A Stamp Every Month — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-ECO-CD-GES-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

A Stamp Every Month Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

Between July 1932 and September 1933 the Austrian town of Wörgl issued money that lost value if it was not spent, following Gesell's idea; the central bank banned it after fourteen months. The print is the scale of what it costs to hold on to it.

A Author

Silvio Gesell

B Subject

Free Money

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

The idea is uncomfortable because it works. If money loses value over time, nobody hoards it, and if nobody hoards it, it circulates. Gesell proposed notes that had to be stamped every month for a small fee, so that hoarding cost money instead of earning it.

Wörgl, an Austrian town of four thousand with a third of its people out of work, put it into practice. Streets were paved, a bridge was built, taxes were paid in advance — which never happens — and unemployment fell while it rose in the rest of the country.

It lasted fourteen months. The central bank banned it, and the argument was the right one from its point of view: issuing currency is its business and nobody else's.

They did not stop it because it failed. They stopped it because it worked in a place where it was not supposed to.

Details