It is lunch time in Ithaca in upstate New York, and the local currency is rolling off the presses. Printer David St. George has not been arrested, because as long as these notes are not purporting to be dollars, the currency is legal. In Ithaca, like many other smaller cities, one of the key problems is how to make sure local earnings keep circulating locally. This is an environmental problem too. A dependent local economy with too little cash is unable to produce and grow local goods, and it is replaced by food trucked in from what may be thousands of miles away.
People living on the economic margins are even more marginalized.
Paul Glover organized Ithaca Hours to keep local money circulating locally, to encourage local farmers and businesses and to provide an income for these people. And it seems to be working. Hours are accepted in 300 local businesses and have the enthusiastic backing of the chamber of commerce and the mayor, who accepts them for meals in his town center restaurant. One local bank pays staff partly in Hours, and you can pay your bank charges with them, too. It feels terribly good.