The Empire State Inclusive Value Ledger Establishment and Administration Act

Abstract

This draft bill establishes the author's Inclusive Value Ledger plan - a publicly administered digital payments platform and associated system of digital wallets - in the State of New York. The aim is thereby to afford all residents and businesses in the State of New York free access to a universal value-storage and -transfer architecture, meaning in turn that (a) all persons and businesses will be 'banked,' (b) all will be able to make and receive peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in 'real time' at no charge, (c) disbursements to and from the state fisc also will be instantaneous, and (d) the state will be able to remunerate forms of 'care work' that currently go unrewarded. The bill also works to ensure personal data and privacy protection, through both encryption technology and criminal law enforcement, for all users of the system, and requires all banks to permit access to teller windows and ATMs for any who wish to convert digital cash to paper currency. These attributes must be considered essential public infrastructural goods in any self-styled 'commercial republic' or 'exchange economy' such as our own. The upshot will be a system of banking and payments that is simultaneously more just and efficient (hence 'pro-growth') than what is currently available anywhere in the U.S. The bill has been formally proposed in the New York State Assembly by Assemblyman Ron Kim, and in the State Senate by Senator Julia Salazar, since October of 2019.