Let's put a smile on that face!

Ok, time banking is hardly a new idea: originated by Edgar Cahn in the States, it involves individuals giving up their time to provide services to others, which are then recorded as credits, so that they may then benefit from the help of others - without any money changing hands. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out that this woolly hippy invention can hardly make sense of the relative worth of vastly different types of labour, equating an hour of dog-walking with an hour of plumbing, that it depends entirely on goodwill and that it couldn't possibly serve to replace money.
But it's lovely when it works, even if the successes listed here may also be heavily reliant on the setting of a small, self-contained country which is relatively homogenous in terms of both ethnicity and social equality. There's no reason why it shouldn't be taken on board as a complement to our other economic activities, and if there's one social positive to be found in a recession, it's the impetus it can give to people's sense of community and pulling together. The Blitz spirit, if you will. Find out more here.