The total came to be $5.01. The customer ruffled through her bag in search of any loose change. There wasn’t any. The cashier handed her a receipt and told her to keep it moving. “Time is money,” the cashier said, and that singular penny wasn’t worth her time. 

Economists and government officials heard this scenario repeating over and over again all across the country and then came the question: Is it really worth it? If someone drops a penny, is it worth a second to bend over and pick it up? The answer for most Americans is no. In a time where digital payment, bitcoin and credit cards are all the rage, cash has taken a step back in society, and coins along with it. Pennies in particular have stepped out of existence. Times have changed, so why has it taken so long for something so small to disappear?

Life is all about responding to change, adversity, and struggle. Adaptation is what makes societies survive and thrive. The beauty of objects is most fundamentally understood when you lose them. The penny’s discontinuation isn’t just about saving money; it exposes American society, and its inability to let go. 

The decision to discontinue and remove the penny from society wasn’t an easy one. The penny has been a multigenerational foundation to currency. The Silent Generation used pennies to stretch small allowances, whereas boomers used them to learn to count. Regardless of the function they served for the time period, they were valuable for many reasons.

Fast forward to today. What changed? When did the penny become so economically irrelevant? What once functioned as a significant unit of exchange has slowly been transformed into an inconvenience, fueled by consumer disparage and inflation.

One of the primary issues with the penny was its cost to produce versus value. Around 2005, the penny began to cost more than a cent to produce. At its peak, in 2024, the penny cost 3.7 cents to produce. While that number may sound trivial, at scale it has had obstructive effects on the U.S. economy. 

But production costs only tell part of the story. Inflation has deteriorated the value of U.S. currency, and especially the penny. The penny, being the weakest of the four coins, has lost its economic relevance due to how little it is worth. People used to care about a penny, value it, and keep hold of it. But now  they aren’t even worth a second of a person’s day, and they are practically invisible. You used to be able to purchase a piece of candy or a chocolate bar for a penny. That’s why people would carry them. There was a saying that said “every penny saved is a penny earned,”  but that phrase no longer holds material meaning

While the penny may have lost its economic relevancy decades ago, for a long time it had still remained a significant piece of politics and symbolism for our nation up until its discontinuation on November 12th, 2025. People were afraid to let it go because of the nostalgia and history it holds for our nation’s currency. In 1990, U.S. representative Jim Kolbe first introduced  the idea of nickel rounding (rounding to the nearest nickel rather than penny). Originally, this idea was considered unnecessary and unamerican, and Kolbe received a great amount of criticism for it. People simply weren’t ready to accept it and didn’t understand how the expenses of the penny production were affecting the economy.

While the economic and political arguments against the penny have been debated for decades, they don’t give full context to why the coin survived for so long. The answer lies not only in policy, but in people. Different generations have grown up with different ways of facing the penny: some grew up on it, while others never used it. To understand why the penny’s disappearance took as long as it did, it is necessary to understand how its role changed across generations.

During the childhoods of the Silent Generation and baby boomers, the penny carried real weight. It was a meaningful and real unit of currency. Pennies would be saved in jars, counted carefully, and used intentionally. They weren’t only used as currency, however. They also symbolized the knowledge of financial currency because that is how those generations learned about value. A penny wasn’t just a penny. A penny was a piece of candy. A penny was a symbol. 

Inflation isn’t the only reason for the diminishing usage rate of pennies, however. Arguably the most relevant reason is the introduction and wide acceptance of digital payment. Over time people have adopted new forms of currency through credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, and so many more. As Dartmouth Economics professor Diego Comin said, “currency per se isn’t that interesting because at the end of the day how we make payments is not that critical, simply that we can make payments.” In the end, being able to pay is the only aspect that consumers and producers both value. Therefore, payment is simply about convenience for the consumer. What is easiest to carry in my wallet? What saves me the most money? At the end of the day that is what truly matters, not whether your grandfather used pennies to learn how to count. 

The emphasis on coins and physical tender varies heavily across nations. Some countries, like Japan, are still very cash dependent; for this reason their coin system has stayed intact. “If you go to Kyoto and take a bus, you have to go with coins. They will not take any digital payments. It’s interesting because Japan hasn’t had much inflation in the last thirteen years,” Comin said. That brings up the thought of how interconnected the economy and the currency really are. Although Japan’s inflation rate hasn’t risen in the last thirteen years, neither has its economy. Professor Comin claims that “inflation is neither good nor bad,” because to have a growing economy, inflation has to rise to a certain extent. 

Beyond production costs and rising inflation, the discontinuation of the penny has an underlying message: the U.S. can change and Americans are reevaluating their definitions of value when it comes to currency. Value was once characterized and defined by physical and emotional thoughts, but now it relies heavily upon accessibility, speed, and efficiency. The penny has become a symbol of inefficiency in a society that targets economic perfection. 

Despite this, most Americans struggled to let go of the penny for a very long time. This resistance highlights how reluctant of a society we are when it comes to change. Humans claim they want improvement in society, yet aren’t ready to make the sacrifices necessary to grow our economy. 

However, this first step of discontinuing the penny demonstrates that we are on the way to optimization and that society has finally learned to outweigh value over nostalgia. Change has never been comfortable in any aspect of life. It can take some time to get adjusted, and especially so when an entire generation of Americans need to accept something like the penny has been taken away from them. However, it’s important to understand that change is absolutely necessary for progress, and although, periodically, it may be difficult, we as a society must learn to accept it. By accepting changes like the discontinuation of the penny we, as a society, display both our willingness to adapt, and our perseverance.

With the growth of AI and many other technological advances in society, change is bound to happen. Jobs are bound to be lost. Roles and responsibilities are going to change. The penny being discontinued wasn’t the first, and it most definitely won’t be the last extinction that our nation will be forced to swallow. Fortunately, it may help us learn to accept change more holistically, for the greater good of our country’s economy.

While the penny may have lost its economic relevancy decades ago, for a long time it had still remained a significant piece of politics and symbolism for our nation up until its discontinuation on November 12th, 2025.