South Korea Moves Towards The World's First 'Robot Tax' (zdnet.com) 83
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
It's being called the world's first robot tax. If it goes into effect, South Korea will be the first country to change its tax laws in recognition of the coming burden of mass robotic automation on low and middle-skill workers. The change proposed by the Moon Jae-in administration isn't a direct tax on robots. Rather, policymakers have proposed limiting tax incentives on investments in automation... Under existing law, South Korean companies that buy automation equipment, such as warehouse and factory robots, can deduct between three and seven percent of their investment. The current proposal, which seems likely to advance, is to reduce the deduction rate by up to two percentage points.
The move is evidently not an attempt to staunch companies from adopting automation technology. Rather, it is a kind of formal acknowledgment that unemployment is coming on a big enough scale to eat into South Korea's tax revenue. Policymakers are hoping that reducing the deduction incentives by a couple percentage points will offset the lost income tax and help keep the country's social services and welfare coffers filled.
The Korea Times, which broke the story, reminds readers that former U.S. treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has called robot taxes "profoundly misguided... A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced."
The move is evidently not an attempt to staunch companies from adopting automation technology. Rather, it is a kind of formal acknowledgment that unemployment is coming on a big enough scale to eat into South Korea's tax revenue. Policymakers are hoping that reducing the deduction incentives by a couple percentage points will offset the lost income tax and help keep the country's social services and welfare coffers filled.
The Korea Times, which broke the story, reminds readers that former U.S. treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has called robot taxes "profoundly misguided... A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced."
What unemployment? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: What unemployment? (Score:2, Insightful)
The trick to a good economy is to address your problems before they are provlems.
Not if you're a European bureaucrat (Score:1)
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Even something simple as a banana can be a major problem
I think the problem here was misrepresentation of the regulation, not the regulation itself.
I'm not sure however what your actual point is in relation to GP or the topic in hand...
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Unsure whether Fixing or Creating (Score:2)
History shows that fighting innovation and technological advancement never works in t
Wrong title (Score:5, Informative)
They removed some subsidies. It's not a robot tax.
Re: Wrong title (Score:2)
Yeah. I'm not even sure how they'd define it, come to think of it.
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South Africa is the FIRST.
Taxes on ATM's, Petrol pumps and self serve checkouts - where people can do the job.
Maybe it makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
As robots become ever more able to function independently and replace human workers, perhaps they should be regarded less as mere tools and more like workers - who deserve a salary and need to pay tax? I know, we are still far from having achieving anything like human-comparable robots, but it is not hard to argue that we will get there one day. In the meantime, although companies have a short term goal of making as much money from as small an expense as possible, they too are dependent on there being customers, which ultimately depends on there being humans (for the near future at least) and a functioning society etc. Otherwise, making money makes no sense at all - so in the long term, all businesses must have an interest in paying taxes to support society.
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What would a robot do with a salary ? Go home in the weekend and spend it on coke and hookers ?
Re:Maybe it makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
What would a robot do with a salary ?
Pay its taxes, of course. That is what this whole fuss is about: making sure that robots pay their fair share of taxes.
Of course, robots will also spend their salaries on high-priced robotic AI tax lawyers, and end up stashing their loot in robotic AI offshore accounts, just like Apple and the rest.
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So how much salary should I pay the robot that cleans my dishes ?
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I pay my dishwasher with salt
As the grandparent said, you literally pay it a salary.
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So how much salary should I pay the robot that cleans my dishes ?
That depends on the model number of your dishwasher. If it's a Cherry2000, you should pay her more than you can afford, so you should pay her in Bitcoins.
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stashing their loot in robotic AI offshore accounts
Don't you mean ByteCoins so the IRS cannot get to it?
Re:Maybe it makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This is basically the reason why we're currently in the recession we're in: We're producing without paying the people supposed to buy the stuff we produce. This is not going to work in the long run.
In the past, this was the reason our system worked. Companies paid their workers, who then in turn went and bought the products. That way the system worked. This changed radically when we started developing and producing abroad where we ship money away and get goods in return. It's a bit like back in the colonial days... only in reverse. This time, we're sending out our precious metals in return for trinkets and glass beads.
Of course such a system is not sustainable. At a certain point we are no longer able to spend. That point has actually been reached about a decade ago, now it's propped up with more and more debt. And this will continue until the country sending us the beads and trinkets has enough of a domestic market to sell to.
Then... well, why bother with the colony any more when there's nothing to be siphoned from it? Pay your debt and then we'll talk!
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What you are saying is true - and it is basically a simple summary of Marx' criticism of Capitalism: when the rich get richer, because they hold on to their wealth, the poor must by necessity get poorer, and things grind to a halt, or in his version, we get a revolution, since that appears to be the only way of redistributing wealth. It bears some striking similarities to why you can't build a perpetuum mobile, I think.
Re:Maybe it makes sense (Score:4)
We don't need a revolution, we need domestic jobs. The system can work, but it requires money on the demand side. If you don't have workers that get paid, you don't have consumers that buy your stuff. It is actually that simple.
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> If you don't have workers that get paid, you don't have consumers that buy your stuff
What this does not [permanently] result in: Cheaper stuff
What this does result in: The stuff scaled down, layoffs, shutdowns, and finally, the stuff is simply unmanufactured. If the market of people buying bluetooth fidget spinners shrinks, they just don't get made. Low "volume" is only a measure of sales, not interest, so the same applies to, say, cotton t-shirts.
"consumers aren't buying* the stuff" means no one bothe
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In the past, this was the reason our system worked. Companies paid their workers, who then in turn went and bought the products. That way the system worked. This changed radically when we started developing and producing abroad where we ship money away and get goods in return. [...] Of course such a system is not sustainable. At a certain point we are no longer able to spend. That point has actually been reached about a decade ago, now it's propped up with more and more debt.
The problem is not global trade, it is distribution of wealth. Global trade nearly always increases the wealth of all nations which take part as they allow each economy to function more efficiently. The problem is the spoils of global trade are not distributed evenly throughout the economy. The division between equity and labor is becoming unsustainable and automation in the near future will likely make it far worse. I cannot imagine any solution other than a universal basic income, but that has challenges
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The problem is not that the trade is global, the problem is that it is lopsided. A produces X and B produces Y, because their relevant production means (education of workforce, availability of raw materials, climate situation, whatever) mean they can more easily produce X in A and Y in B, and them trading with each other so both A and B can have products X and Y, that's a good idea and that can actually work.
If A only produces and B is only supposed to consume while A buys nothing from B, this model goes do
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If A only produces and B is only supposed to consume while A buys nothing from B, this model goes down the drain.
No it doesn't, because B has still had its workforce freed up to do something of more value. Perhaps they are working in STEM fields creating new technologies. Perhaps they are working in construction and improving the country's infrastructure and housing stock. Improvements to an economy are not only shown in exports. Although I would agree that the US is currently not doing a good job of using its workforce to invest in the future, that isn't because of lopsided trade but instead because of a lack of long
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People aren't fungible. You can't swap random person A with random person B, and likewise you can't make person A perform job B. There are only so many people in a population that actually have the abilities to work in STEM fields and create new technology. You have way more whose mental capacity is already at its peak if they manage to put the metal sheet the right way into the press.
And these people are unemployable in this model. You can't take them and put them into some research job.
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There are many quite simple definitions of what a robot is. You could basically claim that any mechanical device with programmable functionality is a robot.
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That is exactly what a robot is.
No idea why people fear them. Germany and Japan and Scandinavia (and probably the whole rest of Europe) already has automated nearly everything since 30 years or more.
Just compare how many people work in the car industries in Germany right now and how many it was 40 years ago. It is probably in the 10% range now.
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If we're going to start imposing extra taxes on robo
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Rather than discourage robots & automation, a better idea would be to make robots earn money for everybody. That way, everybody can stay home w/ family & do actual important things that matter, while robots do all our work for us, earn all our money for us, and government too gets all its money from them (maybe bitcoin generation) and stops bothering us! Win-win-win for everybody involved!
High taxes - part of the deal (Score:1)
A sufficiently high tax on robots would prevent them from being produced.
Yes, that is half the point. While firing three quarters of your work force and replacing them with robots will look fantastic on the next report to your shareholders, starving masses are very likely to not elect officials who only care about that... assuming they don't outright revolt, in which case those balance sheets aren't going to offer you much protection.
These businesses really should not be surprised that a government that wants to stay in power will do what they have to in order to prevent mass st
Redundant (Score:3)
What a redundant statement. Of course a sufficiently high tax will prevent them from being produced. That goes for everything. What the hell are we supposed to do with this quote?
A sufficiently high tax on cigarettes will prevent them from having a mass market too, that's why legislators are very careful to find the balance at which enough people still smoke while paying as much as possible for the privilege.
This statement implies since there is a balance to be found we shouldn't do it at all. Yet, that doesn't keep us from taxation in most other cases either. So again, the fuck is this except FUD?
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Is one central computer with 200 manipulators one robot, or 200 robots?
It's one robot with 200 manipulators. It's one robot because it has one central command unit and they are all interconnected.
The tax would probably be related to productivity. I believe that Oracle, among others like IBM, has several licensing models which are based on the IOPS or the MIPS of the machine in question. i.e. the number of transactions it can do. Good luck fudging that. The same model would easily apply to a robot. Other way
It IS misguided (Score:2)
But not because a high tax on robots would cause them not to be produced. It's misguided because it's a band-aid. The solution is not robot tax to prop up capitalism, the solution is to give up on letting capital run everything. It has been conclusively shown to not work. Capital simply accrues capital in a runaway effect that sucks all the air out of the room for everyone else.
The easiest way to implement this without throwing away capitalism and starting over is to institute a MGI/COLA, and to fund it by
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If income tax is fair for people, it's even fairer for corporations, which don't have any natural right to exist.
I had started writing a reply to a post above
someone please explain to me why making "innovation" a tax-deductible is a good idea?
essentially describing the system as it currently exists, the difference between Net Profit and Gross Profit, economies of scale, how innovation a la research and development fits into the picture, and so on. Then I realised, just because that's the way it is doesn't mean it's the only way, or the best way, and I canceled out of it. Then I saw your post, and the line I quoted.
Honestly, I am no longer sure what I think.
In a sense you're right, but in a sense all y
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It's not a bandaid; it's saying I got a paper cut, so let me take a blowtorch to the wound to cauterize it.
Technology is the development of new ways to do things with less labor. The frigging wooden shipping pallet eliminated around 90% of all loading dock labor: a crew could unload canned goods in three 16-hour days, and could unload the same goods palletized in 4 hours; and we move those pallets on and off trucks (and train cars) at multiple demarcation points along the way, each of which now requires l
Automation is not the boogie-man (Score:2)
South Korea will be the first country to change its tax laws in recognition of the coming burden of mass robotic automation on low and middle-skill workers.
Just remember that this is the same society that thinks you will die if you run a fan in a closed room [wikipedia.org]. Just because a society has an idea doesn't mean it is a sensible or sane one. I'm frankly rather disappointed that slashdot keeps trolling us with these articles about how automation is going to cause some sort of holocaust in the work place despite there being zero evidence for it either historical or current. It's just a paranoid dystopian theory unsupported by the facts. It's like people who think
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Just remember that this is the same society that thinks you will die if you run a fan in a closed room
Appeal to irrelevant ignorance [theinciden...nomist.com]. They're wrong, but not because they're wrong about fans.
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I'm frankly rather disappointed that slashdot keeps trolling us with these articles about how automation is going to cause some sort of holocaust in the work place despite there being zero evidence for it either historical or current.
If you think there are no historical antecedents, you aren't paying attention. The Dickensian Dystopia wasn't a fiction. It was a reflection of English society at the time. The first Industrial Revolution was massively disruptive. As many as three generations of the non-monied classes lived and died as paupers, with zero chance of ever getting out of the hole they were born into. The "social safety net" at the time was poor houses. Essentially warehousing people society had no idea what to do with.
Aut
Subsidies removed (Score:3)
But you can still depreciate the equipment per standard calculations.
Bad idea (Score:1)
lack of imagination (Score:1)
history (Score:1)
the effect of taxes on the rich (Score:1)
Robot Migration (Score:2)
Surely all the robots will emigrate to Japan to escape the Korean taxes. What are Japan's rules on migrant robot workers?
Bullshit move, is bullshit. (Score:2)
The move is evidently not an attempt to staunch companies from adopting automation technology.
Then it's pointless. Greed N. Corruption will demand automation, and not give a shit about the impact.
Rather, it is a kind of formal acknowledgment that unemployment is coming on a big enough scale to eat into South Korea's tax revenue.
Pointless moves are bullshit that only serve to fulfill an illusion of concern. The reality is policymakers serve Greeds lobbyist armies.
Policymakers are hoping that reducing the deduction incentives by a couple percentage points will offset the lost income tax and help keep the country's social services and welfare coffers filled.
Citizens are also hoping that policymakers represent their best interests, and look out for the people. How ironic that shit never seems to work out either. Coffers will empty because policymakers hold on to the delusional concept of taxing the rich to help the unemplo
At least they are working on the problem (Score:2)
1) Jobs are dead. "it's jobs stupid" might have been everything in the past but now jobs are becoming stupid. There will not be enough jobs and we already have a massive shortage of meaningful or low skill livable wage jobs (remember how many middle class jobs we used to have for high school drop outs?) Automation will drive this point further as it advances and capital uncontrollably pushes it forward.
2) Corporations are not job creators. Demand creates markets, it fuels black markets despite huge obstacl
No taxation ... (Score:2)
Robots throw tea into Incheon harbor.
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>> Taxation without representation
Will this be the cause of the robot uprising?
Lawrence Summers (Score:2)
behind the scenes (Score:1)
What about if humans CAN do things people pay money for? People pay me money for doing my job.
Propgagandistic nonsense (Score:2)
Reducing the amount of a tax deduction isn't even raising existing taxes, let alone introducing a new one.
Laffer curve (Score:2)
Yes. A sufficiently high tax on *anything* will either keep it from being produced and/or push it into the black market. Not taxing something will result in zero revenue generation from that thing. Somewhere in the middle is optimal revenue extraction. That's the Laffer curve in a nutshell. During the Reagan era it was used to argue for lower taxes. That may not have actually worked under those circumstances; but the notion of an optimal level of taxation seems to make sense. In this case it doesn't
Better Notions (Score:2)
No thanks. (Score:1)
Perhaps we could give cash rewards to parents of students who excel in schools and thus make parents more likely to push their kids to do well in school
That leads to more overworked and overstressed people versus the current US system.