The article in the url is not directly related to CSR (since it deals with the history of the 1¢ coin in the U.S.), but it is a great illustration of why change is so difficult in our political system, today (which is relevant to many of the topics raised in this newsletter):
"The penny may seem like a harmless coin. But few things symbolize our national dysfunction more than the inability to stop minting this worthless currency."
The history of the 1¢ coin and why it has been able to resist eradication for so long (when seemingly nobody that the article's author spoke to could identify a logical reason for keeping it) is equally fascinating to read and incredibly frustrating to think through:
"Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them, so that cash transactions that necessitate pennies … can be settled. … In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint."
This is something that virtually everyone agrees should happen, and have agreed it should happen for decades, yet it has not yet happened:
"A conservative estimate holds that there are 240 billion pennies lying around the United States — about 724 ($7.24) for every man, woman and child there residing, and enough to hand two pennies to every bewildered human born since the dawn of man. … A 2022 Federal Reserve survey found that Americans paid with cash just 18 percent of the time. It's impossible to know how many of those transactions might have involved coins, let alone pennies; the Fed doesn't even try to track this. One thing we know for sure about America's 1-cent coins, however, is that just one of them costs more than 3 cents to produce."
Fascinating, … and intensely frustrating, and is a symbol of so much that is dysfunctional about our political system, which of course bleeds into so many much more important decisions that we should be taking.
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2023
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Stop Making Cents
By Caity Weaver
September 8, 2024
The New York Times Magazine
Late Edition – Final
27-32, 43, 45
