Unless I'm reading it wrong, they do think of it that way (on coins at least):

>Fortunately, dimes and quarters are cheaper to make, costing less than their monetary value. So the Mint makes up the losses incurred on pennies and nickels with its 10- and 25-cent coins, and last year reported making $391.5 million in seigniorage.

Also, paper money isn't produced by the Mint, it's produced by the Bureau of Engraving & Printing

The author of the article thinks of it that way, but I have to think the article is written from a misguided premise. The Mint may publish those numbers in the form of a balance sheet as a novelty, but as far as I understand, they don’t govern the money supply any more than the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does. Their scope is to strike currency, and I would think the exact monetary value of it is immaterial to that mission.

Seigniorage used to be an important revenue generator for governments. This has largely subsided with the transition to bank notes which don't operate under the same market dynamics. But the historical inertia is still there.

"Making" and "creating" are pretty ambiguous here.

The mint literally creates physical money (coins). But in the end, the government actually does generate revenue, that gets calculated into a profit or loss for the country:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seigniorage.asp

$100 bills DO generate profit. Pennies generate a loss. If you look at all of the currency in aggregate, it generates positive revenue for the country.

$100 bills generate close to 0 profit for the United States Treasury as they are sold to the Federal Reserve Banks at manufacturing cost.

However coins are sold by the United States Treasury to the Federal Reserve Banks at face value and can generate a profit/loss based on the difference between the face value and the cost of manufacturing.

$100 bills do generate profit for the person printing them, but in aggregate they inflate the currency as a whole. This inflation, in theory, cancels out the wealth "created."

So when people print money, they aren't generating any wealth - it's just a wealth transfer from people who have paper money to the people who print it.

Yes they did make $98.50, and it is profit. The job of the Mint (and the Bureau of Engraving & Printing) is to use the monopoly of seignorage to make money out of thin air. As much as there is demand for coins and bills, they will sell into the market. The job of maintaining (the value of) the US currency is in the hands of the Federal Reserve.

For some acceptable price yes. This isn't unbounded though. At some point they most certainly would stop producing a unit of currency if it cost way too much vs it's value.