My only question is, what does a currency for the general welfare look like?
Like most intangible things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
From the perspective of the government, it is a tax credit.
The issuing government levies a tax to create a demand for the currency in the economy. In doing so, it also sets the value of the currency. As it spends its currency to provision itself whatever tax credit it allows for the items it requires becomes their price. Only after spending sufficient currency into the marketplace can it collect the taxes, but it must spend more than it taxes if it wishes the currency to become the standard denomination for commerce. It also must not accept any other currency for payment of its tax levy and must denominate all contracts with the private sector in that currency.
Once the government has satisfied, by force if necessary, those criteria it can provision itself at any time without a source of revenue. However, to maintain a healthy economy it must use the power of taxation to avoid too much currency from accumulating in the private sector and devaluing the currency already spent. This is best accomplished by simply discarding any currency it collects. As the monopoly issuer of the currency, it never “needs” its own currency back to spend and accounting is made much easier by keeping it simple. Governments create currency when they spend and destroy currency when they collect taxes.
By creating an accounting entity to represent currency spent and not yet destroyed by taxation the issuer can always know what level of currency is in the private sector. This entity is labeled “debt” because the government “owes” a unit of tax credit to anyone holding a unit of the currency. It represents the total of tax that can be levied without spending more into the economy and can be combined with other data from the government’s central bank to determine the distribution of currency in the economy. It can then use its power to levy taxes and spend new currency to alter that distribution and achieve social goals.
From the perspective of the private sector, the currency is a unit of measure.
A standard currency of commerce enables a modern economy by offering a store of value. A farmer can sell a cow today and purchase a pig next week without having to find a seller of a pig that wants a cow at that particular time. It allows one to conduct trade without having to physically take whatever commodity one is offering to a marketplace to be exchanged for other goods of equal value. One simply has to establish a fair trade value for whatever commodities are being sold and purchased, including one's labor, denominated in the government’s currency.
However, this benefit requires that the government spend considerably more than it collects in taxes. If the government destroys currency in direct proportion to the currency it creates (balanced budget) none is left in the private sector to act as a store of value and any unequal distribution will cause considerable hardship. Economies, via factors such as land ownership, patents, and education, tend to organize themselves in pyramids with wealth distribution concentrated toward the top. This distribution curve is largely responsible for most revolutions and wars and should be mitigated by progressive taxation that takes more from those who have more. Spending should also function as a leveler and be injected as close to the bottom of the distribution curve as possible.
Understanding that taxation creates unemployment mandates that governments offer employment sufficient to provide basic necessities and satisfy the tax obligation. By guaranteeing a job to anyone who needs/wants one at a livable wage the government becomes the employer of last resort and sets a floor for wages and conditions in the private sector. This will stabilize the economy over the cyclical ups and downs of the private sector and protect vital supply chains from collapse. Using the government as the wage setter in this way is preferable to establishing a forced minimum wage and paying people to be unproductive with welfare when the private sector cannot utilize their labor. It anchors the economy in the wages of labor and offers employers a stable of workers with social and work skills intact as they are needed.
Providing socially beneficial work to anyone who wants it also mitigates the problem of first fired and last hired organization that victimizes those who don’t look or speak like the majority. There is never a lack of jobs to be done if one isn’t obligated to create a profit from them, as a short walk in any major city or rural community would prove. Offering employment/pay for things that improve quality of life factors also allows a society to reach beyond simple profit motivation and includes many in social organization that would otherwise be viewed as burdens and vilified for things beyond their control.
None of this is possible as long as we view the currency as something we have a finite quantity of that government must “obtain” from those who have it before spending on the common welfare. Besides simply being in error, such a view is both economically and socially destructive. Spending in deficit is required for a healthy economy that isn’t subject to the whims of the wealthy and taxation is never revenue for governments that neither need nor use revenue to spend. Any government with a sovereign fiat currency and sufficient real resources has all of the tools they need to provide a life of dignity for all of its people.
