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The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
Quartz Media ^ | 2/17/2017 | Kevin Delaney

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ai; microsoft; robots
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To: mac_truck

Just cuz someone has billions of dollars don’t mean they got millions of functioning brain cells.


41 posted on 02/18/2017 9:24:37 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi - Monthly Donors Rock!!!)
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To: mac_truck

Should is not will


42 posted on 02/18/2017 9:24:57 AM PST by stocksthatgoup (There will come a time when those screaming Fascists are in fact the actual Facists. W Churchill)
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To: mac_truck

Gates is a globalist, elitist, fershtinkiner.


43 posted on 02/18/2017 9:26:36 AM PST by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Any thoughts???


The Invisible Hand?

No body likes the concept of the Invisible Hand. The answer to your question could be free markets, which are scary and unknown but work in the long term.

Or centralized govt control, which make us feel empowered but don’t work, which I think is answer you are looking for?

Now having said that, neither choice works perfectly, but what has history shown us?


44 posted on 02/18/2017 9:31:29 AM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Capitalism requires adaption. It’s benefits to society are well worth the price of that inconvenience and lack of certainty in the job market although it is tough on people. The price of rampant socialism is much tougher on all of us.


45 posted on 02/18/2017 9:34:20 AM PST by Crucial
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To: PeterPrinciple

The idea of a free market scares control freaks and the greedy, who want the deck stacked in their favor by the controlling authority that they bought.


46 posted on 02/18/2017 9:38:12 AM PST by SpaceBar
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To: mac_truck

Where is the toaster getting money to pay the taxes?


47 posted on 02/18/2017 9:40:29 AM PST by bgill (From the CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: mac_truck

Next they will be demanding that robots have their own bathrooms.


48 posted on 02/18/2017 9:41:00 AM PST by AmusedBystander (The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next)
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To: angry elephant
How ‘bout we tax Microsoft for using so many H1B workers and taking American jobs?

Bill knows you can't write software with a degree in Lesbian Studies.

Bill, how about taxing the workers overseas writing software?

49 posted on 02/18/2017 9:42:30 AM PST by depressed in 06 (60 in '18.)
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To: mac_truck

What Gates doesn’t get is that we can’t afford our government. No amount of taxes is enough, whether employee or robot-derived.

What Gates also misses is that he is calling for taxes on productivity, and also hard work.

This thinking is simply a shameless promotion of socialism and sloth.

If he wants to tax something, tax government, not productivity.

Productivity growth is the only thing that can keep the music playing on our outsized government.

Ultimately if you tax productivity, you ensure famine and death.

That would probably be fine with Gates.


50 posted on 02/18/2017 9:42:36 AM PST by RFEngineer
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To: American in Israel

Hmmm, what if it’s operating system is based on Apple tech? I don’t understand why a business should be taxed continually for a piece of equipment that will never require health coverage from medicare or ever draw social security. The advance to robots is being driven by socialists and democrats, so if there is fear of even more underfunded S.S. in the future I say double and triple up on the do gooders pushing skilled trade wages for unskilled labor.


51 posted on 02/18/2017 9:45:34 AM PST by Mastador1 (I'll take a bad dog over a good politician any day!)
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To: SpaceBar

Free markets and capitalism are not a panacea. Even Adam Smith saw the need for limited government and even lawyers.

It is the limited we argue about. Time to swing much more the other way to less govt. But as I said, it is scary, that is why most people are workers and not self employed.


52 posted on 02/18/2017 9:51:33 AM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: mac_truck
“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could LOWER that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” ― Bill Gates
53 posted on 02/18/2017 10:07:56 AM PST by Proyecto Anonimo
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To: mac_truck
“But you can’t just give up that income tax, because that’s part of how you’ve been funding that level of human workers.”

I don't understand this thinking. A robot can't pay taxes; and businesses don't pay taxes - they just collect them from . . . consumers. Gates is advocating that consumers have a smaller piece of pie and that government be given a larger piece of pie.

The reasoning behind this is that government planners do a smarter job allocating resources for the public good than the market. Like every liberal, Gates wants the government to have more money; more power.

No thanks.

54 posted on 02/18/2017 10:14:29 AM PST by jeffersondem
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To: mac_truck

Gates. Shark. Jumped.


55 posted on 02/18/2017 10:41:52 AM PST by dasboot
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To: mac_truck

Gates is simply a latter-day Luddite if he thinks that labor saving machinery should be taxed because - it saves labor.

Fundamentally, there’s no difference between a “robot” and a power loom or power forge operated by a water wheel in terms of their impact on eliminating tedious work driven by human muscle, magnifying the AMOUNT of productive work that can be done, plus freeing large segments of the human race from dangerous, rote labor.


56 posted on 02/18/2017 10:47:38 AM PST by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: mac_truck

A smart man, born at the right time, and the right place, who by chance fell upon a societal tidal wave he was able to ride to great riches

Otherwise, he’s absolutely human and foolish and can be ignored on any other topics he speaks on


57 posted on 02/18/2017 10:48:00 AM PST by PGR88
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To: Dilbert San Diego
What's the difference between a job in 2017 that can be automated and textile weavers in the early 19th century replaced by machine looms, or livery operators, horse groomers, and teamsters reduced by automobiles??
58 posted on 02/18/2017 10:51:54 AM PST by PGR88
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To: PGR88

There is no real difference. Will the displaced workers be absorbed into other parts of our economy, that is the question.


59 posted on 02/18/2017 10:59:10 AM PST by Dilbert San Diego
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To: mac_truck

I love how these people think they are super duper smart.


60 posted on 02/18/2017 11:06:31 AM PST by Trillian
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