Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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problems. Since then, the system has spread to the UK as Fair Shares and is well
entrenched in the Japanese health­care system.
Time dollars operates under quite a different philosophy to LETS, as it turns time
into buying power and there is no emphasis on spending credits. In fact, commonly only
15 per cent of time dollars ever gets spent. 15 If you become a participant of a time dollars
project, you earn credits for the time you spend helping other people. One hour of
service earns you one credit – a service credit or a time dollar. With that credit, you can
‘buy’ an hour of a particular service that you need. If you don’t need all the credits you
earn, you can save them up, donate them to someone you know, or give them back to the
‘bank’ so that the people who run the project can make sure the participants with the
greatest needs get all the help they require.
Students have used their time dollar earnings to purchase second­hand computers,
while David Boyle reports that time dollars have also been used as a mortgage payment
on a house from Habitat for Humanity, a charity in the US. 16 Meanwhile, an organisation
in New England provides a US$40 bag of groceries for US$14 plus two hours of time
dollars. 17
The time dollars system recognises that many people don’t like the idea of
accepting charity but instead prefer to feel useful and able to offer something back. Time
dollars provide the opportunity for this through working on a basis of reciprocity – in
other words, everyone has something to offer and neither age nor mobility need exclude
anyone.
This kind of exchange is not new – as discussed in Chapter 7, the gift economy has been
used since time immemorial among families and friends. The UK Fair Shares website
says that all Fair Shares does is to provide a new structure for neighbourliness, one that
turns good deeds into real purchasing power. 18
The big advantage of the system is that its originator, Edward Cahn, managed to get
a tax­exempt ruling for it from the US Inland Revenue Service, after arguing that time
dollars do not actually represent money. This has probably been a major factor in the
rapid proliferation of time dollar schemes.
Another advantage is that time dollars provide recognition for services that would
ordinarily be carried out by volunteers. It allows its participants – who are often women,
the elderly, teenagers, students and the unemployed – to redefine themselves as
producers and contributors rather than recipients of charity.
The Japanese Health Care Currency