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Solving Poverty With 'Hour Money'Bob Blain Travels World Explaining Role Currency Plays in Inequality
Dr. Bob Blain, a sociology professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, has spent decades trying to change the world's monetary system.
Now retired from the classroom he’s hit the road with his show. Dr. Blain has presented his concept of Hour Money at international conferences on three continents. He continues to direct the Hour Money Institute from his home base in the Midwest region of the United States. Q: Dr. Blain, please explain what Hour Money is.Hour money is just like the money we use now. In fact you could have hour dollars. Some people think, “Oh, then we’re not going to have money?” No, we are going to have money. Money’s a good thing. It’s an essential medium of communication, and it is essential for personal freedom. However the money we have now has no unit. The “dollar” (U.S.) only has historical significance. We defined it in terms of gold or silver. But I don’t know anything about gold or silver; most people don’t. The hour, we all know. So, it’s money, but it is money with a unit we all understand. So, when we go to get a job, our prospective employer is going to offer us a wage in hours. With the hour, they might say to us, “You know, you’re new to this job. I’m going to pay you half time until you learn it. Then I’m going to pay you full time. And if you get better than the other people here, I’ll pay you time-and-a-half.” You notice how we already do that? It doesn’t change anything about what we do, except putting a unit on it that we all understand. Q: Why should citizens of the United States, or anywhere, make the effort to adopt this idea?I think people understand that money is out of control. Look at the lottery winnings somebody just won, $270 million. At the same time, look at the people who can't pay their bills. It's wrong. Q: And Hour Money can create equality?Yes. It’s like turning the light on in a darkened room, or giving pilots an instrument to determine their actual altitude so they know where they are. By calibrating money in a meaningful way, suddenly, the guy who’s got far more than is every humanly possible for anybody to use in a meaningful way, it’s a wake up. As if realizing, “Wow. I’ve got 1,000 years’ worth of income at $50 dollars an hour? My god, I thought I only had a $100 million.” And you see it happening with Bill Gates. And he sees it, but do you have to wait until you get to $50 billion before you think, “My god, I’d better get out there and start helping people.” Andrew Carnegie said, “A man who dies rich, dies disgraced.” Q: Tell us about the board game you co-invented – Cooperation: The Wealth of Nations Game – for the purpose of relating the Hour Money concept. The original inspiration for the game came when I was trying to explain something in a class and it was obvious the students weren’t understanding it. I’d had a game I had experienced in St. Louis – the Community Land Use game – and I used it. I found the students understood very quickly the point I had been trying to make in words, once they saw the way it worked. We came out on the market with it in 1981. We sold it in 17 states, but only about 500 copies. At this point, I still produce a few boxed board games. (A free computer version of Cooperation: The Wealth of Nations Game is available online at HourMoney.org.)
The copyright of the article Solving Poverty With 'Hour Money' in Anti-Poverty Activism is owned by Adam Williams. Permission to republish Solving Poverty With 'Hour Money' in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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