U.S. Government Plans to Debase Coins

A bipartisan bill authorizing the United States Mint to devalue the metal content of coins was reintroduced on April 20 after a report revealed that soaring costs have driven up the price of minting a nickel beyond 10 cents, more than double the face value of the coin.

Senators Joni Ernst and Maggie Hassan say this legislation is designed to cut the rising expense of minting America’s quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Yet it also highlights the declining value of the U.S. dollar.

Inflation: The U.S. Mint revealed that it now costs 2.7 cents to make a penny and 10.4 cents to make a nickel. So, the government is researching alternatives to the copper-plated penny and recommending that Congress reduce the nickel content in nickels, dimes, quarters and half-dollars. The proposal aims to save the Mint roughly $12 million per year by making coins of cheaper materials even though doing so is an admission that the U.S. currency is losing purchasing power.

A century ago, a gallon of gasoline only cost 14 cents. Yet if you paid for it with a 1923 silver dime and four 1923 copper pennies, you actually paid for it with 2.25 grams of silver, 12.09 grams of copper, and 0.62 grams of tin or zinc. At current prices, you can sell that much metal for $1.93 (which is about what a gallon of gasoline cost before Joe Biden’s war on American energy began).

So, until recently, the value of gasoline, food, clothing, cars, houses and other commodities was not going up so much as the value of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollars was going down.

History: When Congress established the U.S. Mint in 1792, all U.S. currency was made of gold, silver or copper. But on Jan. 30, 1934, Congress ruled that Federal Reserve notes were no longer redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity. In the years since, the Mint has repeatedly devalued the metal content of coins to keep pace with the plummeting value of the paper dollar. That is why pennies are copper-plated zinc, and nickels barely have any nickel.

This type of coin debasement is a hallmark of dying civilizations. Mikhail Rostovtzeff wrote in A History of the Ancient World: Rome:

To crown all these calamities, the emperors in their need for money issued a vast quantity of coin. Not possessing enough of the precious metals for these issues, they alloyed the gold with silver, the silver with copper, and the copper with lead, thus debasing the coinage and ruining in the end men who had once been rich. This measure cut at the root of trade and industry. The government mint in the third century became a vast manufactory of base coin.

Prophecy: The Bible indicates that America’s economic problems will worsen as the government continues to rack up debt and debase its currency. The Prophet Haggai describes current and future economic conditions this way: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” (Haggai 1:6).

Learn more: Read “The Party and the Crash.”