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DOGE takes aim at the penny
Business Insider ^ | Jan 22, 2025, 11:54 AM EST | Alice Tecotzky

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: doge; pennies; penny
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To: Olog-hai
What would Lincoln say???

Put Lincoln on the nickel and drop Jefferson?

-PJ

21 posted on 01/22/2025 12:28:03 PM PST by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))
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To: Cletus.D.Yokel

They did something similar during WW2 when copper was needed for the war industry; they made these red cardboard type pennies. MY grandad had a cup full of them as souvenirs.


22 posted on 01/22/2025 12:29:52 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: Olog-hai

DOGE needs to take aim at the H1B scam.


23 posted on 01/22/2025 12:29:58 PM PST by bobcat62
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To: Olog-hai

Make pennies out of cheaper materials, like plastic.


24 posted on 01/22/2025 12:30:10 PM PST by philippa
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To: uranium penguin

I still haven’t seen any nickels or dimes from 2024. They usually turn up in March or April of the issue year.


25 posted on 01/22/2025 12:30:12 PM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: Cletus.D.Yokel

Use those electrical punch-out slugs from junction boxes. They’ll last longer.


26 posted on 01/22/2025 12:31:05 PM PST by bobcat62
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To: Strict9

What do you want to do? Make welfare un-lucrative or something? /s


27 posted on 01/22/2025 12:31:09 PM PST by Sequoyah101 (Donald John Trump. First man to be Elected to the Presidency THREE times since FDR.)
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To: Strict9

” Not one dime. You don’t get a che k for being blind, you don’t get a check for being homeless, you don’t get a check for being retarded”

May you be struck blind, homeless and retarded. Well, you’ve already got the retarded part covered.


28 posted on 01/22/2025 12:31:11 PM PST by dljordan (What would Michael Collins do?)
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To: Political Junkie Too

“Put Lincoln on the nickel and drop Jefferson?”

Hell no! One Jefferson is worth ten Lincolns.


29 posted on 01/22/2025 12:32:07 PM PST by dljordan (What would Michael Collins do?)
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To: Fai Mao

My thoughts exactly... Fix the money and the penny will be worth something again.


30 posted on 01/22/2025 12:32:40 PM PST by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)
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To: SkyDancer

1943 steel pennies.


31 posted on 01/22/2025 12:35:04 PM PST by Dead Corpse (A Psalm in napalm...)
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To: Strict9
Goldwater, in The Conscience of a Conservative, advocated getting rid of welfare in favor of private charity:
Let welfare be a private concern. Let it be promoted by individuals and families, by churches, private hospitals, religious service organizations, community charities and other institutions that have been established for this purpose.

If the objection is raised that private institutions lack sufficient funds, let us remember that every penny the federal government does not appropriate for welfare is potentially available for private use—and without the overhead charge for processing the money through the federal bureaucracy.

Indeed, high taxes, for which government welfarism is so largely responsible, is the biggest obstacle to fund raising by private charities.

32 posted on 01/22/2025 12:35:42 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Olog-hai

How will I pay my taxes?


33 posted on 01/22/2025 12:35:49 PM PST by HYPOCRACY (Democracy is dead. Long live the Republic!)
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To: Olog-hai

Yikes - very small potatoes. Federal government civil service workers need to be fired - 50% would be a great start.


34 posted on 01/22/2025 12:36:42 PM PST by DennisR (Look around - God gives countless clues that He does, indeed, exist.)
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To: SkyDancer

Pennies these days are zinc with copper plating.


35 posted on 01/22/2025 12:39:43 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: dljordan; Olog-hai

Dump FDR and promote the others.


36 posted on 01/22/2025 12:39:50 PM PST by larrytown (A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Then they graduate...)
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To: uranium penguin

Collectors would go nuts. U. S. coins from 1965-67 were minted at all US mints...San Fran, Denver, Philly, West Point...without mintmarks, to minimize the number that would be removed from circulation by collectors. Things were a little crazy when silver was removed from the coinage. The Mint should be turning a tidy profit from coins minted in San Fransisco, these days.


37 posted on 01/22/2025 12:42:51 PM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: Olog-hai

And they charge 5-7 cents for washers. Not while I have a drill press....


38 posted on 01/22/2025 12:46:54 PM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: Olog-hai

A penny today is roughly the same value as if we had a 1/100th of a cent coin in 1915.

In 1915 Henry Ford paid his workers 5 dollars a day, and had a 6 day work week. That would be 30 dollars a week. Hypothetically every two weeks, that worker could go down and exchange that cash for three shiny new twenty dollar one ounce US Mint gold coins.

essentially, that worker was getting paid 202,800 a year in purchasing power. That is how much purchasing power the Federal Reserve and central banker have stolen from you. With today’s 37,500 median income, todays worker could buy 3 gold coins every two months.

It’s amazing what losing 1 or 2% inflation for a hundred years does.


39 posted on 01/22/2025 12:48:10 PM PST by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2025... RETURN OF THE JEDI...)
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To: DennisR
In fiscal year 2023, taxpayers spent more than $179 million producing over 4.5 billion pennies

The potential savings of eliminating the entire $179 million would only amount to 0.0025% of government spending. It is the equivalent of a family making $100,000 per year who are over a half million dollars in debt cutting $2.50 out of their annual budget. If the DOGE effort is even wasting a moment of their time on such irrelevant topics, the whole effort is a complete sham.

40 posted on 01/22/2025 12:48:25 PM PST by Ronaldus Magnus
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