Why are we so poor?

One of my professional development goals this year was to read an article and summarize it each week. This weeks topic burns me up. Here is my summary:

Congress considers steel nickels and pennies, Mining Engineering, Vol. 60, No 6, June 2008, p 12.

This article is about the idiotic practice of spending more than 1¢ to make a penny. Apparently, we’ve been doing this for some time. (In 2007, it cost 1.67¢ to make a penny. Now it’s closer to 1.26¢). Currently (well, as of the writing of this June 2008 article) it costs 7.7¢ to stamp out a nickel. Again, that’s just stupid. No wonder our national debt is raging out of control! At 7.4 billion pennies made in 2007 and 1.2 billion nickels in 2007, we lost almost $82 million just in the cost to make the coins. They’re only going to circulate for a few years and then we have to pay for them all over again.

Part of the problem is no one is bold enough to stand up and make the change in coin composition needed to make them cost less than their face value. One proposal is to make them from steel, as was done with pennies during WWII. In May, Congress debated a bill telling the Treasury secretary to suggest new coinage compositions, but doesn’t give him the authority to actually do it.

The costs to make other coins is less than their face value. (4¢ for a dime, 10¢ for a quarter and 16¢ for a dollar).

Again we can see who (Congress) is in part responsible for the lousy economic situation we're in. As long as they continue foolish spending like this, things won't get better.