circulation or devalued it completely?
Perhaps it as responsible to halt creation of surplus coinage as it is to halt printing of fiat paper currency?
Just yesterday I made a cash purchase with a moderately sized bill and received at least one piece of every lesser sized tender -- coins and bills -- as change. Had I too many coins already, three steps away from that counter was a machine that would have returned bills in exchange for the number of coins I inserted. If the machine had failed, the cashier could have made the same exchange.
Seems like that penny is still in circulation. Maybe when the supplies held privately (or dredged from fountains or mined from seat cushions) run low, we can start up the mint again.
Those who speculate on currency aren't necessarily living in the same world as those who actually use it as legal tender.
Trump did not kill the penny. The Fed did however. Trump merely stated the obvious; if it takes 3.7 cents to mint a 1 cent coin, why are we minting it?
Yes! Now do the nickle -- just shy of triple its face value to produce (circa $0.13). If we're going end the charade, let's do it right.
Yeah I’ve been on about eliminating the penny for 20 years. Somehow I failed to think about the nickel and had no idea it costs .13. We’d need to mint more of those if we eliminate the penny. So I’m not sure where to stop at. I’m guessing the dime doesn’t cost so much, so maybe that’s the stopping point.
Just some cursory research suggests the dime runs about $.045 to produce. So that's the logical cutoff point, for sure. But, that would be a disaster if ever implemented, I suspect, especially for those trying to argue inflation is under control and our currency is strong.
It’s a bad indicator for sure. And some people would figure out how to game the system. But I think it would still be a net positive, at least from a minting/deficit standpoint
Fair point, @George Demic. We would, of course, like to see the logical conclusion of this train of thought -- End the Fed. We can always hope!
The history of Roman decline is an interesting parallel to our present day situation but some things are different. For instance, it's a global collapse now with nowhere else we can escape as the planet continues it's destructive course of unsustainable growth and toxicity. There are solutions if we choose to return to a path in tune with nature and curb our species genocidal march to oblivion. I think it would involve limiting our lust for wealth and power.
Absolutely! But it's hard to get an addict to break their addiction, especially when it's wealth and power we're talking about.
The ‘managed decline’ of the West is globally orchestrated, and at a supranational level. That’s one point I’d like to make here.
But it’s a good article, and I’m not challenging the article at all. And I’m not going to speculate about who exactly has been orchestrating the decline of the West these past 70-100+ years. I’ll leave that to the “kooky conspiracy theorists” 😂 OK, just one guess here. No, I do not believe that it is any particular racial or ethnic or national group orchestrating the undoing & reversal of the Great post-WW2 Middle Class Expansion. Instead, I’m an ‘equal opportunity hater,’ so collectively I refer to the sociopathic Ruling Class as just that: sociopaths!
(They don’t think & feel like you & I do.)
And suffice it to say “corruption,” same today as in the Roman Empire. Corruption is the problem, not the size & scope of the military.
Apparently, US obesity costs more nowadays than the US military does 😳 And add to that soon the impending crushing tsunami of Millennial & GenZ autistic children, who will overwhelm whatever’s left of Medicaid & Medicare after the Boomers chew through it like a plague of locusts.
At least a properly executed imperial war fighting economy generates an ROI for the motherland. In contrast, you get no ROI on obesity & autism, just a communistic make-work health “care” industry 😔 that will collapse under its own weight (i.e. corruption) (pun intended).
But poor health is just *one* of many problems (i.e. corruption) that threaten to financially bankrupt the US nation & US empire.
One last point I’ll make here - and thanks again for letting me think out loud (for letting me Scream Into Void here 😂). I’ve heard the British criticize us Americans for comparing ourselves too much to the Roman empire, and for worrying too much that our USA will collapse in a similar fashion (i.e. corruption).
The point is that when i made the decision ten years ago to (run away from my lot in life in the USA 😂) move my family of seven back to my wife’s native Tokyo-metro, I was taking a cue from History (Roman empire, British empire): sometimes a niche lifestyle in one of the empire’s far flung colonies is way, way better than life back home in the motherland 😔
Just for one example, my family eats a couple dozen eggs a day. I’m not sure exactly how many eggs we eat, and I’m not sure what the price of eggs is 👍🙂 but there’s a good chance that the money we spend on eggs each month is similar to what we pay each month for the single-payer health care system. That’s it! Our socialistic (not communistic! 😡) health care here in Japan is no more expensive than that 👍🙂
If I hear someone call Social Security and Medicare "entitlement programs" one more time, I'm going to lose my mind. Calling the "entitlement programs" is a way for those in congress to put the blame for their horrific mismanagement and theft of the dollars every working American has contributed to both programs with money that systematically leaves their paychecks before they even see it.
SS and Medicare are a contract between the citizen and the government to provide income and health care to senior citizen retirees and the physically disabled, who would have no means of supporting themselves at retirement. Ever hear the term "poor house?" They existed before Social Security.
The fact is that the politicians have used the Social Security as their personal piggy bank to pay for their god awful spending addictions for their forever wars, among other expenditures that do not benefit anyone except themselves and the corporate oligarchs.
When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, Social Security was deemed solvent until 2050. So like everything else government touches it eventually falls to the taxpayer to reward irresponsible behavior of our "elected representatives" by giving them more of our money.
That is a practice of waste, fraud, and abuse that comes to a screeching halt once DOGE dives into these and other programs. What has already been revealed is just the tip of the iceberg.
Only thirteen years behind the Canadian penny. Not that Canada was ever a super power, even though it's mineral rich landmass and fresh water supply would say different. Kind of like another tax , let's just round up...