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In Spain, we carry ID cards for everything requiring identification. The only people who fake ID cards are kids who want to enter in 18+ parties when they're younger...
However, ID cards make things easier for government. They can spot us from anywhere with those. They can establish surveillance on our dealings with everybody. And importantly enough: noone asked for them. It's not exactly coincident that we Spaniards started to forcibly sport them during the Francoist dictatorship, and that the "democratic" governments from later on have not even imagined the possibility to cancel them. Since they make it easier to watch us and tax us, they're incredibly handy for a government. ID cards are indeed simply about controlling peiople: noone cared about immigrants exploiting the Spanish social security system in the 50's, since it was almost non-existant and people emigrated from the country. And even today, noone legally can complain since the constitution establishes that everyone in Spain has the "right" to health care "free of charge" (tax-paid), and to mandatory education up to the 16th year of life. Yet we still are forced to pack those cards, which damage the honor of us, the people, since our word is no longer believed, but the card's.
That being Spain, the idea of dismantling the rather corrupt and inefficient public health care and education systems never crossed anyone's mind, but that's another topic...
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