Monero has forward and reverse secrecy by default.
Forward: All transactions in Monero are stealth by default, and keys are 100% non-reuseable.
Reverse: Transactions inputs can be mixed with outputs from any other unspent output in the past using the same amount with ring signatures.

So, you can't tell where anything is going, and in the near term soft fork (which we will be publishing a paper on shortly) you also won't be able to tell where funds are coming from with any degree of confidence, unless you choose to publish that information on your own.

Monero also has very different economic policies -- it has a tiny perpetual inflation designed to keep the supply growing and to enforce its use as a currency rather than a store of value. This also ensures that blocks in the future will always have some reward, so PoW can continue to secure the network.

Monero, we had always hoped, wouldn't be a "stealth this" or "darknet that", but rather a currency for the everyday person to use with some reasonable expectation of privacy. Because as anyone knows with Bitcoin, it's piss easy to tell if Joe Blow down the street bought his girlfriend an abortion, or if you just spent half your paycheck on booze and cigarettes or a donation to the EFF. It's about having the same reasonable expectation of privacy with a cryptocurrency that you would have with a normal bank account. The government can still always press you to release your private keys or whatever if they want you to pay taxes, and so on. It's a cryptocurrency to help bridge the world between cryptoequity (which Bitcoin really is) and regular currencies, and hopefully one day become an actual, usable currency (unlike Bitcoin).

It's not a threat to the government (it's still much more traceable than cash, just probably less so than DRK/SDC/whatever) or intended for you to use as Internet Crack Bucks. Probably if you want to buy stupid things online, you'd be better off mailing cash.