Paul Glover on Localized Health Insurance | Local Currencies Conference (2004)

The Schumacher Center for a New Economics is dedicated to creating a just, regenerative economy, promoting tools to foster more regional economic production and trade as well as community stewardship of land and other shared assets.

During the weekend of June 25-27, 2004, the Schumacher Center convened a conference “Local Currencies in the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Money, Building Local Economies, Renewing Community.” Over 300 people gathered at Bard College in New York State to join what participant Pete Seeger called, “the best conference I ever attended.”

In today’s global economy, national currencies have effected a centralization of wealth ownership and a widening of the gap between rich and poor – the while undermining local communities, devastating indigenous peoples, and polluting the environment. Decentralized regional currencies represent a counterforce. A local currency defines a regional trading area, favoring independent businesses and resilient, regional marketplaces. They promise to aid a redistribution of wealth more broadly while supporting unique regional identities, cultures, and communities, rather than faceless global corporations and domineering nation-states.

In 1991, Paul Glover organized a local currency for his hometown of Ithaca, New York, that used paper notes for trade of local goods and services. The notes were denominated in hours of labor (equivalent to the average hourly wage for Ithaca or $10). Hours would be backed by the future productivity of those to whom they were issued, so Hours would maintain a strong value independent of the fluctuation in federal dollars.

In the subsequent decade, Hours programs spread to over 50 communities throughout the USA and Canada. Amidst Ithaca Hours' lifespan in the early 2000s, several new initiatives including a local health insurance program were launched. This talk focuses on the health insurance initiative.