Today it costs about 1.7 cents for the US Government to mint one penny (worth, if you didn't know, only one cent). This is a clear waste of taxpayer dollars, with the US Government paying approximately $138,488,800 in 2014 to mint an amount of pennies that are in theory worth only
$81,464,000. In practice however, those pennies were more worth nothing than $81 thousand, because 1 cent is simply too small an amount of money to facilitate any monetary transactions. Other countries like Canada and Australia have discontinued the use of their pennies and there have been no harmful effects. It is time we take a practical step and discontinue the penny.
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