Billionaire Elon Musk Proposes Initiative to Save the US 179 Million USD

Billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of the (DOGE) Government Efficiency Task Force, has made a proposal that could save the US 179 million USD. Elon Musk and DOGE have just targeted a new federal spending cut goal: Eliminating the 1 cent coin of the US. In a post on X, DOGE said that the US spends about 3 cents to produce a coin with a face value of only 1 cent (0.01 USD). "The cost to produce each coin is over 3 cents and it costs US taxpayers over 179 million USD in fiscal year 2023," DOGE said. DOGE is targeting a long-standing controversial issue, as the cost of producing this coin has steadily increased over the past few years. In 2016, the cost of producing a coin was only about 1.5 cents, less than half the current cost. However, saving 179 million USD for coin production is just a small amount compared to DOGE's federal spending reduction target in the coming years, which could reach trillions of USD. Over the past year, the cost of producing pennies has continued to rise. The U.S. Mint's 2024 annual report shows that each 1 cent coin now costs about 3.7 cents to produce and distribute. The main coin is made of zinc, coated with a layer of copper to create distinctive colors. The price of zinc fluctuates from year to year, but currently the cost per ton has doubled compared to 2016, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. Federal officials have proposed temporarily halting coin production in recent years, with former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew advocating for this idea in 2015. Some economists have also called for the elimination of coins from circulation, but this could have negative cost implications, such as rounding transactions up to 5 cents, according to a blog post by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in 2020. "For a single item or small-value transaction, rounding the price up or down can result in significant price changes," the article notes. Some countries have eliminated the equivalent coin, including Canada, where they stopped minting the 1 cent coin in 2012. An economic analysis in 2018 showed that Canadian consumers had to pay an additional 3.27 million Canadian dollars (2,27 million USD) each year at grocery stores due to rounding prices up after the elimination of the coin. DOGE may need to expand its focus to other coins, as not only the 1 cent coin has production costs higher than its face value. The 2024 report from the US Mint shows that it costs about 14 cents to produce and distribute each 5-cent coin. At the beginning of the week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order formally establishing DOGE, placed within the executive branch with a mission to "optimize efficiency and productivity". President Donald Trump has announced that DOGE will provide recommendations to "reduce unnecessary regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies". Musk said the organization aims to cut $500 billion in annual federal government spending. DYOR! #Write2Earn #Write&Earn $DOGE {spot}(DOGEUSDT)