From the Fine Article:
President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value.
If it costs thirty five cents to make a one cent piece, but the cost of the metal is a fraction of one cent, then no one gets one cent pieces to melt down into base metal.
If a dollar coin has five dollars worth of metal in it, only the very stupid wouldn't go get all the dollar coins they could and melt them down for the base metal.
The cost of the base metal should be less than the face value of the coin. The cost to produce the coin is largely irrelevant. The cost to make a bill of any denomination is the same for each bill (leaving out the minor variations for printing millions of them) but only last a limited time compared to a coin. For a dollar bill about 18 months, a bit longer as the denomination goes up. But every coin wears for 20 to 30 years. Arguably if saving money is the imperative we should stop printing paper money.
Your words:
Save us the trouble of repeating this entire drama in another few decades and kill off the Nickel alongside the Penny.
If the standard is that the coin is too low in value to bother with, I agree. The issue is that the one cent coin's value is too low for people to care if they lose one, or even a 100. Same with nickles, dimes, but quarters... now people pay a tiny bit of attention. But not for much longer, really, and the purchase power of a quarter drops ever lower. This is why we see more and more credit card vending machines. Inflation proof, and when we get to the point of needing a wheelbarrow to haul cash around the credit card makes it a simple transaction.
Back in the Day I had a job where we had to settle with the state tax authority each and every day we operated. The joke was as the tax percentage was not an integer, (EG: a fractional number) so we kept a one cent piece we'd cut in half. We'd trade it back and forth with the state guy depending on the balance due. It was always funny when we got a substitute state guy in during illness or vacation.