COVID: New World Order?

It would actually be an interesting way to introduce a Univeral Basic Income. One of the main points of Universal Basic income is it's supposed to provide everyone with enough to remove that concern about having enough to survive on thus taking some of the stresses people have away and allowing people a bit more freedom rather than being ruled by their jobs (For example in some of the small pilot the number of new business set up was significantly higher, people could afford to drop some hours to dedicate time to a passion project) BUT the concern is that some people would misuse the money and then still end up needing to be bailed out. If everyone got a UBI paid in an official digital currency that would be limited how you could spend it (With Business that its spent in able to trade it for actual cash), it would remove that. You couldn't just sit unemployed and have the government pay for your SkyTV, your alcohol problem, your fags, to jet off on a foreign holiday to say Ibiza, if you wanted those things you would have to use actual money you earned. It would also obviously remove the issue of feeding kids, the parents would have the money to do that via UBI but couldn't then use it on leisure for themselves.

It actually seems a perfect way of doing it (With it replacing most if not all benefits) as it doesn't remove that push for people to work, if people want luxuries they will need to go and earn extra

 

Just because there were plans doesn't mean they were ever going to be implemented. Part of crisis planning is you have plans for almost anything that could impact you and all the possible solutions to the problem based on severity. I think it was the US where freedom of information request revealed they had emergency plans for a Zombie outbreak

Having a plan in place where some virus is so bad that you have to decide which lives are worth giving priority to does not seem all that unusual to me. And obviously, it seems heartless to sacrifice older people but unfortunately, if things were that bad that such a plan needed to go into effect it's the only thing that could be done. They would have a lower chance of surviving any virus and they have less to offer society, again if it was that bad that such plans had to be implemented we would need the younger people to get society back on its feet, we would need what they contribute to the economy to get that back on its feet and we may very well need them to reproduce to stabilise the population numbers.

The only problem with such plans when it comes to anything that the Government has a say in is that you can have all these plans but politicians these days are so concerned about popularity and winning their next election that they are too spineless to go ahead with the plans in place. They try and hedge their bets and won't follow the plans to try and keep people happy with them and as such usually end up being ineffective