This might be Bill Gates' second greatest idea.

If someone works in a factory and earns $50,000 we tax him/her. If a robot works in a factory and earns $50,000 the same tax should be paid for it.

It's that income tax that funds socially necessary work, among other things, that the community needs but which private enterprise doesn't do or do well.

So that when robots displace people - and he quotes research that says 47% of US jobs might be at risk - tax money will still be available to employ people for jobs that robots may not be suitable for, like community & health care.

Sounds good to me, BUT will taxing the robots put them out of a job?
Either way it might be a win.

So banks would pay tax for ATMs? Supermarkets for self service checkouts—would they get a rebate for shoplifting using the ss checkouts?

Why not apply the idea to jobs offshored?

Jovial Monk wrote on Feb 20^th, 2017 at 6:47am:


This is something I was going to come back to
There are a lot of issues and you've raised a couple of them above.

What defines a taxable robot? (This sort of question takes me back to work I used to do once)
Who pays? The owner of the robot I assume.
Would there be different rates for different classes of robot?
The mind boggles, but it is a proposition worth serious consideration

The corporate world will go spare but Gates would be able to get the ear of everybody.

Jovial,
Life wasn't meant to be easy and its problems have to be dealt with as they arise. And automation on a massive scale is going to be one of the toughest.

It's a pity we mostly get politicians who prefer to find ways of avoiding rather than dealing with problems.
But they are on the whole a reflection of ourselves.