What if your income tax refund was more valuable the faster you spent it?

Huh?

At various times in the history of the US and other countries, various alternative forms of currency or ‘scrip’ have been utilized for different purposes. But a German econimist, Silvio Gessell, proposed a form of scrip which imposed a fee (called a demurrage) which increased the longer you held on to it, thus becoming a form of negative intrest.

The Austrian town of Worgl also tried out Gessell’s idea, in 1932. Like most communities in Europe at the time, it suffered from mass unemployment and a shortage of money for public works. Instead of spending the town’s meagre funds on new works, the mayor put them on deposit as a guarantee for the stamp scrip he issued. By paying workers in the new currency, he paved the streets, restored the water system and built a bridge, new houses and a ski jump. Because they would soon lose their value, Worgl’s own schillings circulated much faster than the official money, with the result that each unit of currency generated 12 to 14 times more employment. Scores of other towns sought to copy the scheme, at which point - in 1933 - the central bank stamped it out. Worgl’s workers were thrown out of work again.

Similar projects took off at the same time in dozens of countries. Almost all of them were closed down (just one, Switzerland’s WIR system, still exists) as the central banks panicked about losing their monopoly over the control of money. Roosevelt prohibited complementary currencies by executive decree, though they might have offered a faster, cheaper and more effective means of pulling the US out of the Depression than his New Deal. --The Guardian

Could a stamp scrip issued by the Federal or State governments for issuing tax refunds be useful to get money back into our economic system? It might be worth some serious consideration.