As the coronavirus continues to rage around the world economies are undergoing a punishment the world hasn’t seen since the great depression. 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment since mid-March.
And yet, stocks continue to see their best days of recovery since 1987. In pain and misery of the poor, there is affluence for the rich.
We are seeing a continued move of capital accumulation by the world’s richest corporations (Google, Amazon) alongside heightened pressure on labor as workers around the world endure quarantine against COVID-19. It is a feature of capitalism that during times of economic crisis, which are cycle and inherent to capitalism itself, the elite swallow the weak. Capital has a tendency to accumulate.
Through this period of crisis, as is typical, we will see governments institute emergency measures that will subsist after the crisis has ended. Likely this will be the case with new levels of government surveillance used to track the movements of Corona patients.
On a positive note, however, one of these features may well be the digitization of fiat currency. The emergency bill passed through congress as the CARES Act at one time included sections describing the creation and distribution of a U.S. digital dollar overseen by the Federal Reserve.
Those portions of the bill were later removed. Another bill has been introduced to Congress by democratic lawmakers called the Automatic BOOST to Communities Act, sponsored by Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). This bill essentially would begin a system of universal income for American citizens distributed by the use of a digital dollar. As countries continue to move to provide financial relief to those hit hard by the virus, we may see a persistence of that relief in the form of universal income. Such a move could help combat the looming environmental catastrophe by enabling a shortened work week, increased wages for workers and further cuts to the world's richest in order to invest in sustainable social systems.
Some points of this proposed bill include:
Although 73% of US adults have broadband service in their home, the speed and quality of that internet remains spotty and abject compared to countries like South Korea.
You can read the full interview here.
The question on everyone's mind, of course, is how a digital dollar could effect Bitcoin?
