Works cited:
- Joel Kurtzman, The Death of Money: How
the Electronic Economy Has Destabilized the World's Markets and Created
Financial Chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
- Willis Harman, "Whatever Happened to Usury?"
World Business Academy Perspectives 6(2) (1992): 17-23.
- Such a tax on hoarding is technically
defined as "demurrage." All the values given are all for illustrative
purposes; in practice, a lower demurrage rate would normally be used.
- John
Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money. London: Macmillan, 1936, 1967.
- Ibid, p. 234.
- Ibid, p. 355.
- S. Homer and R. Sylla, History of
Interest Rates, Third edition. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1991. In the authors' defense: they were primarily bond traders, so did
not look for negative interest currencies.
- Several of these examples are also
mentioned in Hazel Henderson's paper in this issue [World Business Academy
Perspectives, 8(2) (1994)]. However, I limit discussion to those cases
that have the demurrage concept built in, and highlight the behavior patterns
they have generated.
- There was an erroneous application of the
concept in Hawardem, Iowa, introduced by Charles J. Zylstra. The stamps were
to be applied at each transaction, which created the opposite of what was
wanted: everybody hoarded the currency instead of spending it. This currency
became very unpopular, and is an example often mentioned by the detractors of
the system.
- Personal communication, June 1994.
- I define a welfare system as a means to
circumvent market forces by redistributing resources from the rich to the
poor, usually by means of taxes on the rich to finance support programs for
the poor.
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