lent to the joyous news be spread, the worthless old penny at last is dead. [00:04]
The president said, but after two centuries of copper in play, can just one order really sweep it away? [00:10]
To find out when power is in doubt, we turned to the Constitution to sort it out, which has Congress write what laws shall be, while the president decides how to enforce their decree. [00:20]
And since Congress created the pennies through ink, the President has no power to snap them away, you'd think. [00:27]
Okay, so the president really did just post that the days of printing pennies are now done because printing pennies is dumb. [00:36]
It costs more than a penny to print a penny and it has for ages. [00:41]
13 years ago, when I first made a video on this topic, click here, it costs two cents to print a penny, but since then, it's only gotten worse every year, nearly $0.04 now. [00:52]
Which means the government spends $1 to buy $0.27, a terrible deal, one shouldn't do even once, but instead, that somehow happens 100 million times every year, evaporating $70 million into the ether just to print pennies, which means yes, the US Mint manages to lose money while literally printing money. [01:21]
Guys, like literally how, like literally why? [01:25]
Well, the why is cuz Congressional Law says to do so, or does it, which brings us back to the president's post saying, sod this, it's stupid, we're stopping. [01:36]
But does the president really have the power to prevent the penny printing?
Cuz according to the Constitution, the president is to execute the laws that Congress writes. [01:46]
But the thing is, Congress, bless their hearts, has been having a hard time with their half of the homework. [01:54]
See, to pass a law means corralling hundreds of Congress critters together to all agree not just on the law they'd like to pass, but the exact wording and boring but vital details of that law, and that's like really hard to get everyone to agree on cuz laws have gotten way longer and complicateder, so there's more to argue over. [02:14]
Not to mention glueing loads of laws together and also it's summer break soon, so to get it done and go outside, Congress has developed a bit of a bad habit by writing broad laws that state their simple goal, X needs to happen and assigning the funds to pay for it, but then the exact details of how the X is to be done, they often just don't. [02:40]
Which means there's less to argue over, which makes the law easier to pass, but passes the problem to the President of how to X, exactly? [02:49]
And the penny is the perfect example. [02:53]
Congress passed the law stating which coins can exist and gave the money to make them, but how many coins to mint, that's very hard math. [03:03]
So, uh, just print the necessary amounts, okay?
Necessary?
Necessary.
Amounts?
Amounts. [03:14]
So, I decide what is necessary, what is amount?
Sure, perfect.
Wait, what? [03:20]
So, if the penny costs more to make than it's worth, then it seems to me necessarily unnecessary, and zero is technically an amount. [03:31]
Correct?
Which technically correct, but this trick of zero is something, right guy,s will definitely cause some pushback, because if it works, it means the president has the ability to eliminate anything Congress wasn't crystal clear about in the exact details of its creation. [03:51]
So, when an inevitable argument starts over who can tell who what to do what, then again, we take it to the Constitution, which tells us to take it to the courts, who always have only one question.
Mr. President, is there precedent? [04:06]
And in this case of coins, well, not exactly.
See, previous presidents with unpopular coins they wished to ditch, used the same trick, but softer instructing the mint to print the necessary amounts, needed only for numismatists, coin collectors that is, which was not a lot and effectively retired those coins from circulation. [04:28]
So, non-collecting citizens didn't have to deal with coins they didn't like.
The president got to push presidential power just to pinch, while Congress didn't feel countermanded.
Everyone was happy, especially the coin collectors whose unwanted coins just got rarer. [04:44]
But the penny is different.
Unlike those other coins, it's used everywhere. [04:51]
Billions need printing a year at a loss, which is the whole problem and what makes it harder to argue that zero is the necessary amount of pennies instead of the presidentially preferred amount of pennies. [05:08]
What will happen?
Now we have to wait and see.
Will the president push this trick to its technically correct max, and if so, and if it succeeds, it could become the precedent for future presidents for eliminating far more than just coins.
But until then, ahem, even a soft technically correct decree will make pennies mostly cease to be, saving billions now lost on copper's high cost. [05:38]
Thus, whichever path lies ahead, ding-dong, the penny is truly dead. [05:48]