When something costs more to make than it is worth then we should stop making it. The penny has reached this point. We have plenty of pennies in circulation and people will start to spend those jar full of pennies they store away if it means the government is saving money.
Pennies are about 98% zinc so the "zinc lobby" will fight this idea. So to appease the "zinc lobby" the government can reconfigure the compostion of the other coins to incorporate a percentage of zinc and thus reducing the more expensive copper content. The other coins are made of at least 75% copper and 25% nickel. So the addition of zinc into the other coins will also make them cheaper to make. More savings.
Zinc is less than a dollar per oz. while copper is more than $3.50 per oz.
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