In these trying economic times, is the redesign of the one cent piece penny showing good financial sense?

You are SOOOOO right, the US Government never does anything for a few thousand bucks.

To recoup the cost of the new machines, dies, presses, etc. they should make the new ones out of plastic. I mean, come one, they saved money by no longer using pure copper.

But I think it's STUPID to waste money issuing new penny designs. Just another example of our tax dollars being wasted!!!

I don't think it's too costly to change the imprint on the penny. The are constantly putting new coins out there, these ones will be a little different. They will be using new imprints yes, but only on one side, and nothing else is changing no need to replace machines. I think it's nice to do something like this especially in these times. But yes the government should have mentioned how much this cost them, might have put people at ease.

They are not converting all pennies, they are just throwing in some new ones as they did with state quarters. I mean pennies do get worn out with use and need to be replaced anyway, so this time they replace them with a different design.

Sure they had to pay the artist, and make new dies form coin presses, but it was probably just a few thousand dollars.