Waldman, S. (1990, May). Beyond money: replacing the gold standard with the golden rule. (service credit exchange program). Washington Monthly. Retrieved on November 17, 2006, from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-8993187.html
Going through the history of implementing time dollars in the United States, Steven Waldman identified the fear of loosing government expending as the powerful reason that limited the expansion of service credit exchange programs.
Back in 1985 Professor Edgar Cahn proposed a legislation to start a service credit program in Florida. After approved, the Florida human resources agency mandated the use of a specific database, fingerprinting, and the purchase of workers’ compensation and volunteer insurances to guarantee the credits. The local programs were approved to start on May 1986, but the legislation expired the following month. In the same year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation granted more than one million dollars to start experiments in a few major cities of the United States.
The largest service credits program, Friend to Friend, is based in Miami and has recruited 847 volunteers contributing 8,000 hours of service every month. It is also noted that seniors are not using their credits, and that the dropout rate is around 3 percent, compared to 40 percent in conventional volunteer programs.
—– Literally…
- This appeal extends to countries treading cautiously into the free-market model.
- At first, the notion seems to corrupt the spirit of volunteerism … But in practice, the credits strengthen volunteerism by providing a context of reciprocity … “People society labels as problems, this system labels as resources.”
- Resistance came from social service activists. “… that Ronald Reagan would use it as an excuse to cut” government spending.
- Margaret Lynn Duggar, the head of the state human resources agency
- according to Duggar’s lawyers, state law required that the program purchase expensive workers’ compensation insurance in addition to low-cost volunteer insurance.
- “If this program really starts to work, someone might ask if you really need all this money” for social programs
- the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation … In 1986 … issued about $1.2 million in grants to start experimenting in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Miami, and Boston and … Washington D.C. and Missouri.
- In Miami … Friend to Friend, the largest service credits program is based … Countywide … has recruited 847 volunteers who contribute 8,000 hours of service each month.
- in fact, seniors aren’t even cashing in their credits
- dropout rates are only about 3 percent, compared to about 40 percent for conventional volunteer programs.
- “We are like an insurance policy you take out,” … “Except you don’t pay with your money; you pay with your time.”
- “The real wealth of a society … is the time of its citizens …”
- time dollars are limited only by the desire of citizens to be helpful … time dollars are a cohesive force that can hold communities together in a web of reciprocal service
- A study in England found that paid home-car workers spend 80 percent of their time shopping and going to the post office
- If people don’t spend their time dollars, the service credits don’t function as an alternative economic system.
- tax-free because they aren’t undertaken for profit
- Eventually, individual programs could link up their computers as banks do now, only this time to establish a state of national market in good works