Local currency plugs holes in leaking-bucket economy (From Worcester News)

Local currency plugs holes in leaking-bucket economy

8:10am Saturday 13th March 2010 in

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SIR – Re: the Worcestershire Pound. money swills around the local economy like water in a big bucket, but the bucket is full of holes.

Among the biggest of these are the supermarkets and retail chains. About 80p in every pound leaves the area, with a little paid back as local wages. All the hard work to get more tourists and win more business is a futile but necessary fight against the odds.

A local currency is an attempt to plug the holes in the bucket. Money that can’t leave has to circulate locally, and that will benefit us all. The trick is to get it to circulate, so it would have to be valid for food growers, shops, workers, plumbers, and everybody else.

If you get some of your income in local money then whatever local money you spend will go around the city from person to business to person. Eventually, some of it will come back to you – it can’t go anywhere else!

Your sterling from the cash machine, once you spend it at a supermarket, goes to London or Tokyo and you’ll never see it again.

Local currencies are running in Devon and Sussex.

Justin Kirby
Transition Worcester