United States going down the path of Basic Income which is not likely to be universal
The launch of a fed backed "digital dollar" allows the US government not only to give a UBI at the click of a button but also to see how every cent is spent. Imagine being shamed because you spent more than the neighborhood average on entertainment? Imagine if the government gives X amount of money to Y people to spend on food and those people buy something else instead? They can simply raise the taxes or reduce the income to those irresponsible few.
Congress (government) as expected is choosing to take power during a crisis. Yes we may get UBI but we may also lose the ability to have financial privacy or to decide how we spend our money. Free speech? Yes free in the sense that if you speak wrong you get taxed (literally)?
I expect the United States form of basic income to be crippled by good intentions and plagued with the input from weall meaing congressional micro-managers. They may want to do the right thing and I think yes UBI is correct particularly in light of what the Coronavirus has revealed. I just think the form we are getting is likely to be a form where the US government says to the receivers:
"Here is money for you to buy the essentials" --> [List of essentials we think you should buy]
"If you buy too much of the stuff not on this list we will see it" --> [Total Transparency and Zero Financial Privacy]
"If we know and don't like we can punish you!" [List of possible punishments for offenders]
Yes, indeed it can be worse than being a child receiving an allowrance from your parents with zero trust that you'll be an adult to spend your money correct. Yes it could be worse than what we see in China with social credit. Yes it could be a divide between people who have money which they can spend in privacy (because they worked for it) and those who receive basic income who spend the "public money" on the "publicly determined essentials" else fear of losing social desirability or worse an actual fine/tax.
I don't expect responsible spending to be rewarded with greater income either even if that would be a smart thing to do. The US in particular trends toward judge and punish culture instead of judge and reward culture in my opinion. I think we can all thank Facebook Libra for lighting the fire or creating the spark which pushed the US government to even consider a digital dollar.
Good points. UBI is absolutely necessary but it won't come without strings attached. It could've been paid to ordinary bank accounts instead but it was chosen to be paid out like this. What this means, among many other things, is that if poor people with substance abuse issues wish to avoid having their spending money cut or refused or getting a visit from the child services or something, they're going to have to create a secondary market for used goods. That would make the authorities pay attention to anyone who uses any UBI money in trading a lot of used goods. At some point, laundering the UBI money with such methods may be considered an offense.
Well we don't know yet. It's speculative but they did try to sneak it into the stimulus for unknown reasons so it shows there is some strategy in place to put in place digital dollars and from there UBI could be implemented.