yet he dint mention PC's being taxed like that...
Posted on 02/18/2017 8:42:50 AM PST by mac_truck
Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment.
It’s a striking position from the world’s richest man and a self-described techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in artificial-intelligence technology.
In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it.
“You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed” of automation, Gates argues. That’s because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it’s important to be able to manage that displacement. “You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once,” Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them.
(Excerpt) Read more at qz.com ...
How ‘bout we tax Microsoft for using so many H1B workers and taking American jobs?
Every robot is a mechanical operation of a computer. Let Microsoft volunteer 10% of its profit.
A little money where his mouth is...
Tax the hardware, but not the software?
Typical feudalism: all the peasants get the same- as little as possible.
STHU and go away already Bill!
somehow i wouldn;t trvst Gill Bates, either!
;)
Gunny G @ Planet WTF!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you tax these robots, expect them to start demanding their Constitutional Rights.
Then it is all downhill.
Hopefully they will not convert to Islam (They WILL be recruited, I am sure.)
Big companies would shoulder this burden easier than small companies so his words do not surprise me.
Does this mean all computers that are doing bookkeeping should be taxed for eliminating those jobs?
Tax electric tools that save us from doing things manually?
Bill Gates’ contribution to the world — the practical Desktop Computer — put a lot of secretaries out of work as businesses found it more cost-effective to put a computer on every worker’s desk and ultimately network them. Businesses made that decision, and it made Bill Gates a wealthy man. Now Bill presumes to tell “Business” that it can’t make self-interested decisions, that government with it’s arbitrary tax code should force outcomes. He then goes on to cite the usual list of do-gooder dreams like “smaller class sizes” and “reaching out to the elderly” to sugar-coat his ideas.
Bill should just write a huge check to the US Treasury if the guilt is getting too much for him.
I really wonder about issues such as this.
We can beat up on Bill Gates, have at it.
But, what about the larger issues? Will people displaced by automation have some kind of gainful employment, above subsistence level?
I know history teaches us that we saw a huge decline in people involved in farming in this country, as former farm workers migrated to cities and found jobs. As farming became more mechanized there was less need for human labor. And those people found low skilled jobs in cities.
I know I’m oversimplifying but hope others can add to this discussion about what will displaced workers do; what sorts of jobs will they do, and who will be paying their paychecks to do that work? It’s not clear to me that displaced fast food or warehouse type workers, will easily find other employment in today’s world.
Any thoughts???
yet he dint mention PC's being taxed like that...
Just another mechanism to raise taxes that would be applied to fewer and fewer workers.
# Bill Gates the Socialist
Globalists are socialist losers.
I betcha Microsoft technologies are complicit — programming languages, IDEs, embedded OS.
Bill has deep pockets.
I morn the lost type writer manufacturing jobs. The makers of ribbons alone who lost their jobs makes me weep.
Then there are the millions of underpaid though employed women who beavered everyday creating the reams and reams of memos and invoices and statements and letters. Their jobs are all gone.
Tragedy struck the home of cassandra white when she was laid off from her typist job. She was the sole support of her aging father who suffered from mental illness after he lost his job as buggy whip maker. It's just terrible, terrible, terrible
How ‘bout we tax Microsoft for using so many H1B workers and taking American jobs?
Plus: Every robot is a mechanical operation of a computer. Let Microsoft volunteer 10% of its profit.
A little money where his mouth is...
3 posted on 2/18/2017, 8:47:27 AM by American in Israel
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