[Music]
one big problem as we hopefully
eventually emerge out of the covid
crisis
is even if we have money we're going to
be reluctant to spend it so
how can the government step up spending
the answer perhaps
lies in austria in the 1930s.
can we
work all our way out of this one that's
today on the debunking economics podcast
with professor steve keane
i'm phil dubby welcome along
[Music]
so can we work our way out of this in
other words
look the only reason we're doing this
podcast is is for that
i have to admit but we have spoken about
this before the town of wargle
in austria during the great depression
issued its own currency basically
because
money must wasn't moving around fast
enough so they issued a currency
that lost value over time i mean
i would do d marriage isn't it this is
the demo it's just the yeah is the term
for that
um and i guess that i mean the reasoning
behind that is because
um you people can hoard money and we're
actually seeing that right now aren't we
the word people who've got money
are hanging on to it during this crisis
and that's not helping the
circulation of money so this is an issue
that needs to be tackled if we're going
to find our way
out of the out of kovid 19 and get the
the economy
uh firing up on all cylinders isn't it.
K:
it is and this is
um i mean there was a cl that was an
amazing experiment because
when you think about maybe you see how
people define money they say the money
has
money has to be a means of account so
where you measure
um you know your your financial
situation versus somebody else.
a means of payment so it's what you use
to buy goods and services
and the killer it's a store of value now
this is the problem because if you
actually start to regard money
whatever you're calling money to guide
it more as a store of value
that actually undermines it being used
as a means of payment
because if you think it's going to rise
in value that's a good reason not to
spend
okay yeah okay you're actually
sacrificing spending
of future spending power by spending now.
so
if you obsess about the the store of
value side of whatever you use as your
currency
you're in trouble uh because ultimately
you're going to be
rewarding people for not spending and
then you have lots of money but turning
over very very slowly so the result can
be a stagnant economy
and that wasn't the cause of the great
depression but it was one of the
consequences of it we didn't want to
spend.
um and then what the world the currency
was well
here's a currency if you don't spend it
it disappears
and rather than getting the runaway
inflation effect of
uh the weimar republic the wargle
republic uh was one where people
that the the demurrage system and the
need to spend it all you'll lose it
meant that people were spending and
spending the currency
out at a huge rate and it drove
unemployment from all the order of 30
percent of the population down to zero.
P:
yeah and the argument being i think from
the the economists who
who pushed ahead with that idea in the
first place which got the
the attention of the the mayor of
if you have money it holds value if you
sell vegetables they rot if you don't
sell them so really money should behave
like uh like produce does.
K:
and that's uh
i mean
people make the same case about energy
that it should be related to energy use
and so on
but yeah the idea that money is actually
something which should decay
over time uh is is an important insight
that came out of silvio gazelle.
and keynes was incredibly uh
impressed by gazelle's argument uh but
of course the last thing you can do
at a with an existing currency is bring
in the fact that it's going to decay
over time because the people who hold it
are going to say no no don't like that
so it doesn't happen but when you invent
a new currency that can be one of the
rules that if you don't spend it in a
certain time
you've got to fix a stamp to it
uh and the stamp each time you do it
falls in value so you're encouraged to
spend rather than forward.
P:
but
inflation does the same thing doesn't it
if you have inflation which obviously we
don't now
um so wouldn't it be easy if we just had
some way of getting every inflation was
to pick up people would start spending
because they want to
get rid of the money now while it's
worth something.
K:
yeah and that's why like
in
inflation rather than being the big
bogeyman which is the way the
neoclassicals put it across
and also all the the hard money types
and so on
what that actually does is encourage
spending.
and
and it can it can be oh if you have
ludicrous situation of hyperinflation
then
of course that's a breakdown in its own
right but a moderate level of inflation
and something at the order of
between two and five percent per year is
enough to mean that you
you're more encouraged to spend than you
are to hoard and because you're in a
system
where your spending is somebody else's
income.
that actually money comes back to
you in the sense that once you've spent
it
goes to somebody else who then buys
something off of you in a
very roundabout way but it actually
encourages more economic activity out of
the same amount of
money.
and that was the beauty of the
wargle experiment it wasn't just a local
currency
it's a local currency which depreciated
if you didn't use it
and therefore you were encouraged to use
it and that drove up overall economic
activity.
P:
right so how did that relate to
the uh and so the austrian uh shilling
that
was it would would they sample anything
what the currency was yeah
let's go i think it was the shilling so
i did it
yeah dude let's assume i'm right uh even
though i'm incredibly wrong
but what does the um so how did it with
the local character how did how did the
exchange work it would do could
if you went into a shop and you wanted
to buy something and it was 10 shillings
how many how many
wore gold dollars would it be.
K:
i don't
know the actual conversion rate there.
but
it was something which was it could
initially be used one way.
they
encouraged it was that again this is
where it comes in very much
in line with modern monetary theory
thinking.
it's something the local
council would accept in payment of local
council rates
and therefore you had a an encouragement
to to buy it.
and like my good friend the
system engineer tron andreyson
has suggested a a similar idea um
that you for countries like ecuador
bring in a parallel currency
and maintain give a discount for using
it to buy your taxes
and pay your taxes in which case you
could actually be worth
worth more than a local currency in that
situation.
because you're buying a discount on your
taxes to get it and then because
economic activity in general increases
courtesy of that.
then that
covers uh you know the revenue problems
of the council in the first place.
643
P:
no but how does paying your tax um push
up productivity because that's a leakage
surely.
K:
but what it means is you uh you've got a
currency which
uh you're encouraged to hold because you
can use it to pay taxes
you don't have enough money to you're
not getting enough money in
the legacy let's use the mark as our
currency here.
i'm not sure they're using
shillings or marks in austria at the
time but anyway
say it's the mark each each
if you don't get enough revenue coming
in in
marks because people are hoarding
courtesy of the great depression
and the absence of credit based money
and the accessibles of debt
denominated in that currency you don't
have spending in that but you do
you start accumulating uh people are
willing to pay you
in uh you're willing to accept payment
in the
um the wargle uh currency the the script
because you have commitments in that and
then you can use that to buy somebody
else who's also got commitments in the
same
uh script currency to the local council
and ultimately the the rate of turnover
of the script currency was far
higher than the rate of turnover of the
mark
in the same region but the the the sum
of the two meant that we had full
employment.
P:
yeah i mean
in fact to such an extent it worked to
such an extent didn't it that they were
having
so much money paid back in uh in overdue
council tax
uh that they started to wonder in fact
whether uh people were
um uh counterfeiting the the currency
because so much of it was coming
backwards in fact it was just
because it was turning over so quickly.
810
K:
yeah yeah and this is the big mistake
people make in thinking about money
is that they they tend to equate the the
sum of it they have in their possession
with the rate with the level of economic
activity but the the difference between
the two is
the the sum of the money is the turnover
rate of the money that matters so people
think
you know you can't pay back any um any
um
um more detail because you've got to pay
the interest as well.
they're adding the debt in the the
interest payments in dollars per year
to the debt in dollars which is just so
just a mistake.
um that that that thinking
gets in the way if we think about a lot
of monetary issues.
and the beauty of the
wargle experiment was this idea that no
the um we want to encourage the turnover
of the
the notes not um the hoarding of those
notes
and demurrage meet people with no point
hoarding you'd lose it.
P:
right well
we've seen the velocity of money slow
right down not just during the pandemic.
but before that so does that mean this
is the right time for doing
something like this we'll listen to the
rest of this discussion by becoming a
supporter of steve keane on patreon go
to patreon.com
forward slash prof steve keane or
subscribing at debunkingeconomics.com
you can hear the full
half hour discussion on the wergle
currency.
and what it means for today and of
course if you subscribe you can get full
access to all of the podcasts in this
series
thanks for listening so far we'll catch
you again soon.
00:00
[Music]
00:00
one big problem as we hopefully
00:03
eventually emerge out of the covid
00:05
crisis
00:06
is even if we have money we're going to
00:08
be reluctant to spend it so
00:10
how can the government step up spending
00:13
the answer perhaps
00:14
lies in austria in the 1930s can we
00:18
work all our way out of this one that's
00:20
today on the debunking economics podcast
00:23
with professor steve keane
00:24
i'm phil dubby welcome along
00:26
[Music]
00:29
so can we work our way out of this in
00:31
other words
00:32
look the only reason we're doing this
00:33
podcast is is for that
00:35
i have to admit but we have spoken about
00:36
this before the town of wargle
00:39
in austria during the great depression
00:41
issued its own currency basically
00:43
because
00:44
money must wasn't moving around fast
00:46
enough so they issued a currency
00:48
that lost value over time i mean
00:51
i would do d marriage isn't it this is
00:52
the demo it's just the yeah is the term
00:54
for that
00:56
um and i guess that i mean the reasoning
00:57
behind that is because
00:59
um you people can hoard money and we're
01:01
actually seeing that right now aren't we
01:02
the word people who've got money
01:04
are hanging on to it during this crisis
01:06
and that's not helping the
01:07
circulation of money so this is an issue
01:10
that needs to be tackled if we're going
01:11
to find our way
01:12
out of the out of kovid 19 and get the
01:14
the economy
01:15
uh firing up on all cylinders isn't it
01:17
it is and this is
01:18
um i mean there was a cl that was an
01:20
amazing experiment because
01:22
when you think about maybe you see how
01:24
people define money they say the money
01:25
has
01:26
money has to be a means of account so
01:28
where you measure
01:29
um you know your your financial
01:32
situation versus somebody else
01:33
a means of payment so it's what you use
01:35
to buy goods and services
01:37
and the killer it's a store of value now
01:40
this is the problem because if you
01:43
actually start to regard money
01:45
whatever you're calling money to guide
01:47
it more as a store of value
01:48
that actually undermines it being used
01:51
as a means of payment
01:52
because if you think it's going to rise
01:53
in value that's a good reason not to
01:55
spend
01:56
okay yeah okay you're actually
01:58
sacrificing spending
02:00
of future spending power by spending now
02:02
so
02:03
if you obsess about the the store of
02:05
value side of whatever you use as your
02:07
currency
02:08
you're in trouble uh because ultimately
02:11
you're going to be
02:12
rewarding people for not spending and
02:14
then you have lots of money but turning
02:15
over very very slowly so the result can
02:18
be a stagnant economy
02:19
and that wasn't the cause of the great
02:21
depression but it was one of the
02:23
consequences of it we didn't want to
02:24
spend
02:25
um and then what the world the currency
02:28
was well
02:28
here's a currency if you don't spend it
02:30
it disappears
02:32
and rather than getting the runaway
02:34
inflation effect of
02:36
uh the weimar republic the wargle
02:38
republic uh was one where people
02:40
that the the demurrage system and the
02:43
need to spend it all you'll lose it
02:45
meant that people were spending and
02:47
spending the currency
02:49
out at a huge rate and it drove
02:50
unemployment from all the order of 30
02:52
percent of the population down to zero
02:54
yeah and the argument being i think from
02:57
the the economists who
02:58
who pushed ahead with that idea in the
03:00
first place which got the
03:01
the attention of the the mayor of
03:04
if you have money it holds value if you
03:06
sell vegetables they rot if you don't
03:08
sell them so really money should behave
03:10
like uh like produce does and that's uh
03:12
i mean
03:13
people make the same case about energy
03:14
that it should be related to energy use
03:16
and so on
03:17
but yeah the idea that money is actually
03:19
something which should decay
03:21
over time uh is is an important insight
03:24
that came out of silvio gazelle
03:26
and keynes was incredibly uh
03:29
impressed by gazelle's argument uh but
03:32
of course the last thing you can do
03:34
at a with an existing currency is bring
03:37
in the fact that it's going to decay
03:38
over time because the people who hold it
03:39
are going to say no no don't like that
03:42
so it doesn't happen but when you invent
03:43
a new currency that can be one of the
03:45
rules that if you don't spend it in a
03:46
certain time
03:47
you've got to fix a stamp to it
03:51
uh and the stamp each time you do it
03:53
falls in value so you're encouraged to
03:55
spend rather than forward but
03:57
inflation does the same thing doesn't it
03:58
if you have inflation which obviously we
04:00
don't now
04:01
um so wouldn't it be easy if we just had
04:03
some way of getting every inflation was
04:05
to pick up people would start spending
04:07
because they want to
04:08
get rid of the money now while it's
04:09
worth something yeah and that's why like
04:11
in
04:11
inflation rather than being the big
04:13
bogeyman which is the way the
04:14
neoclassicals put it across
04:15
and also all the the hard money types
04:18
and so on
04:18
what that actually does is encourage
04:20
spending and
04:22
and it can it can be oh if you have
04:24
ludicrous situation of hyperinflation
04:26
then
04:26
of course that's a breakdown in its own
04:28
right but a moderate level of inflation
04:30
and something at the order of
04:31
between two and five percent per year is
04:34
enough to mean that you
04:35
you're more encouraged to spend than you
04:37
are to hoard and because you're in a
04:39
system
04:40
where your spending is somebody else's
04:42
income that actually money comes back to
04:44
you in the sense that once you've spent
04:46
it
04:46
goes to somebody else who then buys
04:47
something off of you in a
04:50
very roundabout way but it actually
04:52
encourages more economic activity out of
04:54
the same amount of
04:55
money and that was the beauty of the
04:57
wargle experiment it wasn't just a local
04:59
currency
04:59
it's a local currency which depreciated
05:01
if you didn't use it
05:03
and therefore you were encouraged to use
05:04
it and that drove up overall economic
05:06
activity right so how did that relate to
05:08
the uh and so the austrian uh shilling
05:11
that
05:11
was it would would they sample anything
05:13
what the currency was yeah
05:14
let's go i think it was the shilling so
05:17
i did it
05:17
yeah dude let's assume i'm right uh even
05:20
though i'm incredibly wrong
05:21
but what does the um so how did it with
05:24
the local character how did how did the
05:25
exchange work it would do could
05:28
if you went into a shop and you wanted
05:29
to buy something and it was 10 shillings
05:31
how many how many
05:32
wore gold dollars would it be i don't
05:34
know the actual conversion rate there
05:36
but
05:36
it was something which was it could
05:38
initially be used one way they
05:40
encouraged it was that again this is
05:41
where it comes in very much
05:42
in line with modern monetary theory
05:44
thinking it's something the local
05:46
council would accept in payment of local
05:48
council rates
05:49
and therefore you had a an encouragement
05:53
to to buy it and like my good friend the
05:55
system engineer tron andreyson
05:57
has suggested a a similar idea um
06:01
that you for countries like ecuador
06:04
bring in a parallel currency
06:06
and maintain give a discount for using
06:09
it to buy your taxes
06:11
and pay your taxes in which case you
06:13
could actually be worth
06:14
worth more than a local currency in that
06:17
situation
06:18
because you're buying a discount on your
06:19
taxes to get it and then because
06:21
economic activity in general increases
06:23
courtesy of that then that
06:25
covers uh you know the revenue problems
06:27
of the council in the first place
06:29
no but how does paying your tax um push
06:32
up productivity because that's a leakage
06:33
surely
06:34
but what it means is you uh you've got a
06:36
currency which
06:38
uh you're encouraged to hold because you
06:39
can use it to pay taxes
06:41
you don't have enough money to you're
06:43
not getting enough money in
06:44
the legacy let's use the mark as our
06:46
currency here i'm not sure they're using
06:48
shillings or marks in austria at the
06:50
time but anyway
06:52
say it's the mark each each
06:55
if you don't get enough revenue coming
06:57
in in
06:59
marks because people are hoarding
07:01
courtesy of the great depression
07:04
and the absence of credit based money
07:06
and the accessibles of debt
07:07
denominated in that currency you don't
07:09
have spending in that but you do
07:11
you start accumulating uh people are
07:13
willing to pay you
07:14
in uh you're willing to accept payment
07:17
in the
07:18
um the wargle uh currency the the script
07:22
because you have commitments in that and
07:25
then you can use that to buy somebody
07:26
else who's also got commitments in the
07:28
same
07:29
uh script currency to the local council
07:32
and ultimately the the rate of turnover
07:34
of the script currency was far
07:36
higher than the rate of turnover of the
07:38
mark
07:39
in the same region but the the the sum
07:41
of the two meant that we had full
07:43
employment yeah i mean
07:44
in fact to such an extent it worked to
07:46
such an extent didn't it that they were
07:47
having
07:47
so much money paid back in uh in overdue
07:50
council tax
07:51
uh that they started to wonder in fact
07:52
whether uh people were
07:54
um uh counterfeiting the the currency
07:57
because so much of it was coming
07:58
backwards in fact it was just
08:00
because it was turning over so quickly
08:01
yeah yeah and this is the big mistake
08:03
people make in thinking about money
08:05
is that they they tend to equate the the
08:07
sum of it they have in their possession
08:09
with the rate with the level of economic
08:11
activity but the the difference between
08:13
the two is
08:14
the the sum of the money is the turnover
08:17
rate of the money that matters so people
08:18
think
08:19
you know you can't pay back any um any
08:22
um
08:23
um more detail because you've got to pay
08:26
the interest as well
08:27
they're adding the debt in the the
08:30
interest payments in dollars per year
08:32
to the debt in dollars which is just so
08:34
just a mistake
08:35
um that that that thinking
08:38
gets in the way if we think about a lot
08:40
of monetary issues and the beauty of the
08:42
wargle experiment was this idea that no
08:44
the um we want to encourage the turnover
08:48
of the
08:48
the notes not um the hoarding of those
08:51
notes
08:52
and demurrage meet people with no point
08:54
hoarding you'd lose it right well
08:56
we've seen the velocity of money slow
08:58
right down not just during the pandemic
09:00
but before that so does that mean this
09:02
is the right time for doing
09:04
something like this we'll listen to the
09:05
rest of this discussion by becoming a
09:07
supporter of steve keane on patreon go
09:09
to patreon.com
09:10
forward slash prof steve keane or
09:12
subscribing at debunkingeconomics.com
09:15
you can hear the full
09:16
half hour discussion on the wergle
09:18
currency
09:19
and what it means for today and of
09:21
course if you subscribe you can get full
09:22
access to all of the podcasts in this
09:24
series
09:25
thanks for listening so far we'll catch
09:27
you again soon i'm phil dobby
09:28
see you next week..
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