Richard J. Maybury’s book Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? provides a good introduction to government’s destruction over time of the value of money. The “penny candy” mentioned in the book’s title has moved on to higher and higher prices as the value of the penny has continued to decrease. Now pennies themselves are going away with the last new penny having been minted by the United States government on Wednesday.
“Whatever happened to the penny?” is a question people will be asking years from now.
In my August 4 article “The Happy Penny” I provided a heads-up about the coming end of penny minting, writing that:
In May, the United States Mint declared it had made its final order of blanks upon which pennies are pressed. The plan is for these blanks to be turned into the last pennies put into circulation.
I also discussed in that article how the composition of nickels may change or their production may be terminated soon as well given that, like pennies, their metallic value and production costs are above their face value. Stopping the production of pennies and even nickels would be a continuation of the long process that has accompanied the inflation of the money supply that I noted included the government’s abandonment of gold and then silver coins, as well as the removal of most copper from pennies to be replaced by cheaper zinc.
In about ninety years the US has moved from having a gold standard to not even being able to maintain a “zinc standard.”
Describing why Americans can no longer buy a piece of candy for a penny like they did in the 1940s, Maybury concludes in his book: “The candy didn’t go up; the penny went down.” Now the penny has gone so far down that the US government has decided it is fine for it to go away.
