I would expect a Nobel prize winner, MIT and Princeton professor and New York Times contributor to be able to construct proper arguments not emotional outbursts:

> Republicans say that they’re worried about invasion of privacy, that a CBDC would open the door to widespread government surveillance. But remember, these are the people who have handed over personal Medicaid data to ICE to facilitate arrests and abductions

Instead of providing an argument for why CBDC is not invading privacy and enables government surveillance he goes for ad-hominem of "they're bad and don't care about what they say they care about".

I don't need Republicans to care about privacy. CBDC would be a privacy and surveillance nightmare and if Republicans ban it, it's a good thing regardless of their motivations or thoughts.

Imagine a giant bank, potentially mandatory for citizens, run by government.

Today if government wants to look at your bank account and transactions they have to convince the judge to sign a warrant.

With CBDC they'll just have this information, they'll control your ability to send money which is essential to modern living.

We'll inevitably be one supermajority away from your ability to use money will vanish because you say something government doesn't like or call a politician fat.

This is not future dystopia, this is today dystopia.

In Canada during Covid protest the government gave itself emergency powers and shut down bank accounts of protesters.

In Brazil the new government just made it criminal to do and share interviews with previous president.

In Germany they're prosecuting someone for calling politician fat.

Governments will abuse any power they get so it's best to give them as little power as possible.

Politicians love it because they love every tool of control.

I don't know why Krugman loves it but you should be against it.

Sending money is not a problem and it doesn't need government to provide a "solution".