Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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believe that credit to be valuable. Now that’s a lucky break for the banks. They
earn interest on the sewage scheme ‘loan’, and then justify it by saying that
because the public is getting something sooner rather than later it should pay.
In an interest­free system, however, ‘now’ is the same as ‘later’ because
money doesn’t increase or decrease over time. In fact, when interest is negative
(as when a charge is made for hoarding money) now is better than later for the
spender, as later he or she will have to pay more. If a bridge has to be built and
the labour and materials are available, all a community has to do is create the
interest­free money. Money is only a unit of value, in the same way that the
centimetre is a unit of length. To say you can’t build a bridge because you
haven’t enough money is like saying you can’t build a house because you
haven’t got enough centimetres. But communities, ignorant of this fact, still go
cap in hand to the banks for a loan and end up paying for the bridge two or
three times over.
In times of war, do governments argue that there is not enough money?
No. The money is simply issued. At the start of the World War I, for example,
Lloyd George issued what were called ‘Bradburys’; munitions factories went
into overdrive. The lesson from this is that money can be always be found for
urgent national needs such as funding a war.
Private loans
When it comes to an individual needing money for a house, it is good for both
society and the homeowner that he or she has that house now rather than later.
So to argue that interest is the price people pay to avoid deferring consumption