Investing in a Happy New Year
Commentary by Cara Tausig
January 13, 2011, page 2.....

In 2010 I attended both the first-ever Gross National Happiness conference at Champlain College and, one week later, the sold-out Slow Money conference at Shelburne Farms. It’s telling that conference organizers chose our corner of Vermont for a meeting of the minds on these topics. Apparently, we are an avant-garde bunch when it comes to inventing an inspiring future for ourselves.
So, maybe the first question is, why are we being recognized, across the country and beyond, as a uniquely happening, and happy, place? And, importantly, what can we do to keep our mojo going?
In recent decades, universities and political think tanks around the world have developed well-being indexes ­– such as the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index explored in the aforementioned conference – to replace economic activity indexes like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that offer a misleading measure of citizens’ quality of life. In other words, as Robert F. Kennedy remarked, GDP “does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials … it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Many of us in Vermont tangibly demonstrate the high value of the non-economic aspects of life, choosing to settle here, or to remain, for the natural beauty, abundant recreational and educational opportunities, and alternative ways of life to “working 9 to 5 ‘til you’re 65,” such as entrepreneurship, homesteading and artisan crafting. That is to say, in Vermont, “working two to three jobs just to survive” is fairly common.
Our local culture, whether by necessity or choice, is less oriented toward consumerism than other parts of the country. The region isn’t known – yet – as a wellspring of high-paying jobs. Instead, with a mixture of pain and hope, I believe we are birthing the next generation culture of the good life. Some of us probably didn’t even realize we were carrying such an amazing baby, but wise folks around the country are following our star… and holding conferences in a place they see brimming with potential.
Vermonters are innovating personally and professionally within our local businesses and institutions in ways that are exciting in themselves and also promising responses to the perils of peak oil, climate change and monetary instability. As alarm increases across the nation and world, we are increasingly viewed as leaders in developing intelligent responses to these challenges. Transition Town groups have sprung up throughout Vermont in the past few years, including Charlotte, serving as catalysts and conduits of widespread grassroots R&D in living resiliently and well through anticipated rapid change.
I believe our embrace of “slow money,” whether called by that name or not, has been one key to our mojo so far. Slow money is invested to maximize non-financial benefits while earning a modest 0% to 3% return – a rate of growth commonly found in natural systems such as forests and fisheries. We can think of it as occupying a niche between conventional high-yield investment and charitable giving. When slow money is invested locally, local residents, human and wild, enjoy all the benefits. Slow money investments recognize that our “social security” is less dependent upon the size of our individual bank accounts and more dependent upon the depth of our relationships with each other, the quality of our local commerce, the integrity of our civic leaders, and the health of our ecosystems and ourselves within them.
A wealth of carefully incubated ideas is hatching here and now. In Charlotte alone, examples of individual and civic slow money abound, from the Old Brick Store’s membership model to finance its re-opening, to residents’ patronage of local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms, to the 100+ member online Farmstand Coop launched last summer, to an astounding and still growing amount of conserved land, to tenacious citizen activism to fund trails and facilitate teahouses. As we continue to invest significant time, energy and slow money in 2011 to realize their potential, I look forward to witnessing some full-fledged, home-grown solutions “going viral” across Lake Champlain and Mt. Philo. I hope they are neither gross nor slow.

Cara Taussig, member,
Transition Town Charlotte Core Team