A penny for your thoughts.
But if you have that penny, will you even spend it?
I recently read an article in the New York Times Magazine about the wasteful production of pennies. In it, one expert, Caity Weaver, said, “Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them.”
Apparently, we are stuffing all our pennies in our piggy banks.
She continued. “A conservative estimate holds that there are 240 billion pennies lying around the United States…enough to hand two pennies to every bewildered human born since the dawn of man.”
But that is just half the battle. They cost too much to begin with.
The United States Mint disclosed in its recent Annual Report that the “unit cost” for both pennies and nickels was above their face values. This is now the eighth year in a row that this has happened.
It costs about 2.7 cents to make a penny.
And. It costs about 10.4 cents to make a nickel.
Whoa boy. Even I can do THAT math.
Maybe it is the materials.
Pennies have a composition of 2.5% copper with the balance in zinc.
Nickels are minted in 25% nickel with the balance in copper.
Regardless, it appears the government is spending a lot of money on making a coin that we just take home and throw in a jar.
Or a well. Yes. Maybe that’s it.
Maybe with the sad state of things in our world, people are taking all their pennies to Wishing Wells.
The wishing wells are being filled with those 240 billion pennies.
That turns out to be 2.4 billion dollars.
I hope it is working.
In the meantime, I loaded up my scuba gear and some buckets. I have some deep wells to attend to.
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“A wish is a dream your heart makes.” — from Disney’s Cinderella
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“Wishes are the echoes of the soul.” — B. Ruston
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“A wish is a powerful thing. It can make you believe in the impossible.” — Joel Newton
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A penny saved is a penny earned. Or. Is it?
