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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: 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.