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.
