A local entrepreneur welcomes news that the Treasury Department plans to stop manufacturing the penny.
The United States mint says after this last batch of pennies it just ordered runs out, that will be the end of the copper-looking coin.
Glen Meakem, who founded Freemarkets and then later the cloud storage site Forever, has been a longtime critic of the one cent piece.
He says most people get them for change and then just throw them in a jar. Meakem says if collectors’ value them, they can have them.
“People who are interested in coins will certainly want to collect pennies over the years but there are billions and billion and billions of pennies and huge amounts of value sitting in jars and it's a good thing for us to move on from that,” said Meakem.
Meakem says getting rid of the manufacturing cost of the penny is a good way to cut government expenses, without really hurting anyone.
He adds most transactions are done electronically now, making them even more irrelevant.
It costs nearly 4 cents to make a 1 cent penny.