they're a tool with which speculators gamble our jobs and homes. By contrast, HOURS are as steady as the clock, because minutes neither expand nor contract.! HOURS when properly issued represent basic labor that produces real goods and services.! As Adam Smith said, "Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things." Federal Reserve Notes are shrinking as well because, like all national currencies, dollars are in debt to nature.! Feeding our treasure-to-trash economy, they spur degradation of the essential resources upon which commerce depends. HOURS!would be issued primarily through the proposed Green Labor Adminstration (GLAD), a nonprofit nongovernmental WPA. ! They'd!stimulate the less instantly profitable green markets that big investors have too long avoided: energy-efficiency and retrofit, solar and wind, urban agriculture, co-op health care, and transit. Just like national currencies, HOUR commerce requires constant networking, with sharp calibration of issuance, to balance circulation. Gold itself, still the most admired store of value, is not capable of transacting the needs of seven billion humans.!
Total world supply is a sixty-foot cube.! Sooner or later, as soaring populations compete for declining farmland, gold would become worthless because it is not food. Meanwhile, supplemental HOUR cash honors skills neglected by the formal economy, stimulating new enterprise and creating new jobs.! HOURS revive deflated sectors when issued through regional credit systems, community banks and credit unions, community-based stock exchanges and family farms; and lent interest-free to small businesses.! They thereby strengthen the dollar.! Just as healthy lungs depend on millions of healthy air sacs, macroeconomies depend ultimately upon the vigor of village and neighborhood economies. Our Chinese creditors would approve America's transition to HOURS.! Their People's Bank sent representatives to Ithaca who soon received approval from then-Premier Zhu Rongji to start HOUR systems.! Time Banking also has its foot in this door, worldwide. HOURS ease America's path toward sensible renewal. Putting HOURS to work, and ourselves as well, invites us to repair civilization.! Times change, money changes.! Thinking outside the box will become common, as the box dissolves.
A Recipe for Successful
2. DESIGN CREDIBLE MONEY. Make it look both majestic and cheerful, to reflect your community’s best spirit. Feature the most widely respected monuments of nature, buildings, and people. One Ithaca note celebrates children; another displays its bioregional bug. Use as many colors as you can afford, then add an anti-counterfeit device. Ithaca has used local handmade paper made of local weed fiber but recently settled on 50/50 hemp/cotton. Design professionally-- cash is an emblem of community pride. 3. BE EVERYWHERE. Prepare for everyone in the region to understand and embrace this money, such that it can purchase everything, whether listed in the directory or not. This means broadcasting an email newsletter, publishing a newspaper (at least quarterly), sending press releases, blogging, cartooning, gathering testimonials, writing songs, hosting events and contests, managing a booth at festivals, perhaps a cable or radio show. Do what you enjoy; do what you can. By 1999, Ithaca HOURS became negotiable with thousands of individuals and over 500 businesses, including a bank, the medical center, the public library, plenty food, clothes, housing, healing, movies, restaurants, bowling. The directory contained more categories than the Yellow Pages. We even created our own local nonprofit health insurance. Imagine millions of dollars worth circulating, to stimulate new enterprise, as dollars fade. 4. BE EASY TO USE. Local money should be at least as easy to use as national money, not harder. No punitive “demurrage” stamps-- inflation is demurrage enough. No expiration dates-- inspire spending instead by emphasizing the benefits to each and all of keeping it moving. Hungry people want food, not paper, so hard times can speed circulation. Get ready to issue interest-free loans. The interest you earn is community interest-- your greater capability to hire and help one another. Start with small loans to reliable businesses and individuals. Make grants to groups. 5. BE HONEST AND OPEN. All records of currency disbursement are displayed online and/or upon request. Limit the quantity issued for administration (office, staff, etc) to 5% of total, to restrain inflation.
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Community Currency
Printing local money sets the table for a feast provided by your city or town.! Here are my suggested ingredients for spicing local trade with local cash. 1. HIRE A NETWORKER. During the past 15 years, nearly 100 American community currencies have come and gone. Ithaca’s HOURS became huge because, during their first eight years, they could rely on a full-time Networker to constantly promote, facilitate and troubleshoot circulation. Lots of talking and listening. Just as national currencies have armies of brokers helping money move, local currencies need at least one paid Networker. Your volunteer core group-- your Municipal Reserve Board-may soon realize that they’ve created a labor-intensive local institution, like a food co-op or credit union. Playing Monopoly is easier than building anti-Monopoly. Reduce your need to pay the Networker with dollars, by finding someone to donate housing. Then find others to donate harvest, health care, entertainment.