Twenty years ago I started printing money. Soon after, residents of Ithaca, New York, began exchanging colorful cash featuring children, waterfalls, trollies and bugs. Since then, millions of dollars worth of Ithaca HOURS have been traded by thousands of individuals and over 500 businesses.
HOURS have proven a flexible unit of exchange, strengthening local businesses, creating jobs, and enlarging sales tax revenue. Each HOUR is valued at $10/hour, or one hour of basic labor. Professionals may request multiple HOURS per hour of work, or trade them equitably. HOURS weren’t intended to replace dollars, but to replace lack of dollars.
Today, however, while much of America tilts beyond chronic recession into early depression, it is time to begin an orderly national transition from dollars to HOURS. This profound heresy becomes perhaps inevitable, since dollars have become tokens of unrepayable debt. And, bluntly, 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.”
