Posted on 01/22/2025 12:15:10 PM PST by Olog-hai
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is targeting one of the federal government’s most notorious examples of waste: the penny.
Getting rid of the penny would be an early test of DOGE’s influence: Could it help eliminate a piece of government inefficiency that has survived decades of reform attempts?
On Tuesday, DOGE’s account on X highlighted the coin’s mounting costs: In fiscal year 2023, taxpayers spent more than $179 million producing over 4.5 billion pennies, with each coin costing more than three cents to make.
Despite bipartisan recognition of the penny’s costs since at least the 1970s, efforts to phase out or change the coin have repeatedly stalled in Congress, making it an ideal target for DOGE’s efficiency campaign.
Lawmakers were considering the questions as recently as November, when Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who founded the Senate’s DOGE caucus, said changing the makeup of the coin could save significant money. …
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Keep the penny. Just replace the current materials with recycled materials.
Win-win.
Materials to make a penny are already under 1 cent (97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper)...it is the labor that makes them cost 3 cents.
“$0.0075148 is the melt value for the 1982-2014 zinc cent on January 22, 2025.”
https://www.coinflation.com/coins/1982-2007-Lincoln-Cent-Penny-Value.html
Do some “de-flation” and “Make the Penny Great (worth something) Again”....hello Jerome?
Who’s to say they aren’t?
Merely because BI singles out one item on the list does not mean that it’s top priority for DOGE.
This the best low hanging fruit to start on? 179 million?
We can do better.
So they’re starting with this merely because Business Insider says they are?
Is it not ‘highlighted’? Could one reasonably equate a ‘highlighted’ item as a ‘start’ item since this article YOU posted is emerging at the START of the department??
Why did YOU post the article then??
What does that have to do with anything?
People on here ought to know enough to take BI with a grain of salt. And I didn’t post this in the news forum.
If ya make a post about something (especially if you don’t post a comment regarding WHY you’re posting it) don’t be surprised when people comment with their opinions.
The post was about a ‘highlighted’ topic, one of the things this new department is starting off examining...
I made a comment implying it was a pretty impotent topic to start with.
You come back with a snarky comment about only how BI decided is was a items they were starting with. WTH??
If you didn’t agree the new DOGE department was starting with this as one of their items.....DON’T POST THE ARTICLE??
LOL.
Are you making up rules for FR now? I see plenty of other people posting stuff from sources similar to BI without having to post disclaimers and presuming that denizens of the forum (mostly) can figure out the agenda of those publications; others need some help.
Have a nice day; hope your day starts to go better. Please stop reading things into my thread that aren’t there.
Lol. Smh
There are many, many whole departments that need to be eliminated. And you get mad when someone doesnt like the implications of your penny post.
Grow up a little.
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