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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
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(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.