It costs the U.S. mint two cents to make one penny, Which means that every year at least 22 million dollars of federal tax money goes to subsidizing the existence of the penny.
The time Americans spend fiddling with pennies costs us as much as a billion dollars a year. So every year American taxpayers pay 22 million dollars to have the opportunity to lose a billion dollars in productivity costs.
Many studies have shown that it wouldn’t raise prices, and it wouldn’t cut charitable contributions.
A nickel takes at least ten cents to produce. The real solution is that we have three coins, a dime, a fifty-cent piece, and a dollar. If we did this, it would save billions of dollars annually, and create lots of exciting efficiencies in our economy.