Back when the United States had a great economy, in the nineteenth century, in the roaring 1920s, in postwar prosperity after World War II, the dollar itself was redeemable not merely in copper (100 pieces to a dollar) but in gold (1/35th of an ounce of it). The decline of the penny is yet another further attenuation of the classical monetary systems of the past—read about it in Free Money—above all the gold standard that we had with us as recently as 1971. The shame of getting rid of the penny is that the venerable copper, “found a penny at my feet,” as Joni Mitchell warbled , is yet another hacking away of links to the hard-money systems that really delivered growth.
Author: Brian Domitrovic, Contributor, Brian Domitrovic, Contributor https://www.forbes.com/sites/briandomitrovic/
Published at: 2025-05-26 20:39:27
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