I personally find this argument quite compelling, but I looked up arguments against discontinuing production of the penny and nickel and they basically revolve around fears around prices rounding up more often than down, creating a tax on those who pay with cash. I'm sympathetic to this argument, although I'm not confident it would move the overall spend for cash up in a meaningful way. This is doubly true in a world where surcharging credit cards is more common, which means those paying with cash are sometimes getting cheaper stuff already.

In looking this up, I also came across this study, which shows a radical drop in cash usage over the past decade. Cash accounted for 31% of transactions in 2016 and had dropped to 18% by 2022, the latest data from this source. Maybe I'm too on the bleeding edge of payments, but I think it would make a lot of sense to stop making pennies and nickels, letting them continue to circulate, and migrate payment systems over to a rounding system over the coming years.

Not mentioned in the "reasons to keep them around" is tradition, and given the current party in power's obsession with all things "traditional" being good and desirable, I don't see this happening in the next few years. Who's voice do you hear in your head for this line: "they tried to get rid of the penny…LINCOLN…what a great Republican, what a great Republican…not as great as me…some are saying…they wanted to take it away…they're so nasty…"