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I 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 po

I 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?

rbera 4y ago
I suppose ideally your money can’t be stolen? E.g., if someone hacks you or something similar, the government can invalidate that currency. Plus reduced money laundering, since it’s tracked, which theoretically reduces crime and makes it easier to track. Personally I only see physical currency being deprecated over the next several decades, considering most people don’t really care about privacy anymore (including me, to be fair).
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  It's 2032. Covid Alpha variant is running rampant. In an attempt to prevent Americans breaking mandatory isolation electric cars have been disabled unless authorised by your neighbourhood state leader and all non-online transactions have been blocked.
  - rbera 4y ago
    I’m not saying this is necessarily a good thing. When I say I don’t care about privacy, I mean that I don’t use VPNs, I don’t use ProtonMail, I don’t disable cookies or JS, I don’t use cash—all because I value convenience. Is this short-sighted? Maybe, but I am in a position where I (generally speaking) trust the government. That’s not true of everyone of course.
    - eddsh1994 4y ago
      And, key here, you trust the government now. If a government you trust erodes privacy over time & then a government you don't like gets into power you're screwed.
    - password4321 4y ago
      Ad block?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
barelyauser 4y ago
Not only that, they will have a much more fine grained inventory of things you own. Convenience might be a personal advantage.
- nsteel 4y ago
  Not only that, most tory MPs will now have investments related to digital currency and will make a load of money off the back of this.
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
> ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. Is that a bad thing? (The end, not the means)
- voldacar 4y ago
  It may be if you believe the government will do evil things with the money, which is often a reasonable belief.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lockhouse 4y ago
  The issue isn't the taxes but the way in which they are used to transfer money from the middle class to the other wealth classes. More taxes won't mean better quality of life for the governed but more waste and the lining of the pockets of the politically connected.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money Will be? will in future ? The majority of my GBP transactions are digital already - they are not pieces of paper with picture of the late Queen changing hands, they are database records, mediated by a "buy" button in the web browser, or the tap of a card onto a reader. The currency is mostly digital, already.
- namaria 4y ago
  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.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    > 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.
    - namaria 4y ago
      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...
roenxi 4y ago
It is also difficult to see what good scenarios this enables. This tech in China is being used to un-bank people who the government thinks are troublemakers. It also looks like it would enable direct-to-consumer money printing which will end poorly (but, I suppose, is better than handouts to the wealthy). The UK government, and Western governments more generally, have a terrible history of lies about who they are going to use this sort of capability on. It starts out being sold to catch child rapists, murderers and foreign agents then a few years later we get to discover who is actually going to be targeted. The US's system of anti-terrorist laws have turned out to be for internal use and it is a stroke of justice that they are more threatening to the right wing, who championed bringing them in. People really need to get it through their thick skulls that centralising power => your political enemies will have more power when it is their turn.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Be less concerned with the money printing, and more concerned with expiring money, making pensioners go back to work to “solve labor shortages”. Programmable money via central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) enables more granular economic control over citizens, that is its purpose. (China’s digital yuan has/had an expiring voucher version of the currency issued) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/24/uk-government-looks-to-lure-early-retirees-back-to-work-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/24/uk-governme... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/02/i-cant-work-in-the-office-safely-the-over-50s-leaving-the-uk-labour-force https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/02/i-cant-work... https://pca.st/episode/fca3c402-4383-427e-9dd4-e5355d270ba1?t=917.0 https://pca.st/episode/fca3c402-4383-427e-9dd4-e5355d270ba1?... (15:20-~20:00)
- MarcoZavala 4y ago
  [dead]
galuggus 4y ago
In theory if the gov can collect all tax then taxes should be lower.
- namaria 4y ago
  In practice, a government with unlimited capacity for raising taxes will just expand its scope indefinitely.
  - vagabund 4y ago
    Even considering the Laffer curve, no government today has tax rates at what empirical analysis suggests would be revenue maximizing, so not sure this is true.
    - namaria 4y ago
      > 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.
      - vagabund 4y ago
        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.
        2Crisp 4y ago
        No. The Laffer curve is about taxable income elasticity. It says nothing about the practical challenge of tracking taxes owed and actually collecting them in a cash based system as the parent was suggesting
        vagabund 4y ago
vagabund 4y ago
More granular economic data probably means better monetary policy and fewer systemic risks.
- roenxi 4y ago
  How are you imagining that more granular data would help? It probably won't make a difference. The lag time between action and result is measured in years and there are shocks along the way. And even if it did, we've never really had the public debate on monetary policy. I reckon the median voter would, all else being equal, want "stable prices" to mean that the prices don't change on average. It isn't at all clear we want the community who thinks "stable" means "exponential increase" to be made more effective in their work.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Blockchain cures cancer and makes you more handsome. Imagine what it would do for national fiscal policy.
raggi 4y ago
In the UK that has had a functional transaction system for half a century, not that much. In the US it would be revolutionary to stop mailing checks between banks.
worik 4y ago
I see and acknowledge the catastrophic loss of privacy that digital currency portends > What is the advantage for me as a citizen? There are some, trivially. The overhead of handling cash is eliminated. Moving bundles of notes Reduces the possibility of theft Related, makes the security of your stash somebody else's problem The opportunity cost of proton notes and mounting coins is recovered
jhanschoo 4y ago
If there's a government-blessed open, digital way for a citizen to pay taxes and government services, merchants and banks are highly incentivized to standardize around integrating their payments services on it.
phendrenad2 4y ago
You seem to be supposing that the digital pound will replace the physical pound. Do you have any evidence to back that up?
oliwarner 4y ago
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.

rbera 4y ago

I suppose ideally your money can’t be stolen? E.g., if someone hacks you or something similar, the government can invalidate that currency. Plus reduced money laundering, since it’s tracked, which theoretically reduces crime and makes it easier to track. Personally I only see physical currency being deprecated over the next several decades, considering most people don’t really care about privacy anymore (including me, to be fair).

eddsh1994 4y ago
It's 2032. Covid Alpha variant is running rampant. In an attempt to prevent Americans breaking mandatory isolation electric cars have been disabled unless authorised by your neighbourhood state leader and all non-online transactions have been blocked.
- rbera 4y ago
  I’m not saying this is necessarily a good thing. When I say I don’t care about privacy, I mean that I don’t use VPNs, I don’t use ProtonMail, I don’t disable cookies or JS, I don’t use cash—all because I value convenience. Is this short-sighted? Maybe, but I am in a position where I (generally speaking) trust the government. That’s not true of everyone of course.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    And, key here, you trust the government now. If a government you trust erodes privacy over time & then a government you don't like gets into power you're screwed.
  - password4321 4y ago
    Ad block?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

barelyauser 4y ago

Not only that, they will have a much more fine grained inventory of things you own. Convenience might be a personal advantage.

nsteel 4y ago
Not only that, most tory MPs will now have investments related to digital currency and will make a load of money off the back of this.

EMIRELADERO 4y ago

> ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. Is that a bad thing? (The end, not the means)

voldacar 4y ago
It may be if you believe the government will do evil things with the money, which is often a reasonable belief.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lockhouse 4y ago
The issue isn't the taxes but the way in which they are used to transfer money from the middle class to the other wealth classes. More taxes won't mean better quality of life for the governed but more waste and the lining of the pockets of the politically connected.

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money Will be? will in future ? The majority of my GBP transactions are digital already - they are not pieces of paper with picture of the late Queen changing hands, they are database records, mediated by a "buy" button in the web browser, or the tap of a card onto a reader. The currency is mostly digital, already.

namaria 4y ago
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.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  > 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.
  - namaria 4y ago
    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...

roenxi 4y ago

It is also difficult to see what good scenarios this enables. This tech in China is being used to un-bank people who the government thinks are troublemakers. It also looks like it would enable direct-to-consumer money printing which will end poorly (but, I suppose, is better than handouts to the wealthy). The UK government, and Western governments more generally, have a terrible history of lies about who they are going to use this sort of capability on. It starts out being sold to catch child rapists, murderers and foreign agents then a few years later we get to discover who is actually going to be targeted. The US's system of anti-terrorist laws have turned out to be for internal use and it is a stroke of justice that they are more threatening to the right wing, who championed bringing them in. People really need to get it through their thick skulls that centralising power => your political enemies will have more power when it is their turn.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Be less concerned with the money printing, and more concerned with expiring money, making pensioners go back to work to “solve labor shortages”. Programmable money via central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) enables more granular economic control over citizens, that is its purpose. (China’s digital yuan has/had an expiring voucher version of the currency issued) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/24/uk-government-looks-to-lure-early-retirees-back-to-work-reports-say https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/24/uk-governme... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/02/i-cant-work-in-the-office-safely-the-over-50s-leaving-the-uk-labour-force https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/02/i-cant-work... https://pca.st/episode/fca3c402-4383-427e-9dd4-e5355d270ba1?t=917.0 https://pca.st/episode/fca3c402-4383-427e-9dd4-e5355d270ba1?... (15:20-~20:00)
MarcoZavala 4y ago
[dead]

galuggus 4y ago

In theory if the gov can collect all tax then taxes should be lower.

namaria 4y ago
In practice, a government with unlimited capacity for raising taxes will just expand its scope indefinitely.
- vagabund 4y ago
  Even considering the Laffer curve, no government today has tax rates at what empirical analysis suggests would be revenue maximizing, so not sure this is true.
  - namaria 4y ago
    > 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.
    - vagabund 4y ago
      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.
      - 2Crisp 4y ago
        No. The Laffer curve is about taxable income elasticity. It says nothing about the practical challenge of tracking taxes owed and actually collecting them in a cash based system as the parent was suggesting
        vagabund 4y ago

vagabund 4y ago

More granular economic data probably means better monetary policy and fewer systemic risks.

roenxi 4y ago
How are you imagining that more granular data would help? It probably won't make a difference. The lag time between action and result is measured in years and there are shocks along the way. And even if it did, we've never really had the public debate on monetary policy. I reckon the median voter would, all else being equal, want "stable prices" to mean that the prices don't change on average. It isn't at all clear we want the community who thinks "stable" means "exponential increase" to be made more effective in their work.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Blockchain cures cancer and makes you more handsome. Imagine what it would do for national fiscal policy.

raggi 4y ago

In the UK that has had a functional transaction system for half a century, not that much. In the US it would be revolutionary to stop mailing checks between banks.

worik 4y ago

I see and acknowledge the catastrophic loss of privacy that digital currency portends > What is the advantage for me as a citizen? There are some, trivially. The overhead of handling cash is eliminated. Moving bundles of notes Reduces the possibility of theft Related, makes the security of your stash somebody else's problem The opportunity cost of proton notes and mounting coins is recovered

jhanschoo 4y ago

If there's a government-blessed open, digital way for a citizen to pay taxes and government services, merchants and banks are highly incentivized to standardize around integrating their payments services on it.

phendrenad2 4y ago

You seem to be supposing that the digital pound will replace the physical pound. Do you have any evidence to back that up?

oliwarner 4y ago

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.