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Backlash Builds Against Bill Gates' Call For A Robot Tax (cbsnews.com)
Bill Gates argued governments should tax companies that use replace humans with robots, which "provoked enough negative feedback to fry a motherboard," according to CBS News. Here's how they summarized some of the reactions:
- "Why pick on robots?" former Treasury Secretary Summers asked in a Washington Post opinion piece, which called Gates "profoundly misguided." The economist argued that progress, however messy and disruptive sometimes, ultimately benefits society overall.
- Mike Shedlock, a financial adviser with Sitka Pacific Capital Management in Edmonds, Washington, wrote on his blog that robot owners, who likely would pay the tax, would simply pass it along by jacking up prices.
- The European Union's parliament in February rejected a measure to impose a tax on robots, using much the same reasoning as Gates' critics.
But even while acknowledging that technology can complement humans rather than replacing them, a Bloomberg columnist argues that "Gates is right to say that we should start thinking ahead of time about how to use policy to mitigate the disruptions of automation." So if we're not going to tax robots, then how should society handle the next great wave of automated labor?
But I think it will be found among these Slashdot comments!
because you would not want to tax the ultra mega rich people that actually have enough money to help feed & house the disabled, poor & homeless, they need to buy that new yacht, jet and new limo every year
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Microsoft made its billions off the back of putting millions of accountants and accountants interns out of business with the rise of Excel (and its contemporaries), and yet there were no issues about automation taking over back then... nor any tax on spreadsheets....
Automation has happened all of humanities history - we don't buy cotton material from cottage based weavers any more, and blacksmiths don't build train engines.
Automation is not the enemy of humanity, it's the product of our knowledge and investment in science to better mankind. If you think automation is going to make people permanently unemployable then perhaps it's finally time to admit that we need some sort of universal income so that people can afford basic things like food and shelter. Alternatively, now would be a good time to start having the purge every year. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I don't necessarily disagree with the core idea of a robot tax, but in a globalized world you don't end up with people paying a robot tax, you end up with factories getting moved into countries that don't have a robot tax.
Also robots aren't really the core of the problem, the core problem is the accumulation of wealth within a very small number of people. Robots might make that situation worse and a robot tax could help slow it down a little, but much more drastic measures of wealth redistribution will be needed to actually get anywhere. Robot tax is a band aid and might at worst slow down technological progress.
We have seen what happens when you disenfranchise the local population and strip them of the bare minimum needs for survival. 1789 and 1917 give a pretty good example. That's why we outsourced that to areas where people can't simply pick up pitchforks and kill us, 'cause swimming through oceans with pitchforks is a bit unwieldy.
If you now again create a powerless group of people without any rights and means of existence right at your door, they don't need to swim. And they have a second amendment that ensures they're armed.
I would not go ahead full bore neo-capitalist into another industrial revolution where you don't try to squeeze your workers dry but simply shove them to the side. Working your workers 'til they're dead is one thing, but shoving them aside means that they are still strong enough at the end of the day to hold a gun against your head.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, a tax on robots will make them prohibitively expensive. The US won't be able to successfully compete with other nations on the global playing field. So the government will have to pass a robot H-1B law, that will allow US companies to employ cheaper foreign robots. Only foreign robots have the "cheap" skill that so many companies are craving for.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Anyone who's serious about competing for their jobs against robots should have robotic implants to help level the playing field? :P
Requiem for the American Dream
These dipsh!t producers need to realize that when they collectively suppress labor costs that very same "labor" can't afford to buy your goods.
Want to solve the lagging economy? Follow the philosophy of, "A rising tide raises all boats.
It doesn't matter if you call it Cost Of Living Allowance, Minimum Guaranteed Income, Universal Basic Income, or anything else, the only reasonable way to go forward in a capitalist society is with simple currency-based redistribution of wealth.
There are not and will not be enough jobs to go around. A significantly-sized population is required to maintain the level of technological development, so killing off the masses is a non-starter which would impinge upon the lifestyles of the rich. Their basic needs have to be met somehow. They are going to have to be handed money, because if you don't, one of two things will happen, or both. One, they will die in the streets in droves. Two, they will show up with torches and pitchforks and really ruin all the spreadsheets.
We can forestall this future with public works projects, and honestly that is a good idea anyway, especially in the USA where infrastructure is crumbling. But we cannot do so indefinitely. The health of our economic systems is based on endless growth, and the only way for humanity to enjoy endless growth is to expand into space. We are decades behind where we could be in that area. We may, in fact, be too late. Rockets can never get enough humans off this mudball to make a difference, for reasons of physics, and we still don't know how to build a space elevator. We may well fail here, and never escape our gravity well (a handful of experiments aside.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've been in manufacturing since 1975(!). You would not believe, even in small shops, how much automation has changed the way things are done. In 1975, if you wanted something to move, you grabbed a handle and cranked. Now days, you write code, load it into a computer and hit 'start'. The computer then selects the tool, moves it into position, and heads toward the work at an almost inconceivable rate of speed. This has been going on since the mid '80s. A little late to start taxing robots now.
Since using robots means they're lowering expenses and making more profits, replying "jacking up the prices" is even more greedy.
#DeleteFacebook
"... Nevada, a state which just happens to have no income tax."
Nevada has no Corporate taxes or personal income taxes.
Washington state has no personal income tax, but has taxes "based on gross receipts of businesses".
Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)
Your argument is valid, but only when circumstances don't change. When they do change, such as by introduction of a robot tax, the optimum price point will change as well.
While I agree with there being a big problem with the ultra wealthy in numerous regards, the problem is not Capitalism. The US is not practicing Capitalism, it's practicing a form of Mercantilism which we call "Crony Capitalism". The wealthy install politicians where they believe it suits their interests, and those politicians act as protectionists.
When Adam Smith defined Capitalism the primary role of Government was to prevent monopolies and break them up where they occurred. The Government was not supposed to allow the installment of Politicians by simple means of cash payment like we have today. Those are two very distinct issues with the current system. If you say "Capitalism led to the current state" I will tell you that is idiocy. The people need to behave as was intended and rule the Government, not the other way around. People have been ignorant and lazy, and allowed overreach.
Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" is a modern easier read, which will tell you very similar to what Adam Smith did in "Wealth of Nations".
I agree with you that there are big problems at hand, but moving to Socialism will only make problems worse. Socialism fails when it runs out of other people's money to spend, and we have a large amount of history to sample to see the end of that line. The bigger the bureaucracy the more corrupt it becomes, which is why the US Government was founded on the principle of Minimum powers of the Federal Government (another thing we have lazily let go of).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Contrast that with automation in a factory today. Have you been in a factory recently? The first thing you notice is that there aren't many workers on the floor.
You're looking in the wrong place. Yes, there are fewer people on the factory floor. But there are MORE people in the supply chain. The people designing the robots, making the robots, fixing the robots, cleaning up after the people that designed the robots, cleaning up after the people that made the robots.....
That's how economies grow.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I take it you have never seen the accounting floor of a large business circa 1970 then, because it would have been filled with semi-skilled people filling out numbers in books and passing aggregated numbers to the next tier. Thats how books were done in those days. And those positions were replaced by spreadsheets, with automated cascading on changes, no need for more than a few people anymore.
See the following image for an accountancy department prior to computerisation (computerisation as we know it today):
https://benpadley.files.wordpr...
Its no different at all to your factory worker example. No different at all. You just never noticed the accounting jobs disappearing.
The solution to our jobs being automated is implementing a Universal Basic Income.
The future is here...it's happening...it's absolutely necessary to transition to a system that guarantees income.
The loudest objection, "We don't have the money"...it's simply not true...if we had even the tax levels of the halcyon 1950s Eisenhower administration, we could do it.
Thank you Dave Raggett
A VAT is actually counterproductive - you don't want to tax adding value!
What we really just need is an ownership tax - perhaps something like a property tax. The simplest form is this: your income tax rate is proportional to your ownership percentile.
This means if you own a lot, but have zero income, you get low tax - so you can keep your wealth. If you own nothing, and suddenly get income - you get to keep most of your income.
If you have massive wealth and massive income, you get taxed massively.
This solves most of the adverse incentive problems in any other form of taxation, but it has to be accepted that its unabashed purpose is to dampen wealth concentration effects.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I'll bite, there's a chicken and egg problem here. If you can only afford to feed and shelter yourself, where are the savings to buy a robot and ramp up a business going to come from? Everything is easier (although no business is easy) if you when have access to capital, either through inheritance or a job that pays above and beyond a living wage and allows you to save or service debt. To press the point further, nobody just "goes into business for themselves" anymore, it's not that simple. You need liability insurance, accountants, legal advice, marketing, and (again) access to working capital. Even if you have all that, 9 out of 10 businesses fail, landing you right back to square one, but with depleted savings and probably a newly formed unpaid debt.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
collectively suppress labor
The key word here being "collectively."
Why care about the economy as a whole if YOUR business is doing okay? In the minds of the executive, making as much money as possible is a less important goal that simply making more money than everyone else. Sure, the economy might be a smoldering pile of ashes, but at least my pile of ashes is the biggest!