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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 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.