In an effort to cut costs, the Canadian government released its 2012 budget Thursday without any money designated to fund the Canadian penny. The penny’s costs have finally grown so high that the government has realized it just doesn’t make sense to keep the 1-cent coin going. Does any of this sound familiar?…

The U.S. penny costs an incredible 2.4 cents to make (and the nickel, by the way, costs 11.2 cents). That’s why a couple months back the Obama White House included a proposal in their latest budget to make pennies and nickels cheaper to produce in order to pare down the federal deficit.

There are numerous private citizens and legislators who have proposed getting rid of the U.S. penny altogether. (There are some who even think we should retire the U.S. dollar.) A couple bills have been introduced but of course neither has passed.

– Josh Sanburn, Time.

Did you read that? We mint coins that cost twice as much as they’re worth. And we’re never going to do anything about it, you know why? Because we hate making minor mathematical adjustments. Why do you think happened with the metric system? Eliminating nickels and pennies would mean every cash-register exchange would require some tiny modicum of math: rounding and some very simple subtraction, at least until all businesses have new registers. No way is anyone signing up for that.