>and now try to view "US Dollars" as a Government run loyalty program
This is a very deep and totally novel perspective, and you are really onto something. So, if we view it from this perspective, the Government's loyalty program sucks! You get nothing if you accumulate ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or a million points. There is zero Government reward of any kind for any use of points: the value of the points is ENTIRELY in their market value (what you can buy for a dollar) and as a 0.0000% component, any direct or indirect acknowledgment, praise, plaque, or even stuffed animal.
While it MAY be silly that the government would give a teddy bear with a manacturing cost of as little as 80 cents in exchange for using its loyalty program, and paying taxes on it, in the amount of tens or thousands of the same, in fact private industry proves this is not at all so!
Obviously the US government is not a private enterprise, the social contract (and constitition), and general good taste gives it some powers but not others, but some considered steps in this direction certainly might well end up a net positive for everyone.
(As I wrote this comment I felt that it's so unusual and counterintuitive, even absurd, that it might sound like a satire/parody, so just to be clear the train of thought I expressed above is serious/in earnest.)