Dem
47
GOP
53
Actually, it's more like a penny NO more. After 233 years, an era (of sorts) has come to an end: On Wednesday, the U.S. Mint produced its last penny. The auspicious event took place in the city where it all started (both the minting of coins, and the nation as a whole), Philadelphia.
Over the years, the cost of making a penny rose well beyond the actual value of a penny. It was up to about four cents per coin, which meant that keeping the nation supplied with pennies was costing the government more than $50 million per year. Given that so much of commerce is electronic these days, and that even many cash transactions don't allow the use of pennies (e.g., vending machines), spending that money no longer made a lot of sense. So, the penny gets to go the way of the dodo.
This might be the one DOGE-style maneuver that even most Democrats can get behind. That said, this is also an administration that squeezes anyone and everyone (well, except rich taxpayers) for every last penny. And in this case, they are also going to squeeze them WITH every last penny, as the last few coins of the last run of pennies will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. We know that, with many collectibles, having the first or second specimen produced is pretty valuable. We do not know how much value there is in having, say, penny number 1,502,281,202,292 of 1,502,281,202,298 produced all-time.
The last time the U.S. retired a coin was in 1857, when it was decided that the half-cent no longer made much sense. At that rate, it is easy to project that the next time the U.S. retires a coin will be in the year 3353. Readers might want to start hoarding their nickels now, because one day, they will be collectors' items. Maybe your great-times-fifty-grandkids can pay off their 50-year Trump™ Mortgages by selling nickel number 432,920,278,277 of 13,289,227,282,010.
One interesting question—at least, interesting to us—that this brings up is if the old aphorisms that refer to the penny will survive once the last pennies disappear from circulation. Will people still say "a penny saved is a penny earned" or "a penny for your thoughts" or "penny-pinching"? Or will they upgrade them for inflation, and start saying, say, "a nickel for your thoughts"? We suppose "penny wise, pound foolish" has survived in the U.S. all these years, even though it doesn't make sense anymore, since the U.S. hasn't used pounds sterling for more than two centuries. So maybe the current "penny" sayings will survive, and parents will just have to tell their kids what a penny was. By them, they might also have to tell their kids what "cash" was.
Finally, let us note that the reason that Abraham Lincoln was put on the penny, on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1909, was to emphasize that he was the president of the common man. Now, he'll only be on the $5 bill, and George Washington will be the only president to appear on commonly circulating paper money AND coins (the $2 bill is NOT commonly circulating, and does not count). We think that the correct solution here is to boot Washington off the quarter, since that doesn't make much sense anyhow, and it's a nice pairing to just have Washington on the $1 and Lincoln on the $5.
If Washington is to be replaced by a president, we'd pick Theodore Roosevelt, who is surely the best president who has not been given his own coin (other than those presidential dollars, which every president got, even that lousy bastard Millard Fillmore). That said, it doesn't have to be a president. Benjamin Franklin was on the half-dollar for a long time, and Alexander Hamilton is on the $10. So, our actual pick for the quarter would be Rosa Parks. History does not record exactly how she paid for her bus fare on that fateful day in 1955, but fare was 15 cents, so she may well have paid with a quarter. That would be a nice parallelism with the Roosevelt dime, which was created because of his support for the March of Dimes.
Of course, if readers have other ideas for who should be on the quarter (if Washington gets the boot), we would be interested to hear them at comments@electoral-vote.com. That said, we really should keep such talk among ourselves, for now. If there are any changes to coins under the auspices of the current Congress, then the nation is 100% guaranteed to end up with the Trump quarter. (Z)