cheaper pennies and nickels

[jeff of pa]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. Mint is facing a problem -- especially during these penny-pinching times. It turns out it costs more to make pennies and nickels than the coins are worth.
And because of that, the Obama administration this week asked Congress for permission to change the mix of metal that goes to make pennies and nickels, an expensive recipe that has remained unchanged for more than 30 years.
To be precise, it cost 2.4 cents to make one penny in 2011 and about 11.2 cents for each nickel.
Given the number of coins that the mint produces -- 4.3 billion pennies and 914 million nickels last year alone, those costs add up pretty quickly: a little more than $100 million for each coin.

Obama wants cheaper pennies and nickels - Feb. 15, 2012

 

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[Moonrover]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. Mint is facing a problem -- especially during these penny-pinching times. It turns out it costs more to make pennies and nickels than the coins are worth. ....

Obama wants cheaper pennies and nickels - Feb. 15, 2012

This is a real problem. As the article mentions, the administrative and production cost per coin is the 800 pound gorilla. Cost of the metal itself is still slightly higher than the face coin value. No easy solutions have been suggested except ... for one that I'm tossing out for discussion; subcontract the coinage out to China! I mention this jokingly, but after thinking about it a while, I do see that much of the cost in excess of base metal value would be greatly reduced.

Isn't there a song from the James Bond movie (A Spy Who Loved Me) called "Nobody Does It Better" ? Reference to China? OK, maybe it should be "Nobody Does It Cheaper".

I ramble in jest, of course, however the sad fact is that we (or should I say the US Bureaucracy) are mired hopelessly in an escalation of administrative costs. For THAT there is no currently politically correct solution.

M