Re: For all those of you who haven't paid attention
At least in my country something like that has existed for decades. Lunch vouchers are a tax-reduced component of paychecks, depending on your employment contract; they have an expiration date of some months and can only be spent on meals at restaurants or foodstuffs at supermarkets. Recently they've gone digital, which means either using a smartcard or yet another damn app on my smartphone.
The important part, those vouchers are an additional part of my pay and they're entirely optional: I can opt out of them and be no worse off than before (the money can only go to my pension fund in order to keep the reduced corporate tax rate, there's no option for regular cash).
I can see similar restrictions applied to potential future stimulus checks: you spend the amount in the way you're directed or you lose it, but either way you're no worse off as it's free money. The fear of employers doing the same to regular paychecks IMO is unfounded, that would be tantamount to being paid in company scrip, something that's been illegal since forever.
Perhaps I'm naively optimistic but I don't see all those downsides, then again as a law-abiding individual "having to live on the run from the government" isn't really in my threat model.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
