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San Francisco Politician Jane Kim Is Exploring a Tax On Robots (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: In San Francisco, where robots already run food deliveries for Yelp's Eat24 and make lattes at a mall coffee kiosk, one politician is working to ensure the city stays ahead of the curve. Supervisor Jane Kim is exploring a tax on robots as one solution to offset the economic devastation a robot-powered workforce might bring. Companies that use robots to perform tasks previously done by humans would pay the city. Those public funds might be used to help retrain workers who lose their jobs to robots or to finance a basic income initiative. Kim, one of 11 city supervisors in San Francisco, has been interviewing tech leaders, labor groups, and public policy experts in the hopes of creating a task force that will explore how a "robot tax" might be implemented. San Francisco would become the first city to create such a tax, after European lawmakers rejected a similar proposal in February. Kim learned the concept of a robot tax when Bill Gates called for one in an interview with Quartz. It struck a chord with the San Francisco politician, who represents some of the poorest and wealthiest residents across the Tenderloin, South of Market, Civic Center, Treasure Island, and several other neighborhoods. She hears of robots cropping up in hotels, hospitals, and even her local bar, and worries about how automation might deepen the income gap.
Highest tax rate in the Western Hemisphere and constantly bankrupt.
Traffic lights? Cellular Phones? Urinals? Where does it begin or end?
How is this any different than taxing a business for improving its internal processes or other automated technologies like looms, conveyor belts, or even electric-powered-anythings?
How about replacing Jane Kim with a robot (or an inanimate carbon rod), it would cost nothing just sitting there and so it would create all sorts of savings on idiotic proposals for people of San Francisco.
You can't handle the truth.
but we tax personal income, which will go away, so some replacement tax has to pay for it.
Defining "robot" is going to be the (really) tricky part.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Robot is very well defined especially in this situation:
a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I dislike the idea of a "robot tax", it seems counterproductive. If robots make business more efficient and more profitable than human employees do, then the solution to that is to tax the resultant company profits and invest those tax dollars wherever needed. Specifically taxing the use of robots forces needless inefficiency and thus brings in less tax revenue while preventing some types of businesses from being profitable / developing at all. It also needlessly forces people to work jobs that are so mind-numbingly dull that a robot could do them.
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While theoretically this might be a valuable way to help raise funds to support impacted low income workers, I'm skeptical that the funds raised, especially if successful, will actually go to help them. More likely than not, if San Francisco goes through with it, they'll just take the money to shore up the general tax base, enrich civil workers, or maybe a bit of pork for donors and the elite. Perhaps they'll say the money went to help an existing training center with a token set of new training manuals or something before the rest of the money is funneled to other pet projects. Then they'll go back and say they need a new tax to raise new funds. So unless they tie the launching of a specific new recurring initiative with the tax, it just feels like a money grab by the city government.
or you could have a rational capital gains tax...
BWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Seriously, this is going to end in blood. They're already trying to kill off the poor. You think the latest thing with the oxy epidemic killing off poor formerly middle-class white people is a coincidence?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Taxes on all toasters, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers and...wait for it...vibrators?
She will be voted out in a second, once the vibrator tax hits SF. They will bootleg them in from Oakland.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A "robot tax" solves nothing. We need to find a way to move away from our dependence on currency to survive. Automation is a good thing that can help us *all* lead better, more fulfilling lives, but only if we work to put in places changes to end this horrible capitalist system that ties your entire identity to your job. What good is a robot tax going to do when *all* jobs are run by robots? That wouldn't even make any sense. The key here is finding a way to support each other and make sure that the amazing benefits of automation are given to everyone.
we've got a very regressive tax system. Instead of demanding that get fixed we just keep demanding more tax breaks. The tax breaks go to the very rich, gov'ts run out of money & can't raise taxes on the rich so they raise taxes on the poor through new regressive taxes. Lather, rinse, repeat. There's a name for it. It's called "Starve the Beast". It means intentionally breaking the government so people lose faith in it. It's really a form of terrorism ( inciting fear for political gain, what else would you call it?) but that word is so loaded nowadays you can't use it for anything meaningful.
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So like an espresso machine? Or an embroidery machine? Or any number of tools already in use for the production of damn near everything?
NOT tax "robots" and let the markets evolve with changing technology.
People out of work will find new jobs, or new places to live that aren't as over-priced as SF.
Companies will find the right balance of automation and the human touch in customer-facing positions.
And the government will avoid yet another lurch into Venezualan socialism by promising everything to everyone at the expense of Those People.
That definition will cover a huge number of existing devices used by businesses. For example, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems (press 1 for blah,..) are used by almost every company. It could also hit automated blood test equipment, self-checkout lanes in stores, vending machines, etc.
If we tax mechanical robots that displace human workers, then shouldn't we also tax software in the same vein? We need a lot fewer accountants than would otherwise be the case without TurboTax.
An excise tax on goods produced based on their transfer though the supply chain (a value-added tax) makes more sense because it is easily measured, and imported goods can't escape it. For example, an importer will pay VAT on the total cost minus credits for any VAT the foreign manufacturer paid to the importing country for parts made in the importing country.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There is no reason not to tax robots. They are property used in a commercial endeavor. Since less people working will cut tax revenue it's a logical way of replacing that revenue.
A computer is a machine...
Self-evident.
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Robotic Republicans will revolt and overthrow humanity.
Table-ized A.I.
Punitively taxing progress in order to protect the buggy whip.
Yeah, this is sure to work out for the best.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The tax should be a re-vamp of the corporate tax. Why tax "people" if a corporation can automatedly create infinite goods. The "fix" isn't to tax the robots that work for corporations. The fix is to tax the revenue of corporations. 1% revenue tax on corporations will eliminate the need for all other taxes, and be clear, fair and direct. Though, in practice, I think we should keep a range of taxes, to collect from those most able to pay (and prevent tax holes)
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Is an inkjet printer a robot? Sounds like it is. It selects a sheet of paper, advances it, moves to programmed locations, applies an appropriate volume of ink based on the program, cleans the printer-head, alerts on conditions like out-of-paper or low-ink....sounds like a complex series of actions completed automatically to me. Shoot, I cant even create what a printer can make.
or, you could be like florida, not have income tax, and have a small sales tax instead. Of course in california, i'm sure theirs income tax AND sales tax. no wonder businesses want to leave.
First, robots will not be stealing jobs, tech will create more than it takes, it always does, because we filled all the "neccessary" jobs centuries ago and most current work is luxury - and humans being greedy keep expanding the luxuries we decide are 'essential' - health care is a prime example.
That said, a robot tax is not a bad idea. It's a good way to tax the succesful businesses after they have advanced past the beginner stage and become profitable enough to automate.
Of course the real question is what is a robot and what is a 'job human's used to do'. Robots could be defined as any machine that is capable of moving itself more than 10 ft without a human operating it. That excludes stationary machinery, but would include driverless cars.
But "humans used to do" is stupid, all jobs are things human used to do. Even if you make a new job tomorrow, I could screw you over by doing it once, then it becomes something a human used to do.
Is a Roomba a taxable robot? Humans used to vaccuum. Is it taxable if you buy one to clean a factory - but not taxable if you get it for home use?
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A revenue tax would tax the robots. In fact, a flat tax of 3% of revenue on all legal persons would result in a large decrease in taxes for most people, and would effectively tax robots. It'd fully fund universal health care, which is cheaper than subsidized insurance plans, and fund a UBI as well. Though, it would kick off a 5 year recession before 20 years of unprecedented growth. So it'll never happen.
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You're pointing to an alternate approach. Using robot is substituting capital input for labor input. It may increase efficiency, but definitely more capital will be required. Current law favors capital investments by allowing accelerated depreciation (or even immediate depreciation under Trump tax proposal). So by changing the depreciation schedule to the natural life of the robot or even longer, we can remove the current subsidy which accelerates automation. But this need to be done on the national level.
And how do you enforce this anyway? You can tax a building because it's stationary. You can tax a vehicle because it travels in public spaces. How do you prevent me from building a robot out of parts and not declare it? You just created a problem that is even trickier to implement than detecting moonshiners or meth cooks. The cost of enforcement mechanisms will exceed the revenue generated by such a tax for years to come. I guess at least training the recently unemployed will be pretty easy. All they got to learn how to do is go to factories and count robots. Call me crazy, but it sounds like a VAT tax would accomplish the same thing with a LOT fewer Hard Problems to solve.
Don't many countries already have a variation of this?
Here is an oversimplified thought experiment. Currently a minority productive subset of the population supports the rest of the population; i.e. 0 to 18 years kids are supported by their parents; 67 and up people are retired; students, disabled people and those who do not work for whatever reason are all provided for by the rest of society.
If non-human production takes over *all* jobs, automation will necessarily need to take the place of the productive subset. This would logically be implemented as a value added business tax. Whether a human or a machine produces something or provides a service, some portion of that value would need to be redistributed to provide for basic needs, otherwise there would be a complete systemic collapse.
The sooner we recognize this as a society and implement a simple value added product and service tax, the smoother the transition will be.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Far more Revenue! :-P
That's billion with a "B". And recall that SF only has about 800,000 residents. According to SF Chronicle, San Francisco spends more money every year than at least 10 states, including Iowa and Maine. Kim is among the worst, but every politician in SF will spend up to and even slightly more money than they can get their hands on. This is just one more source of pork barrel money for them them. It has nothing to do with robots or job losses or housing or whatever. The fact that SF is in the shape that it is in after $9 billion every year is proof of how terrible the people running the city are. Or a less charitable person might say how corrupt..
One problem with taxing a robot is 'how much to charge?'. There is a similar challenge in the auto repair industry: how much to charge for ... changing a headlamp in a 2015 Toyota Corolla, for example. The answer is a bit complicated. There are books that document every possible repair procedure and the average time of each repair. If the headlamp is a 15 minute job then the customer will be charged for 15 minutes' labor, regardless of the actual time the mechanic takes.
When a robot takes a human task, that human task should be measured similarly- how long would an average human take to do the job, and what pay grade would have applied? Then we know the value of the work, and the cost in human displacement, and we have a basis for taxing the robot.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Florida has other taxes. They get you a lot of places. There are always property taxes.
A tax on San Francisco Politicians?
Taxes and government go hand in hand. There are certain functions that are required and funds for those things must be collected from somewhere. That stuff doesn't pay for itself.
Other day on PBS a panel discussion or the Newshour with presenters talking about political situations, one said something like "Nobody is addressing the 800 lbs gorilla that is automation which is expected to reduce large numbers of jobs in retail, insurance, groceries, etc. in the next 10 to 20 years."
Which technological changes, people and the politicians they elect tend to react to the results of those changes rather than dealing with implementation. Also much of the wealth in SF bay area is difficult to tax, so go after easy stuff like sales tax and gas tax. I'm not sure how you would tax a robot, first have to define a robot (Roombas, traffic lights, urinals?), is the robot doing revenue producing work or some thing else not financially related?
mfwright@batnet.com
Do you know what else, besides robots, displaces humans?
Other humans.
"Kill them all," is what the robot economist just heard Jane Kim say is desired. You were so worried about robots stealing your job, that you just authorized the production of Terminators.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1) The Taxes would never be used for the proper thing.
2) Companies would move out of the area
3) They would start calling them something else and they the law would be changed, and then they will call them something else, in an endless loop.
4) This stop progress
5) The companies making these service robots would be funded by the city to make them, so there is a conflict of interest
6) I doubt the people being replace amount to a large tax income anyways.
7) Find other creative ways to solve the problem instead of Taxing everything all the time!
So you're saying we shouldn't tax robots because the people who the citizens of San Francisco elected cannot be trusted to spend the money wisely.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Well at least the rent here would be affordable...
Though I'm still unclear as to what companies you're referring to. Minimum wage often means service industry here, so what...is every McDonald's going to leave the city?
Though, that's the one "good thing" about the Trump plan. The tax plan reduces breaks.
The one thing it, and every other tax plan, gets wrong is classes of income. Unearned income is taxed less than earned income.. Capital gains is a low bracket. And taxes on people exclude corporations, which are legally persons, except for taxing. Tax corporations under the same rules as a single filer, and you'd solve all the revenue problems of the US, though you'd also crash the economy. But setting the income tax rate to 0% for the first $100k, and 1% after, for all persons, natural and artificial, then you'd solve the revenue issues, while not taxing any one person too much. 1% tax (no exemptions) isn't too high, but apply that to artificial persons as well as natural ones, and all the problems go away, and with minimal impact on the economy (other than to boost it, as people will have more and spend more).
Learn to love Alaska
This could work. We'd need some form of Great Convention that carefully describes the limits of what is and what isn't a robot - is an alarm clock a robot? Is a washing machine? How about a lawn sprinkler system with a timer? Elevators? Coffee Machines? Snack dispensers? How much automation is permitted in factory machinery? Can this process be regulated by a sensor and a timer, or is that a robot too? Do they have to hire a guy with an egg-timer to stand there and throw a lever instead?
Having made this distinction, businesses will then crowd up against either side of this imaginary barrier; on one side, engineers simplifying systems until they are no longer sufficiently robotic to be taxed, and on the other side Servok craftsmen pushing the limits of the Great Convention up to where their mechanisms might be taxed. There would be jobs for assessors, there would be jobs for screaming torch-bearing mobs chanting "THOU SHALT NOT BUILD A MACHINE IN THE LIKENESS OF THE HUMAN SOUL!" as they drag computers and programmers alike from their offices and destroy them.
It might not make a great novel in itself, but it'd be good background material for one.
You are fascist-right, not libertarian-right. A libertarian wants the smallest government possible. $1 in Head Start cost reduces prison, court and other "necessary" government cost by more than $1. So a small-government libertarian would support giving $1 to Head Start, because that results in a smaller government. But "taxes are theft" libertarians are fascists, who want a large, strong central government controlling every part of our lives. If not, why not spend the $1 in preventative cost?
Like the places that gave away free housing found that it was cheaper than the "traditional" means of dealing with homeless, So why do you not want a small government?
Learn to love Alaska
a Robot, for tax purposes, is a machine used to produce goods or provide services. This means an ATM is a robot and a urinal isn't.
That's why this idea is getting traction. It's hard to understand why you would rob peter to pay paul and why wealth redistribution is a positive good. It's easy to understand "Tax the robots that took my jerb!". You want this, because the alternative is dystopia. Hell, we don't even have to question that. Go read up on what happened during the industrial revolution. There was 80 years of horrific poverty until tech caught up and employed people again.
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Yes, fixing the problems Automation causes is hard. But that doesn't mean you give up. If it was easy we wouldn't be freaking out about it.
After you get the money you have to put honest people in charge of it and kick them out if they become dishonest. Civilization isn't a one and done. There are no guiding principles that will lead to a decent society. You have to keep working at it non stop until the day you die.
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during the industrial revolution. There was decades of misery, poverty and wars while technology caught up. Christ, did you forget WWI & II? You really think we fought those wars because somebody offed a Duke?
As for Venezuela, they're a single product economy (oil) in free fall because the Saudis dropped a shit ton of the stuff to kill US Shale. In any sane world the rest of the planet would bail them out until the price of oil rebounded instead of gleefully reveling in their misfortune.
I got a better idea. How 'bout we don't leave things to the "market". When has a bad situation _ever_ been improved by leaving it alone and hoping for the best?
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and vote the corrupt people out. And if you're not in SF vote in your local elections. You're giving up way too easy. The solution isn't to give up and let the chips fall were they may. That's been tried (Industrial Revolution) and it didn't end well. Luddites weren't just anti-tech noobs. They were people facing starvation when their livelihoods went away. Where do you think all those wars came from? We didn't fight 'em just because somebody offed a Duke.
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Yes we are seeing a huge change that will require us to revamp our entire social and economic systems which will cause drama and unrest but the worst thing in the world is to try to make it fit into an old fashioned world model. That is the path to disaster. Now the game has changed. Try to build and export a product while taxing your robots and automation and you will fall flat on your face as other nations will not tax their machines at all. Resistance is futile is no longer a joke. The robots are coming on fast and strong. Think what it will do to the American buyer. Think for a moment about machines that can build a $15,000 dollar home that is superior to a $100,000 dollar home. Why force the buyer to waste $85,000 dollars. How about a boat that can be well built quickly by machines? How about a new car that did not need humans in the factory? How about your food being picked by machines, driven by machines to your door at half the cost you currently pay for groceries. How about a dental robot that can do $5,000 worth of dental work for you for $100 and do it better than a human dentist? Anything that causes the cost of robotics and automation to rise will do huge harm in so many ways that we can't begin to understand it. Traditional beliefs and practices may be our worst enemy.
You can't tax revenue.
We do for people. Why not artificial people?
A company may live on a super thin margin (or even generate a loss),
And people don't?
explain how you will tax revenue and where exactly the money will come from if the revenue minus expenses = a negative number?
The same place where a company with a loss pays their payroll. Gosh, these questions are easy. Did you think about them before you posted them?
Taxing somebody on revenue who generated a loss is called bankrupting them.
Yet, they get property tax assessed, even if they operate at a loss. Their suppliers send them bills, even if they operate at a loss. That's called "bankrupting them". Business that can't make money go out of business. How is this news to you?
Learn to love Alaska
- idiot.
Nice sig, but you left off any content.
Learn to love Alaska
A coffee machine also makes coffee automatically even though a long time ago we had a coffee-person for that, so when is it a robot and when is it just an automated appliance?
Surely it'd just be simpler to raise the level of corporation tax? More robots = more profitability = more tax = more social provision for those who are rendered unemployed by the intransigent march of future. No need to define what a robot is. Just pay more damned tax!
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Can't do WITHOUT one penny less, than last year.
Why paying extra bureaucrats to cash-in just another tax from companies, which "tax" will come back to the fired employee in something like 10-20% of the value the government will cash-in? Because we all know how good bureaucrats are to handle tax money... Why not just work on a law to protect employee from being fired when a machine comes in? Giving incentives and tax reductions for companies to help the invest more in that employee, to help him/her achieve a better education and to be able to work in the same company, but on a higher level or for a brand new niche that the company can open to? Wouldn't be better for everybody to "prevent" and help companies keep their employees instead of "reacting" to companies firing employees? Wouldn't be better to invest in education and progress instead of taxing progress and keeping the same level of education (or even lowering it on some cases)? Isn't this just another case where bureaucrats are just trying to get their share from something they invent?
Taxing the robots will reduce the efficiency gain of the robots, which will prevent prices from falling in line with that efficiency gain, preventing people from finding themselves with the means to buy more, preventing the creation of new jobs to make and retail those additional things people buy.
In other word: robots will cause transitional unemployment ending in a shift of jobs over time. Taxing the robots will cause permanent unemployment.
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A revenue tax would be complete bullshit. It taxes the movement of money instead of production. If you produce 1 million tonnes of rice, your tax system should capture a portion of 1 million tonnes of rice; income taxes on personal income and business profits accurately do that. Taxes on revenue would tax the simple movement of money, which would tax non-productive movement of money, and would effectively double-tax money. Prices of goods would go up, production would go down, jobs would vanish, and we'd get poorer.
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We don't tax revenue for people.
When a person has an income, he works, and produces an output of his labor. Your time gets you a wage and produces a good or service.
When a business produces goods, it applies labor. It applies domestic labor and pays local wages (taxed). It applies foreign labor by importing goods and outsourcing services (not taxed--not produced here, not an output of our labor). It buys things from other businesses (taxed at the other business). It then sells those goods at a price above the cost of all inputs and is taxed on the difference--the profit is also taxed.
So what does your national economy produce?
All business revenue minus all import goods and services equals all money spent on all goods produced in your economy.
So we subtract the stuff businesses source from other businesses. If that's a domestic business, then it pays its taxes, and so we deduct those expenses from revenue so that production isn't double-taxed. If it's not a domestic business, it's not stuff produced here, and that cost isn't part of our economy's productive output.
What about wages?
Well, you could just tax businesses on wages; that means you have to tax some 30% to equate to the flat personal income tax equivalent of our current income tax system. That, in turn, means that low-income workers (e.g. minimum wage) cost the business 30% more, and don't receive that much money. For a minimum-wage worker a $16,500/year, their taxes are 10% of $10,000 (standard deduction for a single individual deducted), or $1,000; whereas the increase in cost to the business is $4,950 if we tax revenue instead of wages.
So all costs and the requisite prices go up substantially, while the lower- and middle-class take-home income goes up less. You have to break about $260k to be advantaged in this system. That means that over 95% of Americans are less-capable of purchasing as much stuff, so less gets bought, and the number of jobs is reduced. "Less-capable of purchasing as much stuff" is a complicated way to say "poorer".
The same place where a company with a loss pays their payroll. Gosh, these questions are easy. Did you think about them before you posted them?
You could have just said, "They'll have to raise prices." Instead, you gave a non-answer, and mocked the other person for asking you to think for two seconds about the giant hole in your brilliant plan.
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$1 in Head Start cost reduces prison, court and other "necessary" government cost by more than $1.
Citation please. My wife has a masters in education and has worked in several school systems and has never seen this to be true.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
SF, like most large American cities, is run by a single party. There is no such thing as free, open elections there.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I suppose after the task force ponders the definition of a robot for a bit and realizes it can't be defined, it would work out to a tax on capital equipment, which is already defined by accounting.
I don't mind the property taxes so much, but income taxes are just stupid.
People out of work will find new jobs, or new places to live that aren't as over-priced as SF.
Has it occurred to you that there are people in this world that simply don't have the mental or physical capability to compete with a robot? There is a very real risk that only the most intelligent (or connected) members of society will be able to find a job in the future. What happens to everyone else? Do they starve?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Just because you're a robot doesn't mean you can get out of paying your taxes, beeoch.
So you're saying we shouldn't tax robots because San Francisco is run by a single party.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
They punish you for working. Kind of stupid but that's progressives for you.
Government is those things that don't generate direct profit. Roads don't generate profit but they make commerce possible and thus support profit. Some things are just to maintain society which profits everyone.
Dumbest idea ever...
So you are going to create a 50% tax on all capital creation events. Realize that these events aren't "Profit" in the sense that the company is just saying we will give a fair value to our capital so we can have cash for what ever reason they end up needing cash. So some area creates a 50% tax on the event, not only that - but the people taking that 50% now have an effective say in how the company is run... Imagine if Menlo Park got a 10% say in how Facebook is run... Do you think Mark would keep his company there, or have "headquartered" it in nearby sunnyvale, or palo alto... Heck don't even have to move the employees, just put a small office that is the "headquarters" of the company. For a small enough sized company (that is still trying to raise money either through private investment, or on the open market) you just move everyone to an office building 2 miles down the road in a different tax jurisdiction.
Why would anyone ever pay this tax?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
"transitional unemployment"
THAT is the big assumption.
Do you think the unemployed coal miners and truck drivers can retrain to become youtube stars?
Many have become permanently unemployed and there is a costs to that.
When the buggy whip maker lost their jobs, they can learn to make wheel barrel or what ever.
The exponential changes in technologies make it very difficult for people trained in per-computer era to adapt.
I said they don't directly generate profit. I'll make an exception for toll roads.
THAT is the big assumption.
Do you think the unemployed coal miners and truck drivers can retrain to become youtube stars?
Alright let's talk reality for a second. People are unemployed. There's a baseline 5% unemployment rate that fluctuates up and down--people need jobs, and some of those people don't have them.
The "retraining" argument is a persistent fallacy: we don't turn a cola miner into a computer engineer; we turn them into a construction worker or something. There are a lot of overlapping skill sets, and people shift from one career to another based on that overlap. Believe it or not, coal miners aren't low-grade retards who can barely figure out how to pull their head out of their own ass and so got thrown down a deep hole with a shovel; they have skills you can't comprehend, and they're broadly-applicable in a multitude of engineering fields. Let's not forget we mine salt, ffs; coal isn't the only useful, solid thing found in the ground.
Even that argument is shoddy because much of the transitioning out is just a matter of adjusting the inflow.
The thing about not writing a 5-page dissertation every time I respond to a bad economics argument is people move right to the next thing. I keep saying this all over the place: time is a factor. If you unemploy 30% of your workforce in 2 months, you get high unemployment and your economy hits The Great Recession; if you do it over 10 years, not so much.
So you're worried about "permanent unemployment", but we're talking about transitioning over ten years. In the longer time frame, you get a lot of churn of retiring, and a lot of movement in the industry: some of the people who are let go are at retirement age, or so close that they just work retail for a few years; others aren't, and end up replacing the guy who retires 3-5 months later. They don't have to retrain.
Again: "adjusting the inflow". Who replaces the retiree? A new entrant to the field. What if the field is shrinking? Retirees go out; people who still need jobs go out; and now you have people who need jobs floating around looking for jobs. Now you have a labor oversupply, and you don't need to bring in as much new labor as people retire or die in mining accidents.
"Permanent unemployment" happens when you nuke your economy by creating high unemployment all-at-once. Those people don't retrain, either, because the economy's too fucked up at that point to provide the jobs anyway.
So that brings us to another problem here: everyone wants to move person X from one job to the next job, and leave person Y who is already-unemployed to be permanently unemployed. Because unemployment is always a thing, you can't transition out of unemployment unless someone is transitioning into unemployment. At that level, it's a matter of numbers.
In other words: your argument's major flaws are that it doesn't apply in an economy that's transitioning slow enough to not damage itself; it doesn't apply in an economy that transitions suddenly and damages itself; and, if it did apply, it would be an argument that poor and homeless people should be condemned to unemployment forever for the crime of already being unemployed.
Live in a bigger world. You're thinking on the scale of a grain of sand and you're in the middle of a desert.
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you'd solve all the revenue problems of the US, though you'd also crash the economy.
So...you wouldn't solve all the revenue problems of the US?
I live in a heavily Democrat area, and the free and open election is the Democratic primary. It excludes only people who aren't going to win the general election anyway*. The question of who was going to replace Marty Sabo in the House was decided when Keith Ellison won the primary. Democracy in action.
*Non-Democrats are welcome to run in the general election, of course, and they have the same chance as the Democratic candidate to influence voters and get votes out. They haven't succeeded as long as I've lived here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Income taxes mean that you get somewhat less money than you otherwise would. Normal income taxes don't punish you for working.
What punishes workers is things like lower tax rates on capital gains and FICA payroll taxes, as well as ways to avoid taxes on income that don't work when you just do things for somebody and they pay you money for it. Progressives are, I think, not as happy about the capital gains tax breaks.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, we don't do it for people. We tax net income.
When I was making money contracting, I wrote down what I'd been paid and subtracted my expenses, and that's what I was taxed on. The cost of making the revenue is directly deductible. There's deductions for stuff you're required to get (safety glasses, uniforms, etc.) for people who work on a W-2 basis (regular employees). If you spend enough work-related money in a year to offset what you made, you don't pay taxes (although you have other problems).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The economy would recover. But the dip that accompanies positive change is remembered much more clearly than the recovery to a much better place that follows 3 years later. That fixes everything. Just not in a short enough time frame for the "next quarter" attention span of voters.
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