A town in Washington prints its own currency on wood!

[thewayne]

The mayor had printed $10,000 worth of wood dollars on a printing press from the local museum on birch bark, something they did 90 years ago during the Great Depression, and they're issuing $300 a month to families below the poverty line. The wood currency can only be circulated within the town, and obviously you can't spend it at Amazon! The local merchants can turn it in to City Hall twice a month for full cash.

So poor people get stimulus, local merchants get stimulus, the city gov't is only out $10k.

Pretty good idea!

Apparently this idea has been used for a long time. The article goes into quite a bit of history of such scips. Cool stuff!

https://thehustle.co/covid19-local-currency-tenino-washington/

Comments

[howsmyenglish]

This sounds like a really good idea as well as fun! :)

[thewayne]

It's an excellent way to bolster the local community.  And like you said, fun!

[kellan_the_tabby]

oooo, I LIKE this!

[thewayne]

Awesome idea, neh?

[kellan_the_tabby]

would 5000% do it for funsies, benefits to the economy entirely aside

[motodraconis]

That's pretty cool. Any reaction from people who have to use them? Sometimes it can feel a bit like shaming when you have to use a currency that labels you as poor. Though if they circulate round the community this might solve the shame factor.

[silveradept]

One if the ways that a local farmer's market got around possible poor-shaming was by offering 150% of the amount of SNAP benefit put in as market tokens, so it was to someone's benefit to spend their money at the local stalls that would take the tokens, which the merchants could then turn in for face value.

Many community currencies will circulate around, if given the opportunity to do so and enough people being willing to accept them

[thewayne]

That's an excellent method.

[silveradept]

Community currencies aren't a new idea, but I think they're a good one to help keep money in the community and to try and keep a local economy going. It would be nice if there were more of them that could be put to use.

[thewayne]

I think there's an excellent chance that as news of this spreads, there's going to be more small communities going *facepalm* "How can WE implement something like this?"

[silveradept]

When community currencies come up in articles and the like, the sticking point always seems to be getting a big enough group of people to accept them and then getting them to circulate around, rather than coming back to the issuer almost immediately for the Federal Reserve notes.

They might need someone like Emperor Norton to use them before it catches on. And, as is noted, the big box stores won't take them, so you have to have something other than Amazon and the big box stores in your area to make it work.