Minting pennies is a loss-maker that Elon Musk and DOGE want to stop
America loses money while making some of its money.
For almost 20 years now, the physical act of making some of our money has weirdly been a money-loser for the United States Mint. Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are apparently looking to undo that paradox.
Stop making cents
In one of the first DOGE posts on X after the department was established, it highlighted the well-known oddity that each individual penny costs more than 3 cents to make and distribute.
It also wrongly claimed that producing the coin set US taxpayers back more than $179 million in FY23. (That figure was the loss of minting pennies and nickels that year.) However, the point still stands: America loses money while making some of its money, with the cost of making each denomination only rising in 2024.
According to the Mint’s 2024 annual report, every penny cost a relatively whopping 3.69 cents to produce, the 19th year in a row that the cost of production and distribution has outstripped the actual monetary value of the coin itself. While this phenomenon isn’t unprecedented, the current losing streak — which started in 2006, when the Mint explained that the increasing price of zinc and nickel was driving the cost of its lowest denominations higher — is the longest on record.
It’s not just one-cent pieces either…
Another day, another nickel
Nickels have managed to escape some of the heat from Musk and co. and have generally been excluded from many of the anti-penny arguments that have cropped up in recent years, often owing to the fact that we mint far fewer of them, but they’ve also cost more to make than they’re worth since 2006. Last year, the Mint spent 13.78 cents to make and distribute every nickel, meaning that the 202 million five-cent coins that entered circulation cost $27.8 million to make, almost 3x more than they’re actually worth.
The same is not true for every coin that the US Mint produces, of course, with dimes, quarters, and 50-cent pieces all costing less than face value to produce last year.
When faced with the question of whether DOGE intends to abolish the penny, a spokesperson replied “Shouldn’t you ask Treasury?” Meanwhile, thanks to a tweet from Ryan Petersen, the founder and CEO of Flexport, Elon Musk’s attention seems to have specifically turned to the US Mint in San Francisco, which produces commemorative coins.
