According to the U.S. mint, it costs 2.1 cents to produce a penny. Back when The Washington Post did the math in 2006, the penny cost a meager 1.4 cents to produce, and we were already spending $115 million to keep them in circulation.

It makes no sense. The inefficiency confuses, even horrifies me. Surely, I thought, we must have a convincing reason for spending tax money on small circles of copper rather than something like education or research.

Nope. A study by Robert Whaples estimated that fiddling with pennies creates about a $300 million per year loss in productivity cost because it adds an average of 2.5 seconds to every cash-register transaction. So, basically, we are paying money in order to lose more money. Besides, most places won’t take pennies any more—look at parking meters or soda machines.

There is even a website called Copper Pennies, which is devoted to trying to sell you pennies so that you can take advantage of the fact their metal is worth more than their face value by selling your copper back to the government at a higher price (which is illegal, so don’t fall for it). You know something is wrong with your government’s coinage system when there are scam websites designed to take advantage of it. 

Why, then, do we have pennies? If we are losing money on pennies, we should stop making pennies. It’s a no-brainer.

Two bills have been proposed to get rid of the penny, one whimsically called the Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act, but both were shot down. Why? Because people like pennies—two-thirds of people, when polled, said that they didn’t want to get rid of them.

There is even a group that has sprung up in their defense, called the Americans for Common Cents. Which is ironic, since there is nothing commonsensical about keeping the penny.

Others worry that removing the penny will cause an increase in prices or a decrease in charitable contributions, but it won’t. We have precedents: Canada got rid of its penny (which cost it 1.6 cents to produce) earlier this year, and prices and charitable contributions there are doing fine.

Something similar has  happened in our history. The half cent coin was gotten rid of in 1837 because of inflation. It had the same buying power as today’s dime and no ill-effects were felt by the general populace when its production was stopped. However, it is interesting to note that there was a similar emotional backlash to the axing of the coin as there has been to the prospect of axing the penny—businessmen even went so far as to produce their own “half cent tokens.” But they economically unfeasible and quickly went out of business.

While our collective nostalgia does reflect sweetly on humanity, I hold by the idea that emotion should probably be ignored on issues of coinage. Spread the word. Death to the penny.