from the robots-are-not-covered-by-the-sixteenth-amendment dept.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and world's richest man, said in an interview Friday that robots that steal human jobs should pay their fair share of taxes.
"Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things," he said. "If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level."
Gates made the remark during an interview with Quartz. He said robot taxes could help fund projects like caring for the elderly or working with children in school. Quartz reported that European Union lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robots in the past. The law was rejected.
Recode, citing a McKinsey report, said that 50 percent of jobs performed by humans are vulnerable to robots, which could result in the loss of about $2.7 trillion in the U.S. alone.
"Exactly how you'd do it, measure it, you know, it's interesting for people to start talking about now," Gates said. "Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don't think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It's OK."
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/02/18/robots-that-steal-human-jobs-should-pay-taxes-gates-says.html
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:10PM
This will happen the day after we tax imported goods from countries that don't respect our environmental laws, in other words probably never.
Maybe the God Emperor will do it... all hope of survival rests in the God Emperor's hands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:36PM
That's God Emperror. A yuge, yuge, emperror.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Bogsnoticus on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:13PM
All hail Darth Cheeto. Blessed be His Orangeness.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:13PM
I sense heresy.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:21PM
Will you be the first to tell the god emperror that he has no clothes?
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:12PM
At first this seemed like a great idea to me, an extra yearly penalty for using robots instead of workers. But the employer is paying that tax to the government, the amount that the company is paying will go up. I am thinking of a company that:
-makes random product
-10 employees
-50 employee equivilent robits
-taxes paid on 60 employee units
Im sick and might not be thinking this out enough. I am concerned with this giving companies more political influence because of greater share of taxes.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:31PM
I am concerned with this giving companies more political influence because of greater share of taxes.
Hah. If you're paying taxes, that means you have no political influence.
You get influence through lobbyists, PACs and super PACs, etc. Large companies get hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, pay no taxes through various loopholes, yet still have enormous political influence (after all, that's how they got all those subsidies and tax loopholes).
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:50PM
Have to disagree. We've just seen the political influence that we don't have used to elect Cheeto Jesus. Hillary was the candidate of big money and influence selling this time around. Not that I'm saying CJ won't sell influence. I'm just saying that we absolutely knew Hillary would and roughly to what extent while CJ was an unknown.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:32PM
Have to disagree. We've just seen the political influence that we don't have used to elect Cheeto Jesus. Hillary was the candidate of big money and influence selling this time around. Not that I'm saying CJ won't sell influence. I'm just saying that we absolutely knew Hillary would and roughly to what extent while CJ was an unknown. [emphasis added]
Actually, having seen Donny Hairboy in the news (both locally in NYC and nationally) over the last 35 years or so, I knew that His Orangeness wasn't a tool of the moneyed elites, he is part of the moneyed elites.
As such, and I believe I mentioned this a few times here before the elections, he was never going to shake things up or "drain the swamp" or be the champion of the working man. His primary, secondary and tertiary constituencies are himself, Donald Trump and (I do like this one) Cheeto Jesus. Everyone and everything else is a distant fourth.
Anyone who's actually been paying attention over the last thirty years would know that. Sadly, most folks attention span is less than ten minutes.
As such, it's no surprise to me that he's filling his cabinet with others of the moneyed elite and pushing the agenda of the moneyed elite with at least as much gusto as HRC might have done. The downside being that he's a tyro and not a very bright one at that.
I'm not going to argue about whether HRC is corrupt or not. Let's assume she's a shill for the corporate interests and cares about nothing but enriching herself. Even so, we *still* got the short end of the stick here since Donny boy is just as much about enriching himself and is completely out of his depth in pretty much every area of a President's responsibility.
You don't need to believe what I say. Decide for yourself. Just watch this train wreck unfold before your eyes over the next four years, then ask the question "Am I better off than I was four years ago?"
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @10:08PM
I was trying to figure out what demographic people are going for with "Donny Hairboy" and "Cheeto Jesus". I think your approach is misguided. To normal people who read stuff like that, they will just think that people who disagree with Trump are morons, thus supporting him more.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday February 19 2017, @10:42PM
most folks attention span is less than ten minutes.
I was trying to figure out what demographic people are going for with "Donny Hairboy" and "Cheeto Jesus". I think your approach is misguided. To normal people who read stuff like that, they will just think that people who disagree with Trump are morons, thus supporting him more.
I hadn't heard the Cheeto Jesus bit before and I included it because I find it amusing. As for Donny Hairboy, that one's not new. I believe I first heard it and then started using it at least twenty or twenty five years ago.
I'm not really very interested in what folks (whether they agree or disagree with His Orangeness) think about me. If you don't like what I have to say, my username (NotSanguine) and uid (285) are at the top of each of my posts. Feel free to ignore me. I really don't mind.
As for my "approach" being misguided? How do you draw that conclusion?
In order for you to correctly draw that conclusion, you'd need to know what my goal(s) is(are) in writing my post.
I don't believe that I mentioned any particular goal or end state in my post.
I suspect you think that I'm attempting to garner support for my particular viewpoint. That's not my goal at all. In fact, I implied that when I said:
The truth is that I don't have any particular "goal" WRT my post. As such, I don't have an "approach". I simply said what was on my mind. Take from it what you will, and thanks for sharing!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:05AM
Its not about what people think about you, its that you seem to be sabatoging your own cause. Ive seen so much of it regarding Trump, which is why he got elected. Its just bizarre.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday February 20 2017, @12:35AM
Its not about what people think about you, its that you seem to be sabatoging your own cause. Ive seen so much of it regarding Trump, which is why he got elected. Its just bizarre.
And what "cause" might that be, friend? I honestly have no idea what you're blathering on about.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:50AM
This is actually usual too, now you are feigning no interest in who is president (when you clearly care more than me). Why?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 20 2017, @02:38AM
I just think it's a hilarious nickname.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @11:06PM
We've just seen the political influence that we don't have used to elect Cheeto Jesus.
What a complete waste of political influence, then. They couldn't have propped up a third party to at least 5% of the vote, no. This world is doomed.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:00PM
am concerned with this giving companies more political influence because of greater share of taxes.
I don't think the amount of political influence depends on the tax paid.
All historical indications are just the opposite.
Rather, this is another tax shift. Because, as we learned in Econ 101, companies simply shift taxes to customers via price hikes. They seldom pay any themselves. Profits end up in someone's pockets somewhere along the line.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by SleazyRidr on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:46PM
Yeah, the business won't have wage expenses to write off, so they'll end up paying more tax. Gates made a completely useless statement.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:19PM
Robots that 'steal' jobs should drive prices down. A tax would just be passed down to us.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:41PM
Robots that 'steal' jobs should drive prices down. A tax would just be passed down to us.
That's pretty facile.
(1) Just because there is a tax doesn't mean the tax will equal the full cost of an employee, so costs can still go down.
(2) The tax doesn't just disappear into the ether, but firing everybody and replacing them with robots means the income taxes they were paying does disappear and now we have to figure out how to pay for all the infrastructure that our society depends on in order to function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:51PM
Robots that 'steal' jobs should drive prices down. A tax would just be passed down to us.
Exactly.
But the driving down of prices isn't a sure thing in all markets, and without jobs perhaps nobody could afford to pay even the lower prices. (In before the UBI crowd: It Can't Work)
I'm not so much worried about replacing workers with robots, because there are really so few actual applications. And they only work in well established industries - where the work is well defined and long since standardized. Human workers would out compete them in innovative industries in a changing world. That robot won't hang your solar panels or build your new custom house or install your electric car charging station.
Any productivity that results from those industries where robots do fit in would helps the country compete in the world market.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 20 2017, @05:48AM
As a UBI advocate, I would be interested in any sound arguments explaining why it wouldn't work.
UBI should cover basics. If you want to keep up with the Jones', you would need to find a job.
If you get bored, you would have to argue on the internet all day, volunteer, or again. find a job.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday February 20 2017, @06:23PM
Or, with a Universal Basic Income, one could actually have time to create their on job.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday February 20 2017, @06:26PM
...own job...
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 20 2017, @06:33PM
Yes, I forgot to mention that option.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:12PM
Yeah, it happens all the time.
Take for example, Apple... when they manufactured their Macs in US, they were sold at top prices.
When they unloaded the manufacture to Foxconn, the prices were adjusted correspondingly, weren't they?
Furthermore, you could tell by the prices of Apple's gadgets that Foxconn replaced 60,000 workers with robots [bbc.com]... no?
(selling price and manufacturing cost, are they in any relation?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @03:20AM
I think the price drop was more along the lines of they used the same parts as everyone else now instead of custom jobs for everything.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 20 2017, @04:41AM
Did they actually dropped the price or just the headphone port?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Sunday February 19 2017, @11:42PM
Anyone who doesn’t include taxes (all kind) into his unit price calculations is heading fast into bankruptcy. In essence all taxes are paid by consumers, so are you suggesting that corporations should not pay any taxes whatsoever (i.e. property, sales, income.)?
Prices should come down, yes, in a perfect market where no corporations cheat to bolster their profits.
Recent examples: conspiracy to reduce salaries (Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe) [cnet.com]; VW [wikipedia.org], Fiat Chrysler [cnn.com] and Mitsubishi [vice.com] cheating on emissions and fuel economy; Well Fargo [msnbc.com] and other financial entities cheating consumers, ad nauseam.
Your faith in a perfect market is really touching, I mean touching insanity in view of ample evidence of it being a rigged market, where consumers get shafted in and out.
I know its unpopular, but we the people should be calling for greater regulations and taxation of corporations; not blindly trusting the ‘market’.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 20 2017, @05:36AM
I know its unpopular, but we the people should be calling for greater regulations and taxation of corporations; not blindly trusting the ‘market’.
It's unpopular because you are only choosing which master will be shafting you. But it's easier to put pressure on corporations: don't like them? don't buy from them. If your sentiment is sufficiently widespread, the corporation will feel the pain in the wallet. However how do you put pressure on the government? It's all but impossible, even you manage to elect an official who is thinking along the same lines. The country is ruled not by President, but by millions of career bureaucrats at all levels who issue their own little tiny edicts that nevertheless affect you personally. The CARB, for example, is feeling entitled to tell people when they cannot warm themselves by the fireplace (usually when it's the coldest). Your HOA is telling you how to paint your house and what kind of grass you must have; the city comes and tells you how many trees you must maintain... I would be very much afraid to give more power to the government - I know all too well where it will end up [wikipedia.org]. The government has power even to make you pay for policies that you do not support. Compare that to the Apple product that I am free to not buy!
Also, if you allow the government to put pressure on corporations... what do you think will happen? The last ones will leave the country. Not [only] because they are devils - but just because they have to compete with the rest of the world - and the rest of the world does not have such laws! The corporations have no nationality and no allegiance, they are just money-making functions. What will happen to the country when nobody can afford to keep a business, therefore nobody employs anyone? Obviously, the government will have to step in and open its own factories... see the link above. You will be entitled to just enough money to keep you alive, the rest will be confiscated by the government as taxes of one kind or another. That's how it was. Why nobody is willing to learn from history?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 20 2017, @05:53AM
Local government is where individuals have the most influence. It also happens to be where government has the most impact on your daily life. Yet people seem to avoid civic politics for some reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:52AM
Who profits from peoples' ignorance?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @09:13AM
But it's easier to put pressure on corporations: don't like them? don't buy from them. If your sentiment is sufficiently widespread, the corporation will feel the pain in the wallet.
Compare that with: It's easier to put pressure on political parties, don't like them, don't vote for their candidates. If your sentiment is sufficiently widespread, the political party will feel the pain in the ballots.
So you somehow think the people will make better decisions voting with their wallets daily than voting once every few years?
I dunno about you, but I find that a big stretch (considering the rise of obesity in the USA too - that's people voting with their wallets daily). Most of the responses you might make e.g. "lack of good choices" can apply in the market too (esp with all the mergers).
The current President already has proven that he can sack bureaucrats. We've already seen plenty of stories of various teams scramble to backup data, sites going down etc. You and I may not like the choices he and his team makes, but do not underestimate the change the ballot box can make.
Big Corrupt Gov is preferable to Small Corrupt Gov working in league with Big Corrupt Corporations (for similar levels of Corruptness and Evil). There's no freedom of speech in Facebook. There's no right to bear arms in Disneyland. The FOIA does not apply to Apple.
You can look at Africa to see examples of countries with small corrupt Govs working with Big Corrupt Corporations. The Corporations get the oil, gold, etc; the Dictator has his palace, bodyguards and army and the rest of the country has nearly nothing. At least with a large corrupt Gov you have many thousands of bureaucrats (who surprise surprise are usually citizens).
Corporations are better at some of the innovative stuff and usually better at getting the innovative stuff to market.
Universities are good at the other innovative stuff. And the boring stuff that doesn't really need that much change should be left to the Gov and maybe Cooperatives.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 20 2017, @04:14PM
"The country is ruled not by President, but by millions of career bureaucrats"
^ this!!
That is precisely the reason that Trump isn't nearly so dangerous as everyone fears. It is also why a career politician such as HRC would be so dangerous if elected president. She KNOWS how those bureaucrats think, how they work, and how to get around them. She's been doing it for most of her adult life. Trump will have to learn how the game is played, before he can even think about outsmarting the bureaucrats. I'm not real sure he's smart enough to do that. Once again - the court fool, standing in as king.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Monday February 20 2017, @09:40PM
Thank you for your comments. I disagree with your point of only being to options: communism or savage capitalism.
A hell of a lot more regulations are in place in other countries, mostly in Europe (mandatory guarantees [europa.eu] for example) ) and Canada [cbo-eco.ca] and they do well.
In fact Germany is the economic engine for Europe and they do have some regulations (such as store hours [wikipedia.org]) which would drive crazy any American businessman.
As the world develops, more regulations come to protect workers and consumers.
Imagine a no regulation world: your employer would not need to make sure you work in a safe space with appropriate security equipment, I’m sure you seen the many pictures and videos on the Internet about people dangling from multiple ladders stacked to get to a high place; that would be illegal in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and any other developed country.
Imagine if the food you ingest is not required by law to be safe. Imagine if the medicines you take need not be tested for effectiveness and safety. Imagine if the electric or electronic devices you use need not be tested for safety.
I do not propose or advocate a Soviet-style government but I also don’t think it is to our advantage to blindly trust the ‘market forces’, as I stated before, with regulations as they are they cheat (i.e. break the law) I can easily imagine what they would do if no law or law-enforcement was in place: back to a feudal society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @04:48AM
Why do people repeat this? Haven't we learned anything from free trade, companies cutting costs through layoffs, and all this other sort of stuff? Here's what happens when company sells a product for $100 and suddenly through some event (free trade, automation, etc) has their overhead reduced by $20: They sell the product for $100. The one and only thing that ever brings down prices is competition, and even that is increasingly often insufficient. Companies understand there is far more money to be made colluding than competing so even competition is often insufficient to bring down prices, particularly in fields with substantial barriers to entry.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by moondoctor on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:27PM
>"Exactly how you'd do it, measure it, you know, it's interesting for people to start talking about now," Gates said. "Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don't think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It's OK."
The level of cluelessness/arrogance is amazing.
'Start talking about' these issues? There are universal income schemes being trialled right now to see if that's an answer to this problem. It's just one possible answer to a question that was asked a long time ago. People that arrive at an obvious conclusion (robotz gonna take all the jobz) that has been widely discussed for decades, then claim it's a new thing are extremely irritating. Way more so when they are smack on the wrong side of the issue.
He doesn't think the corporations will mind paying more tax? For real? That's one seriously disingenuous statement. All the increases in profit due to automation have gone directly upward, and fast. All the while the corps have bent over backwards to minimize any tax payments.
To cap it all off, as people have said again and again, just excel on it's own has made a metric shit-ton of jobs disappear but he sat back and the wealth gap tore into the stratosphere while he's chiselling on his taxes and plenty rich as fuck like the rest of them. Please. The hypocrisy is pretty off the charts.
There is a big, fundamental change that started a while back but is kicking into full swing and happening right now in global manufacturing and industry. The way things are going it looks like gigantic farms can be run be a handful of people within the next decade or two. Same with shipping ports, mines, it's wild. Once equipment maintenance and repair becomes automated the last of the menial job takeover should happen very quickly. Factories will be able to retool themselves.
What happens then will be fascinating. Hopefully in a good way...
At least it's getting talked about by him, I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:50PM
If you control the message you can partially shape the response.
If he said corporations would be outraged, F-this, then I am sure they will be happy to pile on.
But when everyone reads that taxing robot workers is OK, the expectation can be set that this is a normal and just thing to do. He is controlling that narrative by getting out there and stating this. He may not be the first, and he may not particularly be relevant to comment on the topic, but he has more weight in "computer stuff like robots" than a common celebrity -- or someone selling or buying robots would.
Everyone would expect the sellers to not want to see profits lost from buyers not wanting to pay more taxes and so they purchase less robots or lease their use for less time or whatever.
So what happens then is the Regular People Like Those That Might Lose Their Jobs that probably won't see a universally guaranteed income from whatever government is in power because someone has to pay for it unless they hand the robots out for free, they expect that if they had to pay taxes themselves before getting replaced by a robot that doesn't have to eat, at least the robots can be taxed in a means called something like "human right size adjustments".
You certainly can't expect the people that still have jobs to want to pay additional taxes to fund the welfare. Not with how people have been trained to see that as for lazy worthless people unless it happens to themselves. You have to fund it via another means, or start a war to kill that problem off.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:06PM
The biggest problem I see is how to quantify "worker equivalent units". Should a clothing manufacturing robot be compared to a human with a needle and thread, or with a basic sewing machine, or with an advanced sewing machine? And what skill level of worker? Also, if corporate profits were taxed appropriately then there wouldn't be any need for this.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Monday February 20 2017, @03:38AM
>unless they hand the robots out for free
With the returns they will get from the robots, the up front cost is negligible in the not very long term. They will be more than free, they will make profits skyrocket.
>You certainly can't expect the people that still have jobs to want to pay additional taxes to fund the welfare
No shit. Don't tell me what I expect, particularly when it's made up.
How on earth did you get there? We're talking about huge multinational corporations that will only require a (relative) handful of people to run in the near future. The point is that when jobs are taken away the profits go to fewer people and to balance society the company creating these massive profits should be taxed quite highly. Taxing workers in this environment would be asinine. (obvi)
This is Bill Gates saying this shit, it's foregone conclusion that things have to change. The question is how...
If higher corporate tax doesn't float your boat, got any other ideas? (for real, I'm not being facetious)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 20 2017, @04:28PM
A basic, simple robot, with no sophisticated sensors or anything, can pay for itself within months. All the robot need do, is eliminate mistakes. Our machine operators used to load metal inserts into the molds before the plastic part was injected into the mold. Humans get tired, humans get bored, humans get distracted, and sometimes, humans just don't give a damn - so rather frequently, they would load an insert into the mold upside down, backward, or maybe not even on the pins where they belong. The mold closes on the metal insert, and CRASH! The mold is wrecked, it has to be taken out of the machine, and given to the tooling department for repairs. Tens of thousands of dollars in downtime, plus thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in repairs.
Our robots all paid for themselves within six months, simply by eliminating those careless mistakes. The frequency of bent or broken pins has been cut by at least 90%. We have molds that only come out of the machine now for periodic maintenance. Most damage is caused by failure to lubricate sliding parts, or the failure of a sensing switch on the machine. It's a whole different world with the robots.
All of that said - I still hate to see the workforce cut to make room for the robots. The primary reason we had such crappy machine operators is, the pay sucked, and reliable workers could find better paying jobs elsewhere. Increasing wages would have attracted better, more reliable workers. A semi-skilled laborer should get a starting wage at least 25% higher than minimum wage, and he should see some raises in pretty short order. Paying a starting wage of minimum wage, coupled with a "wage freeze" drove a lot of people out the door.
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Monday February 20 2017, @05:36PM
Bingo. And all those cost/benefit relationships are getting bigger at breakneck pace. The meat robots are just expensive and getting in the way at this point. Couple the throwaway mindset with modular design (i.e. unafraid to just replace entire assembly that has one small failure) and robots can be fixing themselves pretty soon. (That said, my heart does beat a little faster every time a tricky job runs on the big CNC as I pray it doesn't eat the material or itself. It doesn't even notice when it's snapped a tool and is ramming the head into the work.)
As a fan of old school machinery (wrenching on carburetor cars, etc.) it's sad, but the potential benefit for society/progress as a species is phenomenal. It's all about how we manage the transition. It's not going so well so far for the lower segments of society.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wumbler on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:29PM
The practicalities of this are going to be difficult. How do you determine what is a robot? How do you determine how many workers were replaced? How do you tell apart the effect of robots from the effect of general efficiency improvements in production processes? Auditors? This could cause endless squabble and arguments.
Maybe there can be a different approach:
1. Fix loopholes for avoidance of corporate tax (easy! /s)
2. Divide company profits by number of employees
3. Take the result of (2) as a multiplier of sorts to determine the corporate tax rate of the company
This would be quite a hit for companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, which make large profits with very few employees. But that might not be a bad thing. We probably also need a means to classify companies, so "manufacturing" companies would use a different scale than "information technology" companies, for example.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:29PM
Has someone checked his meds? He's making some quite poorly thought out comments recently.
Then again, that appears to be a trend....
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:43PM
It must be something in the water. Better check the EPA... oops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:43PM
> Then again, that appears to be a trend....
Which you seem to have joined with your vapid complaint.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:25PM
> Then again, that appears to be a trend....
Which you seem to have joined with your vapid complaint.
Here's mine! Am I too late? I've heard it is never too late to be vaporid on SoylentNews. Fashionably vapid. But thank $diety that we are not talking about Zuckerborg's "manifesto". See? Feel better? At least we Soylentils are not that vaporish.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:07PM
I glanced at that story but forgot to submit it. My brain must have been subconsciously protecting me from being Zucked up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tisI on Monday February 20 2017, @12:50AM
I was think'in the same thing. WTF is BG smoking? How do you income tax an object of factory automation that has displaced a person from their job? Who or what is being taxed and what for? How do you tax a new motor that runs a conveyor belt that replaced a bunch of step-and-fetch-its?
Bill Gates needs some new taxes to pay so he can stop trying to help others so much, that are better off without him.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Monday February 20 2017, @04:57PM
Ha! Bill Gates has always been pretty unimpressive, intellectually. His only technical achievement was that BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and even that wasn't accomplished on his own. 90% of his wealth can be attributed to dumb luck. I will never understand how people can elevate the man who was responsible for Windows 98. Reboot. Reboot. Reboot... I'm still pissed about it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:47PM
Read SoylentNews articles from the future with SoylentNews+!
Free sample: Robot tax and UBI zapped from Europarl robot report [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:53PM
So the Robots should pay for my Universal Basic Income. I guess that in some regard makes some sense otherwise I don't know who would be able to buy all the products the robots would make. At the same time then, what other machines are we going to tax that taxes away human jobs? Beyond the sales tax etc that is used to purchase them in the first place, tax on electricity and such. We have clearly then opened the door for such taxation schemes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:04PM
How many jobs has MS Excel eliminated? Let's tax Ms for that.
How many jobs has Office eliminated? Let's tax MS for that.
How many American jobs has that H1b Visa thing eliminated? Tax the feck out of MS for that!
Dog Gates can be an idiot: he's correct, but keeps mum about what affects HIM.
He's probably just pissed because only the R-word robots run on Windows.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:10AM
How many jobs has MS Excel eliminated? Let's tax Ms for that.
How many jobs has Office eliminated? Let's tax MS for that.
I don't think they have eliminated all that many jobs.
The work people use those tools for simply did not happen for the most part before the PC.
The number of people who could afford to do full-color offset printing for an office memo was quite small prior to the invention of word processors.
he's correct, but keeps mum about what affects HIM.
Accusations of hypocrisy are the lowest form of criticism.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @06:58PM
I don't think they have eliminated all that many jobs.
The work people use those tools for simply did not happen for the most part before the PC.
The number of people who could afford to do full-color offset printing for an office memo was quite small prior to the invention of word processors.
So you're rather young then, I assume.
As you don't seem to know that Accountants and Bookkeepers balanced books long before Excel (and Versacalc/Lotus/Quickbooks/Peachtree/Intuit/etc.) came along, by writing in account books and using calculators. "Typist" used to be a profession - a *major* one - before Word Processors came along and made it possible to re-print letters with the push of a virtual button instead of retyping the entire letter. (You'd have *entire floors* of office space with (mostly entirely) women with typewriters.) For any color printing, you'd send that work out to a printer's with lots of specialized people involved (yes, they're still around, but don't naively think there's more of them around today... there are less per capita.) Heck, Harvard Graphics was a revolution in being able to make graphs and charts and print them to transparency slides, instead of having a graphics department to do that sort of thing. Databases were the province of mainframes with a *lot* of support staff.
I'm not arguing with you that progress is inherently bad, but Bill Gates did more to eliminate jobs thanks to the Computer than any number of robots have so far. And now that we start to teeter on the brink of having such a huge unemployable population.... he wants to tax further innovation. Well, I'm sorry, but he can retroactively pay some first.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:07PM
Is Billy paying his fair share in taxes?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by HiThere on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:55PM
Well, probably moreso than the president. Of course, we can't prove that...
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday February 19 2017, @08:59PM
:)
Thanks! Made me laugh!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 20 2017, @04:31PM
Of course Billy pays his fair share. Bill Gate's creation voluntarily paid more taxes than were due, and still does to this day. MS would never dream of taking advantage of an Irish tax shelter, or make crazy claims that none of those billions were made in the USA, or any of those other tricks that other corporations use to avoid taxes. MS is a responsible corporation, shouldering it's fair share of the tax burden.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:09PM
I find the whole discussion rather amusing.
According to the St. Louis Fed [stlouisfed.org]:
Given that nearly 70% of economic activity in the US is consumer spending, replacing workers and driving down wages seems to be something of a mistake on the part of industry. Should the trend toward lower wage jobs and reducing numbers of good (i.e., a living wage or even a comfortable income) paying jobs continue, reduced consumer spending will have serious negative consequences on the economy as a whole.
I get it, individual companies are beholden to their shareholders to maximize profits, and many companies are regularly beaten with the quarterly earnings growth [thefreedictionary.com] cudgel.
As to Bill Gates, he's talking out of his ass and it smells that way too. Even if, somehow, the US Congress (a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate USA) were to tax the use of robots, even at a comparable rate to humans performing the same work, this would not inject that money back into the economy in the same way as consumer spending.
Regardless, we're on a path that will likely have seriously negative consequences for the US economy over the medium and long term. I just hope I don't live long enough to see these problems destroy us.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by requerdanos on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:16PM
Gates is a Unitedstatesian who has done a lot of good things, such as benefits through the B and M Gates Foundation. The Gates foundation has donated something like 28 billion dollars to charity. "Billion" is a large number. For perspective, that is just about enough to fill every building of the Library of Congress [loc.gov] completely with pennies.
On the other hand, the Gates foundation also does things like heavily invest in tying developing cultures to proprietary closed software [bbc.co.uk]. So there's that.
Leaving aside the question of whether Robots are far enough advanced to steal, we are left with: So the Robots should pay taxes. Let's see how that works out.
Let's say Joe employs two (or ten) people to shine laser pointers around to entertain his company's cats (which keep down the vermin problem around the company property).
Then, Joe gets a small single-board computer and some stepper motors and builds a makerhack robot project that shines the lasers around when it detects the word "meow". Bam, two (or ten) people fired.
So now... An olinuxino or a cubietruck has to pay the taxes of two (or ten) people? How does that work exactly? I suspect that Bill wants to track down the owner of the "robot" and have that person pay the taxes. In that case, "Joe" in this example is now paying his taxes + the taxes of multiple unrelated people who are now free to create value (and pay their own taxes) elsewhere in the workforce.
(Obvious conclusion coming, drum roll please...)
How about No.
To avoid well-meaning but foolish people proposing stuff like this, I join others in proposing for the United States of America the "FairTax" system [wikipedia.org]. While it has minor problems, it eliminates the United States Internal Revenue Service which is straight up evil [reason.com], so it would be a net win.
Fair tax basics:
- Remove "income taxes" based on arcane rules with draconian penalties for citizens who are even suspected of making mistakes in the process
+ Add a sales tax similar to VAT/GST
+ Add a basic minimum income to offset the value of the VAT/GST increase for poor people
Revenue neutral and gets rid of evil; gets rid of our "thinking and talking about" paying extra taxes if you increase your productivity (or your company's productivity)==increase the country's productivity with automation.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:36AM
Gates Error (Score:1, Flamebait)
by requerdanos (5997) [Subscriber Badge] on Sunday February 19, @02:16PM (#469035)
That's an odd moderation choice. For the record, I didn't intend to flame-bait anyone; my goals were
- point out the good that Gates has done and does, even if he has detractors including rms,
- lay out a hypothetical situation as an example of how I disagree with his robot taxes position,
- throw the fair tax idea out there as an alternative.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:29PM
Recode, citing a McKinsey report, said that 50 percent of jobs performed by humans are vulnerable to robots, which could result in the loss of about $2.7 trillion in the U.S. alone.
And of course, no mention of the jobs that would be created in the process.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:31PM
And of course, no mention of the jobs that would be created in the process.
Of course not, the robots are all misaligned, completely, so everyone was laid off, and there are no jobs anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:58AM
Eventually there will likely come a point where AI becomes good enough to replace nearly all jobs, including fixing other robots. It's wildly unrealistic to expect that everyone work in 'creative' jobs, and even if they tried, there would not be enough money in it. The amount of jobs created by automation is unlikely to be higher than the amount of jobs lost to automation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @08:02AM
It's simple. We go Eldar route.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 20 2017, @09:37AM
Eventually there will likely come a point where AI becomes good enough to replace nearly all jobs, including fixing other robots.
Still doesn't mean that it'll replace nearly all jobs. You still have the matters of price, the usual economic factors like comparative advantage and Jevons paradox, and the fact that ostracized elements of the economy aren't just going to stop working just because they can't get jobs in the primary economy.
I think the first two points have been made before. The last one perhaps not so much. In the US, for a good example, a large portion of the poorest US citizens have been shut out completely of the primary economy. Their labor simply is not worth minimum wage for various reasons. While some of them might indeed just not work at all, most participate in the gray/black markets of the US. For example, gangs are a significant employer [cnn.com] in the US (link states 1.4 million members in gangs in 2011, some research [sciencedaily.com] indicates the FBI was heavily undercounting gang membership in the US). Point is that the US has for some time already economically ostracized a fair portion of its population just like the AI revolution supposedly will do some point in the future. They didn't merely stop working and starve as a result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:15PM
Well, let's see...
For starters, it is once again completely ignored that automation even up to the very cutting edge present, continues to improve our working environment and increase wages, just as it has for the past several centuries (if it didn't, almost no one would be employed).
For those who survive, yes. For those displaced? Well, your manufacturing worker in the United States will have lovely choices between working at McDonald's or Pizza Hut. If wages are increased overall, then costs would have risen to cover the overall increased wages, right? So why would the automation be put in if it ultimately cost the company more money? Oh, it wouldn't. Nevermind.
Second, net income on robots (and humans!) is already double taxed in the US, the first time as corporate profits and the second as income taxes on dividends. And any costs of robots will be paid to other parties for which it'll be taxed as income or corporate taxes.
Maybe because individuals receiving personal profit are different from the corporation [also] making a profit even after paying off those dividends? The individual investor and the corporation are two separate entities and both deserve to be taxed? Which is why the system is as it is. Either that or let the investors and CxO's be liable in their own person for the debts and unlawful acts performed by the company. And has nothing to do with making corporations pay a price for making a net elimination of workers so that they can boost profits. Corporations serve society, not the reverse.
Third, robots don't place demands on society like humans do. Where's the government health care system for robots?
Where's the health care system for the humans who were displaced by the robots? What we have now sucks and thanks to the Republicans, what little we have for that will go away soon. But sure... let's have government subsidies for computing security and groups that exist as clearinghouses to share information to preserve the health of digital systems. Oh, we HAVE got those and big businesses take advantage of it.
Fourth, if we really care about human jobs, then we should remove a lot of the obstacles to employing people. A fair portion of the people angsting about automation want ludicrous restrictions on human labor such as short work weeks or high minimum wages.
No, you can make the minimum wages as low as you like... so long as you then control prices also. The point of society is not to make a few people ludicrously rich, it is to enable all people to survive and hopefully thrive. And if the gross ability for humans to do that goes down.... then you (if your own abilities rise) owe it to your neighbor (who loses) to care for them. UnAmerican as hell, sure. But it is what should be. I'll give kudos to Gates for recognizing that life is more than just money but is quality of life as well.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 20 2017, @08:00PM
For those who survive, yes. For those displaced? Well, your manufacturing worker in the United States will have lovely choices between working at McDonald's or Pizza Hut.
Or a high paying oil worker job in Texas or IT job in California. Not everyone ended up worse off.
The individual investor and the corporation are two separate entities and both deserve to be taxed?
I don't see that. For example, I'm an advocate for zero business taxes precisely because I don't believe in double taxation.
Where's the health care system for the humans who were displaced by the robots? What we have now sucks and thanks to the Republicans, what little we have for that will go away soon. But sure... let's have government subsidies for computing security and groups that exist as clearinghouses to share information to preserve the health of digital systems. Oh, we HAVE got those and big businesses take advantage of it.
Vast sums are already being spent on health care in the US. Automation isn't why we're not getting value for the dollar.
No, you can make the minimum wages as low as you like... so long as you then control prices also. The point of society is not to make a few people ludicrously rich, it is to enable all people to survive and hopefully thrive. And if the gross ability for humans to do that goes down.... then you (if your own abilities rise) owe it to your neighbor (who loses) to care for them. UnAmerican as hell, sure. But it is what should be. I'll give kudos to Gates for recognizing that life is more than just money but is quality of life as well.
Ok, why is that supposed to be the case? Zero dollars per hour is already the minimum wage for most of the world. Can't force everyone to give it away for free and still expect an economy.
Further, it's worth noting that greater employment, even of jobs that suck or don't pay well, is a net good. The US and the rest of the developed world has too many would-be workers and not enough employers. It's painfully obvious that we need to do more to create more employers and encourage existing employers to hire more people. Yet the focus is on forcing employers to provide more and more benefits to employees who don't deserve those benefits. That results in what we see today: massive exodus of industry and employment to the rest of the world and a dropping employment rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @09:51PM
Or a high paying oil worker job in Texas or IT job in California. Not everyone ended up worse off.
Which, of course, is a matter of analytics and debate. And you can find arguments on both sides of the coin: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com] , https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-low-wage-recovery-is-a-myth/2015/05/20/029f92d2-fe69-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html?utm_term=.e0ec3cd30432 [washingtonpost.com] and http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-04/over-80-jobs-added-january-were-minimum-wage-earners [zerohedge.com] (And I could find another story which backs up your assertion as well, I'm sure.)
I don't see that. For example, I'm an advocate for zero business taxes precisely because I don't believe in double taxation.
And many do believe that. I'd much rather see a universal VAT (including on services assessed) and the end of income tax, myself. Not settled on whether dividend payouts should be considered vattable. In any event, as long as we have the system we have I'm in favor of double taxation. But neither, as far as I can see, would make a difference to business automation except for changing the sliding point where automating becomes profitable, maybe.
Vast sums are already being spent on health care in the US. Automation isn't why we're not getting value for the dollar.
Which, if one is for any sort of subsidized or universal healthcare, would have nothing to do with automation other than (maybe) in assessing who pays. Now if you're 100% against all forms of government-subsidized healthcare then it makes automation all the more attractive. But your original point of where is the robot healthcare.... we have that and it is paid for by the taxpayer. US-CERT, Cyber Czars, Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, etc. And I'd argue that there are many hidden values that aren't accounted for in the high US healthcare spending, but that's a different subject.
Ok, why is that supposed to be the case? Zero dollars per hour is already the minimum wage for most of the world. Can't force everyone to give it away for free and still expect an economy.
Yep. And rents, food prices, transportation prices, etc. for most of the world are??? Related, how one lives as a manufacturing worker in the rest of the world as compared to the United States is what precisely?
As to giving it away, that depends on how open ended or closed ended the economy happens to be. Bearing in mind that with fiat currency and speculative markets the economy is an abstracted fiction anyway, we certainly *could* give it away for free. The trick is convincing those outside the economic sphere that there is still value to be had from such a system. But my point is really that when things get bad enough history has shown that the rulers' attention will be called to the relevant issues by Dr. Guillotine.
Further, it's worth noting that greater employment, even of jobs that suck or don't pay well, is a net good. The US and the rest of the developed world has too many would-be workers and not enough employers. It's painfully obvious that we need to do more to create more employers and encourage existing employers to hire more people. Yet the focus is on forcing employers to provide more and more benefits to employees who don't deserve those benefits. That results in what we see today: massive exodus of industry and employment to the rest of the world and a dropping employment rate.
If yesterday your number of good jobs to suck jobs was 5:10 and you had 5 people subsidized, and tomorrow your ratio of good jobs to suck jobs is 1:20 and you had zero people subsidized and a refusal of employers to subsidize, I would not term that a "net good." I would term that a "net evil." But there's a whole lot of rubber in what a "good" or "suck" job consists of, what the ratio was yesterday and what it is today (and how you derive that information.) And that the ratios have so changed is not automatically true (reference the Post article above.) At any rate, the exodus of those jobs occur, by and large, because they are allowed to occur. They don't have to be allowed to occur, and I have yet to see where it has been proven a net good to the public to have allowed that - it has been a net good to the 1%, certainly.
And to me it comes down to: Company wants to offshore jobs but still do business in the U.S., or company automates jobs in such a way that the state will be supporting more persons, then the company can help offset those costs to the economy. Though it doesn't have to be a new tax - adjusting unemployment rates such that laying off people or reducing net payroll hurts a bit more may do it as well.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 21 2017, @08:44AM
Which, of course, is a matter of analytics and debate. And you can find arguments on both sides of the coin: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com] , https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-low-wage-recovery-is-a-myth/2015/05/20/029f92d2-fe69-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html?utm_term=.e0ec3cd30432 [washingtonpost.com] and http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-04/over-80-jobs-added-january-were-minimum-wage-earners [zerohedge.com] (And I could find another story which backs up your assertion as well, I'm sure.)
I notice your stories are just about the last few years. Postwar job loss in US and the rest of the developed world from cheaper labor in the developing world has been going on since the 1960s. Job loss due to automation has been going on since at least the 18th century.
Which, if one is for any sort of subsidized or universal healthcare, would have nothing to do with automation other than (maybe) in assessing who pays. Now if you're 100% against all forms of government-subsidized healthcare then it makes automation all the more attractive. But your original point of where is the robot healthcare.... we have that and it is paid for by the taxpayer. US-CERT, Cyber Czars, Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, etc. And I'd argue that there are many hidden values that aren't accounted for in the high US healthcare spending, but that's a different subject.
Let us note that you're talking about spending that is several orders of magnitude smaller than health care for humans in the US. And I have yet to run into anyone who believes money is well-spent on health care in the US.
Yep. And rents, food prices, transportation prices, etc. for most of the world are??? Related, how one lives as a manufacturing worker in the rest of the world as compared to the United States is what precisely?
As to giving it away, that depends on how open ended or closed ended the economy happens to be. Bearing in mind that with fiat currency and speculative markets the economy is an abstracted fiction anyway, we certainly *could* give it away for free. The trick is convincing those outside the economic sphere that there is still value to be had from such a system. But my point is really that when things get bad enough history has shown that the rulers' attention will be called to the relevant issues by Dr. Guillotine.
Why would things "get bad enough"? It's worth noting here that we're only seeing a temporary effect of globalization stemming from labor competition not some fundamental economic class dynamics. My point here is that there's no positive outcome to engaging in harmful activities that reduce employment and harm ourselves merely because we're currently having labor competition issues with China and other parts of the developing world. It would be better to be competitive and improve the pricing power of US workers by making them more valuable and cheaper to employ.
If yesterday your number of good jobs to suck jobs was 5:10 and you had 5 people subsidized, and tomorrow your ratio of good jobs to suck jobs is 1:20 and you had zero people subsidized and a refusal of employers to subsidize, I would not term that a "net good."
I would term that "an inevitable outcome of treating employers like shit". You have to take care of the employers current and potential, if you want a better world. There is a remarkable counterproductive aspect to defending employees who aren't worth employing, and obstructing employers who want to employ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:33PM
Wasn't the narrative they are good for the economy and only take the jobs nobody wants? Now suddenly having no jobs is (big surprise) a problem?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 19 2017, @07:59PM
Different people, different narrative. (But the first narrative was dubious from the start, and more effort goes into eliminating more expensive work.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:18PM
What should we do to them?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday February 20 2017, @01:16AM
As I think back on my ex, I would say, "Thanks, and good luck with that!"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday February 19 2017, @10:28PM
Two things are certain, death of batteries and taxes.
Anyway I did not steal your jobs, I downloaded them.
Anyway mr. Gates, you had half of a good idea. But let us see who steals jobs.
Amazon, Ikea et all steal from mall that steals from supermarket that steals from mom and pop shop and one man business who steals a bit from shop with external workforce. It does not matter if they use bots, all you need to do is calculate how much income and how much money workers get. To be fair you should not consider upper management, who are in control of the amount of pay.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @04:43PM
Rather than talking about taxing robots, I really, REALLY wish he would talk about H1-B visa abuse. That, for me, is a much more immediate threat to my job!
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday February 20 2017, @06:12PM
Mr. Gates was one of the founders of Microsoft.
In the mid-1990s, Washington prisoners shrink-wrapped software and up to 20,000 Microsoft mouses for subcontractor Exmark (other reported clients: Costco and JanSport). "We don't see this as a negative," a Microsoft spokesman said at the time.
-- http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoners-make-victorias-secret [motherjones.com]