Anybody who seriously thinks that Universal Basic Income (UBI) programs of the future won’t be full-blown social credit systems need look no further than Brazil, where newly selected socialist / globalist Lula da Silva just decreed that the Bolsa Familia program will require family members to be vaccinated in order to continue receiving benefits.
“We can’t play, it’s a question of science. If I have 10 covid vaccines to take, I will take all that is necessary ”.
The news comes via The Rio Times, which describes the Bolsa program as “a social welfare program for the poorest families in Brazil” and “a kind of Universal Basic Income”.
Lula says Brazilians can receive financial aid only if they have taken the vax. Bolsa Família will require vax certificates from participants & their children: We can't play, it's a question of science. If I have 10 covid vaccines to take, I will take all that is necessary. 💉 💰 pic.twitter.com/hqrYq4jO6r
— Geopolitics & Empire (@Geopolitics_Emp) February 7, 2023
UBI is considered by many to be beneficent and inevitable. I personally believe the latter but not the former.
However, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that if you’re dependent on The Saviour State for your sustenance (as Charles Hugh Smith calls it), you are, in effect, their chattel.
CBDCs will be the rails for UBI programs
The emergence of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiatives in nearly every nation on earth clearly signals the direction this is going. Nearly every CBDC white paper or proposal I’ve come across have the following three characteristics spelled out in plain text, and I expect every CBDC to have these five capabilities baked-in, whether or not they are initially enabled (or documented).
#1) Expiry dates / use-by dates
CBDCs will have expiry dates after which their value will evaporate or erode. What I’ve noticed is white papers coming out of central banks started framing it as a feature, not a bug, to facilitate “recovery of lost funds”.
Abstract
An important feature of physical cash payments is resilience, which is due to their indifference to power outages or network coverage. Many central banks are exploring issuing digital cash substitutes with similar online payment functionality. Such substitutes could incorporate novel features, making them more desirable than physical cash. This paper considers introducing an expiry date for online digital currency balances to automate personal loss recovery. We show that this functionality could substantially increase consumer demand for digital cash, with the time to expiration playing an important role. Having more information available to the central bank improves accuracy of loss recovery but may decrease welfare.
— Best Before Expiry? Expiring Digital Currency and Loss Recovery, Bank of Canada Staff Paper, December 24, 2021
However, the real reason CBDCs will have expiry dates is to stimulate money velocity and keep recipients dependent.
#2) “Anti-hoarding” features
Saving for the future is being rebranded as “hoarding” and it is becoming officially unfashionable because personal savings reduces dependancy on the state. The easiest mechanism for achieving this will be through negative interest rates on savings accounts, as per this IMF white paper,
“A world with lower inflation (and even zero inflation) and no persistent recessions may sound like a pipe dream, but we argue that it is possible by transitioning to an “electronic money standard.” Such a transition requires eliminating the zero lower bound, which central banks can achieve using readily available tools. Breaking the zero lower bound implies that the optimal rate of inflation will be lower than in the presence of the lower bound. This will empower central banks to quickly restore full employment and, over the medium term, possibly move toward targeting full price stability with zero inflation.”
…which goes on to outline the challenges there would be in eliminating the “arbitrage” between digital and physical cash:
A zero lower bound can be broken through a combination of (1) adopting or strengthening an electronic money standard in which electronic money is the unit of account and (2) implementing a time-varying interest rate (or more generally, rate of return) on paper currency (cash). Then, as the interest rate on cash moves in line with the official policy rates, there is no arbitrage between cash and money in the bank. Operationally this can be done while remaining quite close to the current monetary system, but there are several legal, communication, and political challenges to a transition to such an electronic money standard (Agarwal, and Kimball 2019).
(Despite the current rise in rates, once the money printers fire back up, this is where we’re headed.)
#3) Total Information Awareness
Once it’s digitized in a centralized database (central banks) – as opposed to being cryptographically secured on a decentralized blockchain (Bitcoin) – everything becomes known to central authorities instantly. Taxation can be applied per transaction; but, more interestingly – prices can also be modified on the fly.
If you’re behind on your property or income taxes – or have an unpaid fine (maybe because you’re fighting it), for example, they could simply enable a rolling garnishee on your wallet until it’s paid off.
