@valleyforge I'm not sure its either of those to be honest. I think it has more to do with the fact that it would devalue the money supply. A penny is worth more than a penny in terms of raw material, many people keep huge quantities of pennies for their intrinsic rather than implied value.
In addition it means rounding loss for the government on things like taxes. If you buy 1.05 in stuff and tax comes to 0.19 (random numbers) you'd only be able to pay 0.15 in sales tax and the government would have lost out on nearly 25% of their tax in that particular transaction.
@freemo @valleyforge Easy solution! Just multiply all costs by a factor of 5, now that you don’t have the penny to remind people that money used to be worth something.
Then they buy 5.15 in stuff and tax comes to 0.95, easily payable in nickels.
No, no you don’t need to thank me. I’m just glad I solved this conundrum.
(Wait what do you mean the rich are demanding we take nickels out of circulation??)