Comment by Archelaos
6 hours ago
"the town and the community quickly went from an unemployment rate of over 30% to near zero"
According to Wikipedia the unemployment rate sank from 21% to 15%. -- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgler_Schwundgeld#Auswi... (in German)
I chased down the wiki citation https://heimat.woergl.at/verschiedenes/freigeld-woergl which appears to be an official museum? Translated source says:
> While unemployment in Austria increased by 19% in the period of the free money campaign, it fell by 16% in Wörgl
The details of words like from/to/by matter a lot, but assuming translation is correct, maybe the confusion here is about absolute vs relative changes.
Guessing the "over 30%" claim comes from the idea that if Worgl was performing normally unemployment would have also increased 19%, instead it fell 16%, i.e. performed 35% better than baseline, assuming it started in a place around average and could have been expected to be average. A different stat than 0% unemployment, but interesting
Still pretty good.
less of a "miracle", as the title claims, though
Countries will need local currencies during recessions and depressions. Here are just a few examples we track on our site: https://community.intercoin.app/t/currency-crises-around-the...
Here is a history of banking snd new forms of money in the USA: https://community.intercoin.app/t/history-of-us-banking-and-...
The fact is, from Berkshares to Disney Dollars, local currencies are not only possible, but they nudge everyone to buy local and hire local, strengthening the economy. The miracles have very good explanations :)
Also, it cured baldness.