Earlier quoted context omitted.
A proper digital ID would certainly make things more difficult for thieves, but if someone actually did manage to clone your ID you'd be in a world of hurt, since businesses would start to trust that ID to a greater extent than they trust anything online now.
But governments would be obliged to ensure that wouldn't happen and fix it if it did. We trust them to do the same for passports etc and it works fairly well.
There's quite a bit less incentive to clone a passport, though. A guy in Pakistan can't clone my passport and use it to clean out my bank account.