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Bill Gates: The Robot That Takes Your Job Should Pay Taxes (qz.com)
In a recent interview with Quartz, Bill Gates said he believes that governments should tax companies that use robots who are taking human jobs, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment. The money gained from taxing robots could then be used to finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools -- jobs which humans are particularly well suited for. Quartz reports: [Gates] argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it. "You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed" of automation, Gates argues. That's because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it's important to be able to manage that displacement. "You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once," Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them. You can watch Gates' remarks in a video here, or read the transcript embedded in Quartz' report.
Does that include WYSIWYG word processing software that put all those typesetters out of work? Bill, you owe some back taxes.
Exactly the reverse should happen. Prices have to be driven down. Nobody is going to pay the tax but us.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Look. We're going to have to accept, in the near future, that smart machines are better than humans at many tasks.
So why would we want, as humans, to keep doing those tasks? Isn't that just embarrassing to keep trying? You're not actually being useful. You're just pretending to be.
So yes, businesses that make profit via automated processes should pay tax to help give people a UBI (universal basic income), but the tax shouldn't be different than paid by any profitable business.
Why keep people working at tasks they are second-rate at? Doesn't make any sense. People should be free to find something actually meaningful and useful to do, given their unique experience and talent. They shouldn't do make-work projects that a robot can do better. That's just a dumb policy.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That's his whole point. He's arguing for slowing down automation so that everyone doesn't lose their jobs all at once.
Sounds fine. The robot's salary is $0. 25% tax of $0 is $0.
Years ago, the Right Wing realized the US has waaay more people than they needed (those needs only being cord wood troopers for lucrative Endless War (TM), former Seal Team 6 security goons, and only the top-shelf prostitutes and rent boys). So short of rolling the cattle trucks and firing up the ovens, how best to get rid of all these useless people?
The total destruction of any type of governmental safety net. Cut most and privatize the rest (just like they are with jails and prisons), and all those un-needed proles will stop dropping like flies. First the aged, then the disabled, and most of the poor (with of a carve-out for the true believer white ones).
Donald's daily circus shit-show is merely distraction from the real agenda of Ayn Rand devotees like Ryan.
When your goal is to reduce headcount, you should have to pay for it.
People who say this are morons...
If you make it expensive to fire people or lay them off (like they do in parts of Europe), then people are very reluctant to hire in the first place...
Companies will then do anything they can to avoid hiring anyone extra to start with...
Gets better
Define robot taking away a job?
As 30 years ago. Companies would need lots of accountants and billing people. Those jobs were replaced by Windows computers running accounting software that did the math and run reports for them so they didn't need so many people to do more work than was previously possible.
Is that a robot since it replaced a high paying job?
Should Microsoft be taxed for job loss?
Why don't people ever think things through?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I think in your own rambling way you're trying to say that without the struggle for survival folks will fall to Ennui. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. There's plenty of things folks can do to amuse themselves. And 99% of us are just fine wearing the same cloths and watching the same things as everyone else. Have you checked what the top websites are lately? There's not that many of them.
You yell out loud that the Utopia can't exist but you haven't given a lick of evidence. Meanwhile I can point out that folks who are independently wealthy do just fine at finding stuff to do. People don't need to worry about where their next meal is coming from to be content. If they did the Netherlands would be a wasteland.
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You (and others) seem to believe that "robots" are clearly defined pieces of equipment, that clearly take over someone's job. Something with at least a sinister metallic arm that you can point to and say "that thing has my job!".
Reality is that work has been steadily mechanized over a course of centuries, and that process will continu. Instead of you doing your job with a machine, it will be a slightly smarter machine doing the work - and it may or may not have an arm. Where do you draw the line, precisely? How is a law going to define what a "robot" is and what isn't? Is an assembly line one robot, or a hundred? How about the robots in your house: are you going to pay taxes on your mixer, your bread maker, your oven, your fridge, etc.? How about your car, are you going to pay taxes on that as well? Each of those devices save a lot of work, and in doing so, replace human labor. Are we going to pay taxes for all of that?
If you wish to apply tax in terms of displaced human labour, will you compare with assembly line labour of a century ago, or fully manual labour of a millennium ago? How about robots in China, how will you tax those?