Last week the United States was abuzz with the aggressive maneuverings of the Department of Government Efficiency, as Elon Musk’s lieutenants were dispatched to key positions in federal personnel management and many employees receiving payoff-for-early-retirement offers. All of this activity raises the suspenseful question of fans of governmental efficiency: will it have the desired effect of streamlining the bloated federal budget? This article will provide a simple indicator that will determine how serious the effort actually is.

Whether or not DOGE is able to pick on (or pick off) low-level individual employees is besides the point. What we very much need to know is whether these reforms will succeed in overcoming vested interests. These are the contractors or other large stakeholders who are able to deploy legions of lobbyists to protect their revenue streams. Since this is an area where “the market” holds little sway, it is even more critical to the public interest that officials in charge of dispensing funds are able to achieve some amount of benefit towards some public purpose.

We’re not going to list off the myriad abuses of the military-industrial complex, which I’m sure would always find some backers claiming a need for boosting defense. Let’s instead focus on a public provision that everyone can agree is a total waste, universally considered a nuisance, even despised. I’m referring of course to that other shit-coin: the one-cent piece of the United States of America, colloquially known as the penny.

This is a unit of currency that costs over three times more to produce than its face value. For an amount of currency which will buy precisely nothing, other than items people want to get rid of more than tiny discs of zinc. These are coins more likely to end up in landfills than banks; if it’s more worthwhile to throw in the trash than convert to real cash, that is not an ideal state of affairs. Cash should not become a liability. And yet, the Mint loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year to perpetuate the memento to a time when they could at least buy some candy.

One can read all about these issues in the Tyranny of the Penny. In it we learn the biggest reason the government continues inconveniencing everyone: a single company who manufactures the zinc blanks called Artazn, making over $1 billion over 15 years. Of course, we cannot discount the role of political inertia with these types of arrangements.

And so we have a situation where coinage nobody wants or uses continues to be minted, due to tradition or said inertia. A rational approach to government would cease these activities; therefore if DOGE claims to be such an approach to cost-cutting we should see the least efficient or desirable activities to be at the top of the list. Of course, hardly anyone is pretending that’s what we have. However, there you go: a simple indicator to test how serious the effort actually is will be if there is an announcement to phase out the once beloved but no longer necessary penny coin.