Backlash Builds Against Bill Gates' Call For A Robot Tax (cbsnews.com) 392
Bill Gates argued governments should tax companies that use replace humans with robots, which "provoked enough negative feedback to fry a motherboard," according to CBS News. Here's how they summarized some of the reactions:
- "Why pick on robots?" former Treasury Secretary Summers asked in a Washington Post opinion piece, which called Gates "profoundly misguided." The economist argued that progress, however messy and disruptive sometimes, ultimately benefits society overall.
- Mike Shedlock, a financial adviser with Sitka Pacific Capital Management in Edmonds, Washington, wrote on his blog that robot owners, who likely would pay the tax, would simply pass it along by jacking up prices.
- The European Union's parliament in February rejected a measure to impose a tax on robots, using much the same reasoning as Gates' critics.
But even while acknowledging that technology can complement humans rather than replacing them, a Bloomberg columnist argues that "Gates is right to say that we should start thinking ahead of time about how to use policy to mitigate the disruptions of automation." So if we're not going to tax robots, then how should society handle the next great wave of automated labor?
I don't know the answer (Score:5, Funny)
But I think it will be found among these Slashdot comments!
BOOK: Says Microsoft is abusive in many ways. (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevada has no Corporate taxes or personal income taxes. [wikipedia.org]
Washington state has no personal income tax [wa.gov], but has taxes "based on gross receipts of businesses".
Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book [businessinsider.com] (May 23, 2012)
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Re: I don't know the answer (Score:2)
I know that Bill Gates is hilariously hypocritical
And yet he's still managed to make an incredibly relevant and insightful observation... I guess we shouldn't be too surprised if the anonymous-piece-of-shit-shills like yourself and scrambling to perform damage control...
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Hopefully, yur argumentum ad hominem isn't going to work on anyone here who was smart enough not to vote for Trump. Notice how the ones pushing against a tax on robots are the ones who will benefit the most financially from robots.
Of course, once robots get so cheap that anyone can make/own one, there's not much (except human greediness) to stop communities from setting up their own robots to compete for the production of goods for the community's consumption and benefit. Then what will the 0.01% do?
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once robots get so cheap that anyone can make/own one, there's not much (except human greediness) to stop communities from setting up their own robots
Except they won't. An current industrial robot can be very profitable for a big company, but it's way out of reach of ordinary consumers. And what are you going to do with a single robot ? You need a whole bunch of infrastructure and logistics around it to make it work efficiently.
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Someone (religionofpeas) with no imagination or foresight wrote:
once robots get so cheap that anyone can make/own one, there's not much (except human greediness) to stop communities from setting up their own robots
Except they won't. An current industrial robot can be very profitable for a big company, but it's way out of reach of ordinary consumers. And what are you going to do with a single robot ? You need a whole bunch of infrastructure and logistics around it to make it work efficiently.
You can place your prediction with these other klunkers:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, founder of DEC, 1977
"the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."
Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995
"Apple is already dead."
Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO, 1997
"Two years from now, spam will be solved."
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, 2004
If I have a robot that can weed gardens, I don't need a garden - I just need to know others who have garde
Re: I don't know the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I don't know the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way - if you won a contest that gave you $1,000 a month from now on, tax-free, would you quit your job, or would you think to yourself "I have $1000 more per month to spend on fun stuff!" Now, maybe you'd quit your job to go back to college for a better degree, in order to get an even better job, but is that a bad thing either?
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Bill hasn't provided the answer - there would be too many ways to dodge it, as I am sure he knows. What he has done (probably intentionally) is generate enough interest in the topic that it starts to get looked at more seriously, so that hopefully we can start moving towards a solution.
If we don't find an answer, sooner or later there are going to be enough pissed off unemployable people that there will be serious social and economic repercussions, that historically has never ended well.
yeah, tax the robots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:yeah, tax the robots (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, silly, they're the ones who will own the robots.
People also predicted that only "the rich" would own cars and computers. It didn't turn out that way. Most people, at least in the first world, already own robots. By any reasonable definition of "robot" your clothes washing machine qualifies. So does the dishwashing machine in your kitchen. Millions of people own Roombas and 3D printers.
Should these devices be taxed to compensate all the laundresses and scullery maids who no longer have jobs?
Re:yeah, tax the robots (Score:5, Funny)
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My two favorite are my robotics clothes washer and robotic dishwasher. Those alone save me half a dozen hours of menial labor a week.
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because you would not want to tax the ultra mega rich people that actually have enough money to help feed & house the disabled, poor & homeless, they need to buy that new yacht, jet and new limo every year
Mistake number one is calling it a tax, Taxes are evil and bad. If you call it a users fee, or a toll, people will line right up.
Re: yeah, tax the robots (Score:2)
Um.. that's the whole point (Score:2)
This is the same thing we did with social security & medicare. A socialist program masquerading as a tax to get people who desperately need help to accept th
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You have NO idea just how much 172 bucks buy in some parts of this planet...
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You make it sound like that money, once spent, disappears from the economy. It doesn't.
Spend 172 bucks on imported oil. Burn the oil to keep warm. You have nothing. Somebody else, in a different country, now has your 172 bucks. The only way to make it come around is to create 172 bucks worth of goods.
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There are a few billionaires out there and that's it.
That's enough. Even just the eight richest people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 50% [theguardian.com]. That's 8 people vs 3.5 billion. The wealth distribution in this world is completely out of whack. Give that money to the poor and they'll spend it in the local economy and get things going.
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The problem with your thought is the underlying assumption of ownership of other people. Those billionaire's stuff? You don't own that.
While some on the list got their wealth through a combination of plunder and subjugation (Saudi royals) - folks like Bill Gates got rich through the voluntary exchange of goods. You don't get to steal other people's stuff just because you feel like they have too much. Theft is theft, no matter how many people cooperate in the theft.
Imagine for a moment that Ingo invents
Re: yeah, tax the robots (Score:2)
It's just as right as stealing part of the reward someone receives when exchanging their time for money.
Or when, on their deathbed, transfer ownership of their assets to their children, after part is stolen in tax.
Or when a company shows great creativity and generates profits in the same economic climate in which others are failing - to have an increased portion stolen in taxation.
I don't see the problem, in a climate where EVERY aspect of a non-super-rich individual's life is taxed, for a tiny portion of t
Re:yeah, tax the robots (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your thought is the underlying assumption of ownership of other people. Those billionaire's stuff? You don't own that.
The problem with your thought is the underlying assumption that you can take it with you. Bill Gates? He won't own anything if he's dead.
While some on the list got their wealth through a combination of plunder and subjugation (Saudi royals) - folks like Bill Gates got rich through the voluntary exchange of goods.
That is a lie, and you are a liar. Bill Gates got rich by abusing Microsoft's monopoly position. The USDoJ found that Microsoft (under the direct control of Gates) basically abused its position in every way possible. And then under Bush, John Ashcroft declared that they would not be punished in any way. Then the Gates Foundation was created to hide those ill-gotten goods from future administrations which might try to seize them.
Theft is theft, no matter how many people cooperate in the theft.
Besides the fact that Bill Gates is a career criminal just a persian cat and a monocle away from being a bond villain, he is subject to the same logic as all the other rich. Point the first, if you take too much from the system it will break and you will have nothing. Point the second, if you get more from the system, you should pay more into the system, because you are deriving more benefit. If you don't want to share with the less-fortunate, then do things that make them more fortunate, so that they depend on you less. However, Bill Gates succeeded not on technical merit, but through skullduggery. His company attacked companies with superior products, which led to more people using Microsoft products. Microsoft set computing back by years if not decades with their lawsuits and lies, which itself is literally a crime against humanity which was perpetrated by Bill Gates. Computing literally saves lives, and he held it back so that he could make more money. Fuck him sideways, fuck him with a pitchfork, which is precisely what is coming for the wealthy if they do not learn to share with the less fortunate who weren't born with a silver spoon in their ass.
Imagine for a moment that Ingo invents something cool.
Then Bill Gates shows up and shits all over it. That is how capitalism works.
Except, that is not Capitalism (Score:2, Interesting)
While I agree with there being a big problem with the ultra wealthy in numerous regards, the problem is not Capitalism. The US is not practicing Capitalism, it's practicing a form of Mercantilism which we call "Crony Capitalism". The wealthy install politicians where they believe it suits their interests, and those politicians act as protectionists.
When Adam Smith defined Capitalism the primary role of Government was to prevent monopolies and break them up where they occurred. The Government was not supp
Re:Except, that is not Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with there being a big problem with the ultra wealthy in numerous regards, the problem is not Capitalism. The US is not practicing Capitalism, it's practicing a form of Mercantilism which we call "Crony Capitalism".
I am interested in discussion of how one can avoid the one becoming the other, especially when the definition of capitalism is that capital controls the means of production.
The wealthy install politicians where they believe it suits their interests, and those politicians act as protectionists.
So, how do you stop the wealthy from exerting this unfair advantage over others?
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So, how do you stop the wealthy from exerting this unfair advantage over others?
The traditional solution is a revolution.
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Not sure if this is a somewhat re-post, looks like my first response vanished.
We stop it from happening the same way we did for the majority of US History. Public education, and not just in reading, writing and arithmetic. Up until the 1930s we used a Classical education system which taught rhetoric, logic, political history (including our own), and ethics. That vanished under Democratic mandate and Federalization of Education. Something that the founders were set against if you read the Federalist paper
Re:Except, that is not Capitalism (Score:4, Interesting)
Up until the '30's the vast majority of the population were even worse off. (America slightly better due to the government stealing land and redistributing it to the poor through homesteading).
The government itself was even more in the pockets of the rich in the 19th century with many political positions, from judges to senators, being for sale.
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"It's not capitalism ... it's just every time that capitalism is tried". Come on, dude, every single time we try this it fails. Miserably. The reek of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is all over this.
It's time to face facts - we have tried to implement capitalism again and again. It's failed again and again. Take off the ideological blinders and you'll see that it simply does not work in practice, and cannot work in practice. You place the blame on the people but we aren't changing the people any time soon.
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Re:Except, that is not Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
The AC is basically right. Capitalism rewards those with the capital and the market rewards the most efficient at using that capital. It is often more efficient to cheat and an easy way to cheat is to get into the position of making the rules. As long as it is more efficient to repress the competition then actually have a better product, the successful capitalist will focus on repressing the competition and you end up with crony capitalism.
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The wealth distribution in this world is completely out of whack.
The implied assumption in this statement is that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, so clearly if some people become richer others must become poorer. Many economists, and even more entrepreneurs, would disagree with that. Wealth is not zero-sum, and can be created (and destroyed) as well as merely redistributed.
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>The implied assumption in this statement is that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world, so clearly if some people become richer others must become poorer. Many economists, and even more entrepreneurs, would disagree with that. Wealth is not zero-sum, and can be created (and destroyed) as well as merely redistributed.
That's not implied in that statement unless you really want to strawman it like that. Nobody says that those rich people become so rich by making African dirt farmers poor.
What is p
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Excel (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft made its billions off the back of putting millions of accountants and accountants interns out of business with the rise of Excel (and its contemporaries), and yet there were no issues about automation taking over back then... nor any tax on spreadsheets....
Automation has happened all of humanities history - we don't buy cotton material from cottage based weavers any more, and blacksmiths don't build train engines.
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Contrast that with automation in a factory today. Have you been in a factory recently? The first thing you notice is that there aren't many workers on the floor.
You're looking in the wrong place. Yes, there are fewer people on the factory floor. But there are MORE people in the supply chain. The people designing the robots, making the robots, fixing the robots, cleaning up after the people that designed the robots, cleaning up after the people that made the robots.....
That's how economies grow.
Re:Poor analogy (Score:5, Informative)
I take it you have never seen the accounting floor of a large business circa 1970 then, because it would have been filled with semi-skilled people filling out numbers in books and passing aggregated numbers to the next tier. Thats how books were done in those days. And those positions were replaced by spreadsheets, with automated cascading on changes, no need for more than a few people anymore.
See the following image for an accountancy department prior to computerisation (computerisation as we know it today):
https://benpadley.files.wordpr... [wordpress.com]
Its no different at all to your factory worker example. No different at all. You just never noticed the accounting jobs disappearing.
On H1Bs too? (Score:2)
This is Gates? Of Microsoft fame? How about a special tax on H1Bs replacing American workers - like he lobbies for.
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Actually, a tax on robots will make them prohibitively expensive. The US won't be able to successfully compete with other nations on the global playing field. So the government will have to pass a robot H-1B law, that will allow US companies to employ cheaper foreign robots. Only foreign robots have the "cheap" skill that so many companies are craving for.
Honestly, I think Bill was a bit misguided there. (Score:2, Insightful)
Did we tax steam engines when they made pumping water out of coal mines more efficient? Or driving mills instead of using water wheels? Or hauling goods and passengers long distances?
Did we tax Bethlehem Steel when they did time motion studies to figure out that laborers using smaller shovels can actually shovel more coal?
Did we tax assembly lines when they made producing cars and washing machines and radios more efficient?
Did we tax Intel's new 17nm fab, when – and just because – it made produc
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Yes? Presumably the increased profits were taxed
That's not the same as taxing the machines.
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I'll spell it out for you: if we didn't tax the steam machines, but we taxed the increased profits, then using the same logic we shouldn't have to tax the robot workers, but just tax the increased profits.
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I don't agree that one tax is as good as another. Taxing the robots will just be a disincentive for anyone to buy and use robots.
If using robots lowers the COGS, the taxes on profits is one incentive to pass the savings on to the consumer in the form of lower prices.
That's the theory. The owner could also just extract the profits as his rightful due. (And he or she is certainly entitled to do that.)
The beauty of competition and free markets is that if the owner fears losing business to his or her competitor
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You are missing the point. With human labor, companies pay tax on their profit. The ALSO pay payroll tax, social security tax, medicare tax, unemployment tax, medical benefits, and pensions. With robot labor, companies pay tax on their profit, and DO NOT PAY any of those other taxes and benefits.
So, yes, automated companies will still pay tax, but they will pay a lot less.
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You answer "Yes?" with a question mark?
Indeed, the (presumed increase) in profits was taxed. But the steam engine itself was not taxed. Nor the assembly line.
And maybe there was an increase in profits. Or possibly the increase in profits was offset by the expense of buying the steam engine or building the assembly line; with a net result of no increase in overall profitability.
Regardless, the point is, the steam engine itself was not taxed.
Automation is NOT the enemy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Automation is not the enemy of humanity, it's the product of our knowledge and investment in science to better mankind. If you think automation is going to make people permanently unemployable then perhaps it's finally time to admit that we need some sort of universal income so that people can afford basic things like food and shelter. Alternatively, now would be a good time to start having the purge every year. ;)
Re:Automation is NOT the enemy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think automation is going to make people permanently unemployable then perhaps it's finally time to admit that we need some sort of universal income so that people can afford basic things like food and shelter.
Yes exactly but you didn't even state the problem clearly. That's what drives me nuts about this issue. Imagine a world where human labor is replaced by robots. The labor becomes upkeep for the robots by replacing parts, upgrading firmware, etc. What that does is it decreases the overall need for labor. In order to understand the problem effectively, you have to be able to see the need for labor decreasing and the population increasing. Then you have to juxtapose that with the current economic system and the problem should become incredibly clear. An economic system whereby every person must perform labor in exchange for money in order to pay for their expenses (largely mandatory) does not work anymore. The only way, as you sarcastically put it, to make that existing system work is to essentially invoke the story of Procrustes Bed and chop the population down to a size that fits that economic model. That of course is absolutely ludicrous and defeats the entire purpose of innovation which is... to EVOLVE.
I believe what's coming is what was predicted in the 50's. Shorter work weeks, more leisure time and that's because through our hard work and efforts we have arrived at the future and will now reap the benefits of all that effort. The type of people who are naysayers and want to keep the status quo are likely to be people who are reaping massive rewards from the current system or possibly puritanical work ethic folks (like the ones that founded America) because the idea of more leisure time than work time is incomprehensible to people like the Mennonites. None of these are good reasons to keep the system.
If we don't evolve, we are effectively have another time of Dark Ages.
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I believe what's coming is what was predicted in the 50's. Shorter work weeks, more leisure time
I predict that we'll be working as long as ever, providing goods and services to one another that our predecessors couldn't even imagine. Mainly because this is what has happened every single time thus far.
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Consider a business where the employees work 40 hours a week. A new widget comes out, that enables them to get twice as much done with the same amount of effort, in a single week. The basic question then is whether you think the business owner is going to tell everyone that
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If we don't evolve, we are effectively have another time of Dark Ages.
Well, there's the problem. Have we evolved since the Dark Ages? And if so, is it by an amount sufficient to avoid another one?
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The problem is captial (Score:2)
I agree with this.. except that ISN'T how things will happen without major restructuring.
It requires capital to buy the robots to produce things. Now, if those robots are basically owned by everyone (lots of small business, for instance, or where stock is owned equitably across the population) then we all benefit: we can work less for the same material wealth.
But capital, as we have learned, is actually highly concentrated, with the vast majority in the hands of a very small minority (0.1%) of the populatio
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I agree, the solution should be to evolve the system to actually make these labour saving devices actually save labour.
The problem is this... if there are fewer workers needed there are less people to tax. Where does the money come from to support society? Or these ideas of universal basic income, etc? Companies automate to save money and thus increase profits. They are the ONLY ones (and the stock market) benefiting from the automation. In order for these efficiencies to benefit society as a whole, wealth
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The obvious solution is to make sure we have a robotic police force in place before we fire all the workers.
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The obvious solution is to make sure we have a robotic police force in place before we fire all the workers.
But can you trust the soon-to-be-unemployed programmers, who have already seen other friends and family lose out) to willfully build their robotic overlords? Oh what the f*ck - of course they will. They're the same chumps who kept saying that programmers don't need unions.
Globalisation (Score:2)
I don't necessarily disagree with the core idea of a robot tax, but in a globalized world you don't end up with people paying a robot tax, you end up with factories getting moved into countries that don't have a robot tax.
Also robots aren't really the core of the problem, the core problem is the accumulation of wealth within a very small number of people. Robots might make that situation worse and a robot tax could help slow it down a little, but much more drastic measures of wealth redistribution will be n
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Of course Bill doesn't want THAT dealt with, how much of that charitable trust money has he actually spent? And how much of it is invested in companies in a manner diametrically opposed to the trusts cause.
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the core problem is the accumulation of wealth within a very small number of people.
Why is that the "core problem"? How is Bill's wealth harming me?
Be careful what you do (Score:5, Insightful)
We have seen what happens when you disenfranchise the local population and strip them of the bare minimum needs for survival. 1789 and 1917 give a pretty good example. That's why we outsourced that to areas where people can't simply pick up pitchforks and kill us, 'cause swimming through oceans with pitchforks is a bit unwieldy.
If you now again create a powerless group of people without any rights and means of existence right at your door, they don't need to swim. And they have a second amendment that ensures they're armed.
I would not go ahead full bore neo-capitalist into another industrial revolution where you don't try to squeeze your workers dry but simply shove them to the side. Working your workers 'til they're dead is one thing, but shoving them aside means that they are still strong enough at the end of the day to hold a gun against your head.
Re: Be careful what you do (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's not forget that a large portion of those workers are in an occupation whose sole purpose is to prevent expression of legitimate grievance against those creating the situation.
Divide and conquer and reward those who work against their own interests in favour of ours with toroidal sugar treats.
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Let's not forget that a large portion of those workers are in an occupation whose sole purpose is to prevent expression of legitimate grievance against those creating the situation.
Congratulations, you managed to drag President Trump and his staff into a discussion about robots :-)
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That's why we outsourced that to areas where people can't simply pick up pitchforks and kill us,
Do you mean China, where worker incomes have quadrupled over the last 15 years?
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We have seen what happens when you disenfranchise the local population and strip them of the bare minimum needs for survival. 1789 and 1917 give a pretty good example. That's why we outsourced that to areas where people can't simply pick up pitchforks and kill us, 'cause swimming through oceans with pitchforks is a bit unwieldy.
I call dibs on the invention of a floating pitchfork with an outboard motor. Think of the pent-up demand even today. It will be YUGE!
The Recursion of Artificial Intelligence (Score:2)
I think people and legal entities will use robots to avoid the robot tax, thus automating it out of existence. Sorry, Bill Gates, we're screwed.
Blacklash by whom? (Score:2)
Elite business people who benefit directly from using robots?
or the people whose jobs are getting replaced by robots?
me thinks it's the former
Show don't tell (Score:2)
Anyone who's serious about competing for their jobs against robots should have robotic implants to help level the playing field? :P
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Wah! I don't want my customers to afford my produc (Score:4, Insightful)
These dipsh!t producers need to realize that when they collectively suppress labor costs that very same "labor" can't afford to buy your goods.
Want to solve the lagging economy? Follow the philosophy of, "A rising tide raises all boats.
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If you don't lower manufacturing cost, you'll be less efficient, and other, more efficient countries, will buy your goods away from you.
Re: Wah! I don't want my customers to afford my pr (Score:2)
The producers might need to do that (Score:2)
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collectively suppress labor
The key word here being "collectively."
Why care about the economy as a whole if YOUR business is doing okay? In the minds of the executive, making as much money as possible is a less important goal that simply making more money than everyone else. Sure, the economy might be a smoldering pile of ashes, but at least my pile of ashes is the biggest!
The answer is obviously UBI (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if you call it Cost Of Living Allowance, Minimum Guaranteed Income, Universal Basic Income, or anything else, the only reasonable way to go forward in a capitalist society is with simple currency-based redistribution of wealth.
There are not and will not be enough jobs to go around. A significantly-sized population is required to maintain the level of technological development, so killing off the masses is a non-starter which would impinge upon the lifestyles of the rich. Their basic needs have to be met somehow. They are going to have to be handed money, because if you don't, one of two things will happen, or both. One, they will die in the streets in droves. Two, they will show up with torches and pitchforks and really ruin all the spreadsheets.
We can forestall this future with public works projects, and honestly that is a good idea anyway, especially in the USA where infrastructure is crumbling. But we cannot do so indefinitely. The health of our economic systems is based on endless growth, and the only way for humanity to enjoy endless growth is to expand into space. We are decades behind where we could be in that area. We may, in fact, be too late. Rockets can never get enough humans off this mudball to make a difference, for reasons of physics, and we still don't know how to build a space elevator. We may well fail here, and never escape our gravity well (a handful of experiments aside.)
Ooh, TWO overrated mods FTW (Score:2)
Thanks for the vindication. We all know that overrated is only used to bury things that make activist moderators upset. If you had a legitimate complaint, you would have made it.
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Bill Is A Little Late (Score:2)
Re: Bill Is A Little Late (Score:2)
A little late to start taxing robots now.
Cue the irrelevant strawman observations. Oh, wait; they're already here.
We are already seeing how... (Score:2)
We are already seeing how it will be handled. Just have a look at places like the Sudan. It's at those edges of the global economy where we will see the repercussions first. To summarize the action into words, "Sorry, you are not needed any longer. Please starve to death quickly and quietly. Thank you." The robots are going to have a pretty easy time of it when they finally take over, there will probably only be a few million people left by then.
Billg@microsoft.com (Score:2)
Is that where the IRS can email his invoice for billions in back taxes?
Because that's what the personal computing revolution of the '80s did. It replaced flesh and blood workers -- filers, clerks, mailmen, ledger maintainers, calculators, computers - with their software equivalents.
Yeah... tax the consumers more instead... (Score:2)
New job opportunities (Score:2)
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The invisible hand demands it so it's a moral imperative it happen.
Until the computers are smart enough to design new and better computers (and other things) without human intervention, they're going to need a certain minimum human population just to maintain the current technological level, let alone to advance it. I only wonder how many of them understand this.
Not surprising, coming from BG (Score:2)
Well now, this tells me it's a good idea (Score:2)
As humans always do: Too late (Score:2)
As with everything we humans do, we will only respond to that change when it's already done some damage...
Especially true if the running government of the time is of the type that denies obvious scientific facts.
Well .... (Score:2)
We should propose taxing Microsoft Office, for causing the sacking of millions of secretaries, just to see how he likes it.
VAT is the answer (Score:2)
America needs to do the same. Apply a 18% VAT, perhaps giving the last level to the state in which the retailer is in, and then give tax breaks for local production. We can then drop sales tax in states lower and lower.
And these vats cover the issues of
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A VAT is actually counterproductive - you don't want to tax adding value!
What we really just need is an ownership tax - perhaps something like a property tax. The simplest form is this: your income tax rate is proportional to your ownership percentile.
This means if you own a lot, but have zero income, you get low tax - so you can keep your wealth. If you own nothing, and suddenly get income - you get to keep most of your income.
If you have massive wealth and massive income, you get taxed massively.
This solv
Universal Basic Income (Score:3)
The solution to our jobs being automated is implementing a Universal Basic Income.
The future is here...it's happening...it's absolutely necessary to transition to a system that guarantees income.
The loudest objection, "We don't have the money"...it's simply not true...if we had even the tax levels of the halcyon 1950s Eisenhower administration, we could do it.
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Since using robots means they're lowering expenses and making more profits, replying "jacking up the prices" is even more greedy.
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Companies cannot just "jack up prices". If they could make more profit at a higher price THEY WOULD ALREADY BE DOING THAT. If prices are already set to maximize profit, which is what any sane company does, then raising the price decreases demand, and diminishes profit.
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Your argument is valid, but only when circumstances don't change. When they do change, such as by introduction of a robot tax, the optimum price point will change as well.
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Translation: I'm a sociopath
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