I don’t see an issue. The government already knows how much I earn, where I live, etc.
Oh, you made an inapropriate comment on twitter... no more concerts and movie tickets for you.
As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place, where chinese people with low social scores cannot buy public transportation tickets.
And I also don't think the government needs to know you went to a buttplug store and bought an XXXL buttplug there. (especially if you're a guy, unmarried, and the government is anti lgbt oriented).
In the area where this instant payment system will go up, health insurance is universal and government regulated as well :)
Your health insurance might not go up, but you could find procedures being denied if, based on your purchases and behavior, the cost would be a poor investment for society and the state.
If you get denied of a procedures because of previous purchases and behaviour that the government insurance does not want to cover; the private sector will be happy to serve you.
Except the Eu is slowly privatizing its healthcare with the pressure from the US.
I mean, you’re exaggerating. But yes, I’d like obese people to pay more for insurance. Also, if government thinks booze is bad it shouldn’t sell it.
> As said by someone else below, china has a similar system in place
Anecdotally, I asked about this a Chinese friend I studied with in Europe. She said “Social credit? What’s that?” It’s not that she can’t read, she’s on Instagram and WhatsApp.
The question for you is whether the government has a need or the right to know every penny (or whatever fractional currency you can legally use) that you move around. This shouldn’t be confused with the government having a need to know about incomes and/or wealth for taxation purposes. Sales or consumption taxes collected by sellers don’t typically care who exactly pays it or what the mode of payment is.
Trusting a nebulous entity like a government to track every expense and every money transfer would be draconian, and would be understandable only in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (and the ones very close to becoming one).
First, there is nothing like the government in Europe.
Secondly, the organisms that are tracking as extensively as possible European citizen are mostly private firms (whose parent companies are typically not European). European directives like GPDR are on the contrary rather shielding European citizen privacy if anything.
I doubt this proposition is forcing to withdraw cash within euro zone. Citizen are free to continue to use cash or not at there discretion.
technically no... but in practice, yes.
EU decides something, and local governments must implement the EU-wide changes into local laws.
If EU decides to do something, they do it... the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
I mean... look at EU banning RT (dot com) - https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
EU decided to identify payers of bills (or bank transfers) above 1000eur, and every country had to pass the law ( https://www.eumonitor.eu/9353000/1/j4nvk6yhcbpeywk_j9vvik7m1... )
So yeah... EU is "the government", there's just one step in between.
The thing is, "EU decides" hides all the complexity of the reality. First of all, "Europe Union" can refer to many things. Here, most likely the sentence refers to the European Parliament. European Commission, European Council, euro area are three other distinct notions for example that can be easily confused with EU.
>the states are not as sovereign as it might seem.
They prioritize their sovereign decision power on staying unified above local punctual interests… or not, as the Brexit showed. States, so far, remain sovereign, even if they accept to bow before collegial decisions in which they themselves participate.
European Council is the institution that is generally presented as "the government".
There is no reason to allow them to know more, but there are very good reasons to let them only know what they really need to know.