Cents and sensibility

The 1-cent coin, unchanged in size in 150 years, has reached the end of its usefulness. Its value is a flyspeck. It is hardly worth picking up off the sidewalk. It should be retired.

Instead, proposals are coming from Congress to make the penny from an even cheaper metal. For more than a century, the penny was 95 percent copper. In 1982, it was changed to 97.5 percent zinc in order to save money. Currently, zinc is one-quarter the price of copper, but even so, it costs more than 1 cent to make a zinc penny. Thus comes a proposal to make the penny from steel, which is priced not by the pound, but by the ton.

During World War II, when copper was needed for shell casings, the Mint made pennies of steel, and the pennies remained in circulation for decades.

Steel pennies could still be made at a profit to the government, but the main concern should not be the government's profit. If pennies were useful, the government could continue providing them at a small loss.

The problem with pennies is that they aren't useful. Today's penny has the buying power of one-22nd of the penny of 1908 and one-seventh of the penny of 1958.

Readers who remember 1958 might ask themselves whether anyone would have been interested in a coin worth one-seventh of a penny.

Ask yourself whether people of 2057 will welcome a penny worth one-seventh of the one-seventh. That is where we are going, and there is no point to it. Even Abraham Lincoln would be against it, and his face is on it.