The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Tone of the article

  • Some readers found the opening line needlessly spiteful toward the US for a topic as mundane as coins.
  • Others read it as light humor and were surprised others didn’t see it that way.

“No plan” vs natural phase-out

  • Several argue no elaborate federal plan is needed: stop minting, let pennies trickle into banks, be recycled/scrapped, and disappear like other obsolete denominations (e.g., half-cent, Canadian and Australian low-value coins).
  • Others think regulatory “warts” should be addressed beforehand (e.g., how rounding interacts with laws and benefits programs) rather than ad‑hoc after the fact.

Regulation, SNAP, and rounding

  • A recurring concern: SNAP rules requiring equal pricing for SNAP and non‑SNAP customers can conflict with cash-rounding schemes if card/SNAP buyers pay exact amounts and cash buyers are rounded.
  • Counterpoints:
    • Law is unlikely to be applied mechanically over trivial penny-level differences.
    • SNAP parity can be preserved simply by treating SNAP as a cash-equivalent for rounding.
    • A tiny statutory amendment could explicitly allow rounding, though some doubt US politics can handle even small fixes quickly.

Business and banking frictions

  • Marketplace reports businesses scrambling for pennies due to changes in Fed distribution; some commenters think this is overblown and will resolve via rounding and updated registers.
  • Experiences with banks vary: some demand rolled coins or refuse small deposits, others provide free coin-counting machines; Coinstar-style machines are common but often charge steep fees.
  • Many people dislike coins, report throwing pennies away, or immediately offloading them; others object that discarding metal is wasteful and suggest jars and occasional cashing-in.

Cost, materials, and disposal

  • Widely noted that pennies cost multiple cents to mint; zinc is already the “cheap” metal that replaced copper.
  • Suggestions include: scrapping/shredding pennies, using them in brass production, or selling large zinc quantities as scrap.
  • Melting coins remains legally murky; enforcement is seen as highly discretionary.

Pricing and denomination structure

  • Some propose rounding all physical prices to $0.05 or even $0.10; others note this would require touching essentially every printed price and might clash with entrenched $X.99 pricing and the dominant role of the 25¢ coin.
  • Examples from Europe and Asia:
    • Eurozone: 1–2 cent coins effectively unused in many places; cash rounded, card transactions exact.
    • Ireland: items still priced at .99 but rounded to whole euros in cash, often favoring merchants.
    • UK expectation that missing low coins should lead to consumer‑favorable rounding.
    • Hong Kong and Taiwan illustrate simplified decimal practices and integer-only pricing.

Cash vs digital money

  • Some see shrinking coin use as part of the broader decline of physical cash, already advanced in some countries.
  • Others raise civil-liberty concerns: fully digital money makes all spending traceable and gives governments or payment processors power to block categories of purchases.

Alternative uses and safety tangents

  • Novel uses mentioned: penny flooring, DIY heatsinks, and pie weights for blind-baking crusts.
  • A subthread debates whether heating post‑1982 zinc-core pennies for baking poses a health risk; one side warns about zinc fumes, others argue oven temperatures are far below zinc’s boiling point and that copper plating and common cooking practice make this effectively safe.