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Schmidt On Why Tax Avoidance is Good, Robot Workers, and Google Fiber

Bruce66423 writes "Eric Schmidt said that a £2.5 billion tax avoidance 'is called capitalism' and seems totally unrepentant. He added, 'I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate.' One must admit to being impressed by his honesty." Schmidt also says that if you want a job in the future you'll have to learn to "outrace the robots," and that Google Fiber is the most interesting project they have going.

2 of 780 comments (clear)

  1. Socialism may win after all by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First on tax avoidance: no one wants to pay taxes, but if everyone is taxed fairly, then this sort of nonsense resulting from favoritism in the tax code would not happen.

    On the robot overlords commeth comment: Just about any halfway intelligent person can see that we're entering the phase of robot factories that produce products and that can repair themselves. Even factories producing robots.... These factories will take orders of magnitude fewer labor hours, and this movement will spread to other typically high labor industries, such as agriculture. Once those are converted, what then? A service economy can only employ so many, and food and basic foodstuff will wind up being almost free, other than energy costs (which could also be virtually free in this scenario) So what's left? Academia will only hold so many, and you only need so many managers/troubleshooters.

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    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  2. Re:Question by Instine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    me. I do. I could play all kinds of games to get out of the 40% rate I pay on half my salary. But I'd rather the NHS got it, than a private healthcare system I sponsored with my avoided spend on tax. Because thats better for me? No. Because that's better for the country I live in and the the one my daughter will grow up in? Yes.

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    Because you can - or because you should?