No more pennies, and other Canadian innovations
Donald Trump ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to stop minting pennies.
Pennies are stupid. They cost 3.69 cents each to produce and distribute. Producing 3 billion worthless pennies cost the government $85 million last year.
The only problem with this is that Congress, not the President, authorizes minting of coins, so you can add this to the list of powers Trump has decided belong to him. Regardless of whether this is legal, though, it’s a good idea. The main purpose of pennies is to prop up uneven table legs and cause fires when used in place of old-style electrical fuses.
Trump didn’t specify how this change will ripple through the financial system or what buyers and sellers should do about small transactions. They’ll probably round cash payments to the nearest nickel and continue to accept electronic transactions denominated in dollars and cents, as the Canadians did when they got rid of their pennies.
The Canadians did it first
Canada dumped the penny in 2012. A Canadian dollar was worth about 99 US cents at the time. It’s now only worth about 70 cents. (Dumping pennies didn’t cause the decline.)
The Canadian government put a plan in place to take pennies out of circulation. Financial institutions paid citizens for 14 million kilograms of pennies and trucked them to be melted down.
If we’re going to do this, we need a plan, too. Let’s do what Canada did. It seems to have worked. We can melt the pennies down and use them to build more border wall.
As long as we’re adopting Canadian innovations, should we do any of the following?
- Remove dollar bills from circulation in favor of dollar coins. The Canadians did that in 1989. Take note: we won’t. Americans have a lot more sentimental attachment to dollars than they do to pennies, even if this change would make it easier to use vending machines.
- Adopt the metric system. Canadians did this in the 1970s. Every school child and scientist introduced to metric knows it’s simpler and better. But any politician suggesting it would face a tonne of resistance, because adherents of Fahrenheit and mileage would line up on the 50-yard line and never budge an inch.
- Embrace universal health care. Why am I paying extra so my insurance company can deny coverage for my health conditions? Because free enterprise. Don’t hold your breath (or turn your head and cough), the for-profit insurers and medical practice groups will amputate this at the knees.
- Switch to a parliamentary system. A chief executive who serves until the legislature changes its mind? Not in America. We like leaders who lead without interference and a system that disempowers third parties. At least, we always have.
Of course, Canada could offer to make the U.S. its eleventh province. Wasn’t President Trump suggesting something like that? Or am I labouring under a false impression? Sorry, eh.
Not sure why Canada wouldn’t be 51st – 63rd states. Except for the significant House and Senate power.
With regard to the metric system, it is easier to understand. No question there. But the transfer interim from completely one to completely the other is rife with problems of practicality in the field. When I lived in northern Virginia working for a civil engineering firm, one of the counties decided that everything in that county had to go metric. We drafters of architectural and engineering plans had to add (in parentheses) the imperial measurement next to the metric measurement for (for example) the length and diameter of storm drain pipes. Plans are already overly cluttered with information; we couldn’t just make the text smaller – it had to be one-tenth of an inch high minimum for readability. Pipe manufacturers had to produce metric sizes for the contractors. Then the contractors discovered that the fit between a metric pipe and an imperial coupling to an existing pipe in the field didn’t work – either the metric was too big and didn’t fit, or it was too small, preventing an impervious, waterproof seal. New gaskets were required.
After three years of this experiment, the Virginia county returned to an all-imperial system. It would have taken several decades to progress beyond this problem, a financially prohibitive prospect.
As clumsy as our imperial system of measurements may be, it works for most of us, because the common people and most professionals in most fields have always used it. It has been applied in the field to most, if not all, of our infrastructure, architecture, and manufacturing for centuries.
The rest of the world knows all about backward America, but Canada was late to the party on these matters as well.
Australia removed its 1- and 2-cent coins from circulation 33 years ago, and was proposing to remove its 5-cent coins when we had this little thing called Covid-19.
We took $1 and $2 paper bills out of circulation in 1984, in favour of coins of the same denominations. Plans are afoot to replace the $5 bill with a coin in the near future.
(And we replaced all our paper bills with polymer ones in 1988, the plastic banknotes being not just much more durable but also much harder to counterfeit.)
We went metric in 1971, introduced universal health care in 1973, and have had a Parliamentary system at the federal level since 1901 (and at the state level since, well, the foundation of the Australian states in the 1800s).
As for the rest of the Australian system of government, an American ambassador was asked, on his departure, whether there was anything Australian he would like to take back home with him, and he replied “the Australian electoral system”, that is, a system administered by an impartial Electoral Commission under laws which forbid gerrymandering and mandate ranked choice voting, allowing the election of many independents and minor-party candidates.
But you’re right, America won’t do anything sensible if it can cling to long-outdated traditions.
Nickels also cost more to make than they sell for.
I remember numerous attempts at killing Pennies and Dollar Bills. I do not remember what fraction always shut those two efforts down in Congress. We did have several attempts at dollar coins and the ones I know were failures (apparently dollar coins were hot for one gold rush).
The metric or International System of Units (SI) is usually better, except in temperature, where it sucks (except at -40). I remember the 1975 adoption. I do not remember the 1866 attempt.
I wonder if revaluing the currency would be better….
Yes! 🇨🇦