So if you protest the wrong thing, they can stop your ability to buy groceries. Wrong think is immediately punishable by clicking a button.
How does that work? Please elaborate using technical language.
Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
91–100 of 103 posts
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#92I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
Knowing everyone else is playing by the same rules has value to me.
I'd limit property purchases and political finance to domestic -earned wealth. You'd be able to import wealth, but you pay tax on it and its person of ingress goes on record. Too much of this country is bought and bribed with dark money.
I'd apply HMRC/money-laundering checks at 1k, not 10k to stop people working for cash. We've had some building work this last year and about half the trades and suppliers offered "cash prices", to the tune of £30k lost tax revenue. Fired one guy for moaning about immigrants and then offering cash rates.
Countries like Greece and Italy nearly collapsed because of nonfunctional revenue systems. We're pissing around with IR35 when what we need is an army of auditors or traceable currency.
And yes, per the sibling comment, this would have to be the only currency. Half measures have no benefits here.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no government today has tax rates at what empirical analysis suggests would be revenue maximizing Because of all the friction in raising taxes on a cash based system. That's the whole point.
What? No, the Laffer curve already describes that. And best approximations of the rate at which the incentive to shirk taxes is so high as to lower total revenue are nowhere near where rates sit now, basically everywhere.
Don't mistake the map for the territory. Model behavior proves nothing.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, over distributed databases controlled by multiple competing entities. With a single system under the government's purview, it's orders of magnitude easier for any government agency to get that data consolidated.
> it's orders of magnitude easier for any government agency to get that data consolidated. I don't buy that; if the government (UK or otherwise) wanted a consolidated view of all transactions (at what stage: acquired, captured or cleared ?) then they could get it from a low double-digit number of sources. Building their own payments processing system is hard, perhaps as hard as getting feeds from all of those.
The sheer amount of cash hoarded by tax evasion, and the very public effort in creating this central government backed blockchain attest to the contrary. For all we can speculate, we will have to wait and see. I dread this possible future and hope it doesn't come to pass...
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The point there being that the bank is the middleman not the government. The current UK government is not going to be the one to "expand the role of government", eliminate the private sector and avoid allowing "private enterprise" (i.e. their pals and donors in big business) a role (i.e. a cut). They're ideologically opposed to that. Mr Sunak, The current PM has ties to banking, he's not going to leave them in the…
All governments will expand the role of government. Can you find me one that has ever decreased its scope in a meaningful and permanent way?
Nevertheless, there are political parties that claim to believe in "small governments" along with "free markets", "individual achievement" and other buzzwords that mean they'll enrich their pals in business, and cut anything that helps poor people. The current UK administration is very much one of those.
They will (ideologically) shrink certain aspects of the state by "outsourcing" or handing it over to private companies. e.g. If you think that the welfare and healthcare aspects of the UK state are currently "expanding the role of government" then you're misinformed. If you think that there hasn't been "austerity" for government services in the last few years, then you don't know the UK at all.
Banking will be likewise, they don't believe in meaningful financial regulation.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
All governments will expand the role of government. Can you find me one that has ever decreased its scope in a meaningful and permanent way?
Nevertheless, there are political parties that claim to believe in "small governments" along with "free markets", "individual achievement" and other buzzwords that mean they'll enrich their pals in business, and cut anything that helps poor people. The current UK administration is very much one of those. They will (ideologically) shrink certain aspects of the state by "outsourcing" or handing it over to private compa…
And there are political parties that will claim to help the poor and somehow the poor get poorer while the rich get richer.
Let's just stop pretending one is better than the other so we can focus on what is important.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nevertheless, there are political parties that claim to believe in "small governments" along with "free markets", "individual achievement" and other buzzwords that mean they'll enrich their pals in business, and cut anything that helps poor people. The current UK administration is very much one of those. They will (ideologically) shrink certain aspects of the state by "outsourcing" or handing it over to private compa…
And there are political parties that will claim to help the poor and somehow the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Let's just stop pretending one is better than the other so we can focus on what is important.
Not to change the subject; the claim was not "one is better than the other", the claim was "this government will make the government the middleman for financial transactions, instead of a bank".
And in terms of this government where the PM, Mr Sunak, is an ex-Goldman Sachs guy, it is an extraordinary claim. Even absurd.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
And there are political parties that will claim to help the poor and somehow the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Let's just stop pretending one is better than the other so we can focus on what is important.
Not to change the subject; the claim was not "one is better than the other", the claim was "this government will make the government the middleman for financial transactions, instead of a bank". And in terms of this government where the PM, Mr Sunak, is an ex-Goldman Sachs guy, it is an extraordinary claim. Even absurd.
From that perspective, you are probably right.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can tell you are arguing in bad faith now because first you refer to a 1978 privacy law which is irrelevant and not applicable, but additionally when I mention Patriot (intentionally instead of AML 2020) you admit Patriot changes it and talk about SEC and State of California, which for political dissidents would be irrelevant. However you now will perhaps even admit that after 2020 AML there is zero privacy in US b…
> you refer to a 1978 privacy law which is irrelevant and not applicable This is wrong. Prior to the RFPA, there were no federal legal protections for these records. The IRS and SEC could request records without the customer’s or a judge’s permission. After, including now, they can’t. That’s far from irrelevant. > you now will perhaps even admit that after 2020 AML there is zero privacy in US banking system Still a s…
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Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in a sort of tangential field, and know a lot of people who are involved with digital currency related public policy. The governments motives for taking an interest in this are basically the exact opposite of the motives of decentralized digital currency proponents. Decentralized digital currency offers the potential for increased anonymity, and a lack of central control/regulation/oversight/ect… Centralized d…
The ultimate irony will be the harder governments try to push CBDCs the more they will increase demand for Bitcoin. Which sounds like better money: 1. money that can expire. be tracked 100% and censored. be auto taxed. auto inflated. or 2. money that has limited supply. is permission-less and uncensored. and no single party can control. It’s the ultimate foolishness of governments to believe the will win that competi…
The problem is that the government CAN ban crypto currencies like Bitcoin. What use is a currency that cannot be used for any lawful purchase?
As long as government exists, we will never have a fair "competition" to find the consumer's favourite currency.
The currency that wins will be the currency the government collects tax in. If you think about it, that's the underlying purpose of tax - to ensure that a government's centrally-issued currency (be it fiat, crypto or gold coins) is the means by which the government itself can procure goods and services.