Re: Fwd: BIG Ithaca HOUR News!

[Joanna Sheldon <cjs10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ithaca money was never meant to have anything *but* a local effect.  The local is the whole point, fer cryin' out loud.  As Glover says in his introduction:

"We printed our own money because we watched Federal dollars come to town, shake a few hands, then leave to buy rainforest lumber and fight wars. Ithaca's HOURS, by contrast, stay in our region to help us hire each other. While dollars make us increasingly dependent on transnational corporations and bankers, HOURS reinforce community trading and expand commerce which is more accountable to our concerns for ecology and social justice."

What's so silly about that?

Joanna


At 09:17 19-10-00, you wrote:

I don't think that the Ithaca hours would be a solution to a massive
amount of unemployment, but I suspect that it does offer a certain amount
of opportunity for some people and the margins of the economy.  In that
respect, it can improve the lives of a few people -- but Doug is probably
correct that the overall effect would be rather modest.

Doug Henwood wrote to LBO:

> Joanna Sheldon wrote:
>
> >For those of you interested in local money...
> >
> >I believe my home town of Ithaca, NY was the first to develop the
> >idea, encapsulated in Ithaca Hours (each one of which is, by common
> >agreement, worth ten dollars).  And Paul Glover's the madman behind
> >the "local tender" scheme.  He's also the one who started the health
> >fund, mentioned below.
>
> This scheme strikes me as largely silly, though in a different way
> from Paul Virilio. The economic problem is not the lack of the means
> of exchange - it's the structure of power that the means of exchange
> represents. What difference will spreading a few pieces of paper
> around Ithaca - the total stock of which is a fraction of 1% of the
> county's personal income - make? They're bartering haircuts for
> bread, and not much more. Does it matter half a damn?
>
> Doug

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx