Robots won't just take our jobs – they'll make the rich even richer

UK Guardian ^ | March 2, 2017 | Ben Tarnoff

[C19fan]

Should robots pay taxes?

It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month, the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.

The proposals vary, but they share a common premise. As machines and algorithms get smarter, they’ll replace a widening share of the workforce. A robot tax could raise revenue to retrain those displaced workers, or supply them with a basic income.

[C19fan]

This is the issue of our time. If you studied the Industrial Revolution it took a 100 years from when the first mills in England during the mid-18th century started to spin cotton for all the technological changes to translate to higher living standards for the common laborer. One of the major factors driving revolutions, for example the Luddites and 1848, was formerly skilled workers driven to poverty wages by technological change. Studies of heights indicated people might of actually shrunk during the 19th century. This AI could be a lot worse. The industries produced by spinning cotton, making iron/steel, and burning coal still needed workers to work with the machines. Our modern day "robber barons" bring in billions of dollars with work forces in the low five figures. How is society going to work when only the top 20% have the cognitive skills to have a job while the remaining 80% are rendered worthless by AI and robotics? I don't but the "Star Trek" utopia that 80% will spend their free time becoming concert musicians, painters, or Shakesperian actors.

[jsanders2001]

< Should robots pay taxes?

The IRS will never do it because robots don't feel any pain.

[brucedickinson]

It really is a huge issue. You have muslims who are rich taking 4 or more wives so you have poorer young muslims standing around with no marriage prospects. Add in female infanticide and the ratio of men to women on earth is wildly skewed. Now, let’s take millions of people’s jobs away with robots. Great idea. The elite billionaires can be elite trillionaires. Let’s just say the French had the right idea. Happy Bastille day.

[VanDeKoik]

I feel the only credible exploration of this takes place in sci-fi novels.

Otherwise I have no idea how tho is going to shake out. Robotics have advanced just that far.

[kingu]

Very simply, there are no corporate income taxes. They are all taxes paid by consumers at the time of purchase or use of service.

Taxes on robots would simply raise the costs to consumers who would pay 100% of those taxes (if not more.)

I realize for some liberals this is a very hard to understand concept, that there’s no free money wandering around (aside from overseas profits which aren’t being repatriated as companies don’t want to hand over hundreds of billions of dollars simply for moving it to a new account...)

But there isn’t. Taxing robots won’t save one job, taxing robots won’t replace one worker, all that will happen is that the cost of goods will go up, and consumers will have to pay the new higher price.

Pay with money they’ve already been taxed on, of course.

[C19fan]

But what happens with the regime have access to AI/robotic warriors? Some believe that the military revolution of the 16th/17th century were a common man with a fireman became the major force of the battlefield that was the necessary condition for modern democracy. Imagine the AI/robotic elites have robotic armies and not longer need citizen soldiers. What is to stop the elites to unleash their Terminators on the residuum?

[Teacher317]

Oh noes!!! Panic, panic!! We can NOT allow people to invest in infrastructure wisely, and in a way that maximizes their return on investment! We will all die because those who work to develop their company will have more than those who do not!!! Then there will be “inequality” of some kind. The horror. The HORROR!!!

[C19fan]

They are all taxes paid by consumers at the time of purchase or use of service.

How are consumers going to pay for things when they earn no income in an economy dominated by AI/robotics?

[Charles Martel]

Be careful what you say around robot co-workers, they're sure to rat you out to the boss.

The similarity of robotics programming to the mindset of "progressive" human co-workers is remarkable. Robots are easier to get along with, though.

[jazminerose]

I am soooo sick of this “let’s kill all the rich people” mentality. Enough with that already. Go try to get a job from a homeless guy.

The Left’s knickers are in a big twist about President Trump having billionaires in his cabinet. Gawd forbid he should have hyper competent successful people running everything. Better we run some kind of Welfare to Work project instead? Or limit ourselves to mediocrity?

The President is hiring the best of the best. We ought to be grateful.

Workers need to be willing to upgrade their skills. Hopefully, Secretary De Vos recognizes that not all kids need to go to college and we should be sending a lot of high school kids into technical education tracks.

Rant over. Rich bashing is one of my pet peeves. McCarthy bashing is the other.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

I have often pondered this. My pessimistic analysis suggests we will have a situation of chronic social instability at the hands of masses of unemployed and idle poor people, followed by the elites coming up with a ‘final solution’ to the problem by exterminating the surplus population to stop the wretched poor people cluttering the place up and making their playground look untidy.

[mazda77]

The more there are, the more people it takes to produce them, maintain them, program them, transport them, yadda, yadda, yadda. Buggy whip and wagon wheel makers hurt most.

Just think of the upside, if they tax the wazoo out of robots, that means more of us can just sit back suckin’ on Mai Tai’s basking on the beach while on the government dole.

[FrankR]

Well, you college pukes best drop “basket weaving” and go for a “robotics engineering” degree! ;)

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Produced in automated factories, transported by self-driving vehicles, and eventually, loaded with learning/self-teaching programs.

[longtermmemmory]

I have two workers I would love to see replaced with AI robots.

[mazda77]

Raw materials, raw materials . . . Eventually, in the year 2525. Then Arnold Scwarteneger’s clone comes a knockin’.

[Sybeck1]

Millions of unemployed will go on drugs and slip into VR realities. People could go forever without any human contact if food is conveyed to your 10 X 12 cell each day by robots

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

This isn't a "lazy union workers vs. Wise investors" type of situation. It literally transcends all previous thought on economics. I can guarantee one thing -- when 85% of us don't have jobs, those who "invest wisely and develop their companies," the Bezos' and Gates' and Soros' of the world, newly minted trillionaires all, will be calling the shots entirely and will decide that you and a few billion others filthy carbon-emitting peasants are excess strain on the environment.

[longtermmemmory]

remember the first (original) Robocop movie. The bad guy was yelling that the Robocop memory was admissible in court.

[marktwain]

How is society going to work when only the top 20% have the cognitive skills to have a job while the remaining 80% are rendered worthless by AI and robotics?

---

It is worth noting that 99% of Freepers are likely in the top 20%, by virtue of intellect, talent, and ethics.

A worthwhile question is how to benefit from this revolution.

A simple solution that might work would be to invest in index funds. An index fund will increase with the market. As profits go up, the market will go up. Non-performing stocks will be dropped, performing stocks will be added. The S&P 500 is what the U.S. Government uses in its version of the 401K, the TSP program.

Become one of the owners of the robot factories, and you will not have to worry about finding a way to pay for housing and food. It will also earn you the resources to shape the society that you want in the future.