Article
It Is Time to Finish the Job
A Proposal to Modernize American Currency
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.
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.