The phrase runs through my mind when I see a penny in a parking lot, as on my Saturday trips to Dollar General. [Five dollar coupon, doncha know?]

I often pay with my debit card. This year, a new screen has been added to the verification process. On a purchase of $32.27, I was asked: “Do you want to round up to $33?”

What? Why would I just give them 73 cents of my money? Who does that?

Well, all of us will likely be doing something similar in the future.

In February, when he demanded this change, President Donald Trump wrote, “For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than two cents. This is so wasteful!”

Actually, it costs just over 3½ cents to produce a penny. An anonymous Treasury Department official told the Associated Press that stopping penny production projects “an immediate annual savings of $56 million. Newsweek reported that we spent $85 million making three billion pennies last year.

The penny will remain legal tender, but the supply will eventually dry up, leaving the nickel as our smallest coin, which we can rest assured will lead to an eventual rounding UP of every one of our bills to the next nickel.

And while it costs 3.69 cents to produce a one-cent coin, the price for one five-cent nickel is 14 cents. It will not be long before the increased demand for nickels overwhelms the ballyhooed hooey of discontinuing the penny.

But the Big Bidness mentality of Republicans is noted for its short-sightedness. The ledger readings at the end of the day take precedent over what might happen tomorrow.

The clamor for governmental efficiency by eliminating the penny makes for a great sound bite. Yet, Trump and company maintain a narrow focus toward real efficiency.

For example, the cost of this year’s penny production comes in under the estimated costs of $45 million for Commander Bone Spurs’ Putinesque birthday parade plus the $50 million that Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem wants for a new airplane to further her 2028 presidential campaigning jaunts around the country, the hemisphere and the world. She campaigned for right-wingers in Poland in May. [!]

Toss in the estimated $3 million per trip for Trump’s golf and grift trips to Mar-a-Lago, and the price of minting the lowly penny – which serves us all – seems like a bargain.

The demise of the penny raises a question as to the purpose of a government. People form governments to provide services beyond the scope of individuals.

Armed forces for national protection – and not just egomaniacal self-aggrandizement – provide the most obvious example of a service that costs more money than it generates for the government. [Yeah, the Masters of War do quite well at our expense.]

Giving us a workable monetary system strikes me as another worthy expenditure of government funds.

I do pick up pennies for the luck involved. Luck secured, I then flip the penny into the air so that it can land back on the ground to spread the luck around.