[kictanet] Why Bill Gates would tax robots

[Barrack Otieno]

Hi Wangari,

When you buy a hoe you pay VAT, i guess the same applies to a Robot
which is a piece of equipment, ROBOTS cannot pay PAYE, they don't earn
a living

Regards

On 2/27/17, WANGARI KABIRU via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> Read on...
> Robots are taking human jobs, so should they pay up for what the human(s)
> would have?
>
> Blessed day.
> Regards/Wangari ---
> Pray God Bless. 2013Wangari circa - "Being of the Light, We are Restored
> Through Faith in Mind, Body and Spirit; We Manifest The Kingdom of God on
> Earth".
>
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>  The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
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> The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
>  By Kevin J. Delaney The world's richest man is arguing for taxing and
> slowing automation.  |   |
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>  DROID DUTIES
> The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
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> Why Bill Gates would tax robots
> Quartz VideoWhy Bill Gates would tax robots0:001:40
> Share
>
> Written by
>  Kevin J. Delaney
> Obsession
>  Machines with Brains February 17, 2017     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.You can watch Gates’ remarks in the video
> above. Below is a transcript, lightly edited for style and clarity.Quartz:
> What do you think of a robot tax? This is the idea that in order to generate
> funds for training of workers, in areas such as manufacturing, who are
> displaced by automation, one concrete thing that governments could do is tax
> the installation of a robot in a factory, for example.Bill Gates: Certainly
> there will be taxes that relate to automation. Right now, the human worker
> who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and
> you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes
> in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar
> level.And what the world wants is to take this opportunity to make all the
> goods and services we have today, and free up labor, let us do a better job
> of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids
> with special needs. You know, all of those are things where human empathy
> and understanding are still very, very unique. And we still deal with an
> immense shortage of people to help out there.So if you can take the labor
> that used to do the thing automation replaces, and financially and
> training-wise and fulfillment-wise have that person go off and do these
> other things, then you’re net ahead. 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.And so you could introduce a tax on robots…There are many ways to
> take that extra productivity and generate more taxes. Exactly how you’d do
> it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about
> now. Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the
> labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of
> robot tax. I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that
> there might be a tax. It’s OK.Could you figure out a way to do it that
> didn’t dis-incentivize innovation?Well, at a time when people are saying
> that the arrival of that robot is a net loss because of displacement, you
> ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed of
> that adoption somewhat to figure out, “OK, what about the communities where
> this has a particularly big impact? Which transition programs have worked
> and what type of funding do those require?”You cross the threshold of
> job-replacement of certain activities all sort of at once. So, you know,
> warehouse work, driving, room cleanup, there’s quite a few things that are
> meaningful job categories that, certainly in the next 20 years, being
> thoughtful about that extra supply is a net benefit. It’s important to have
> the policies to go with that.People should be figuring it out. It is really
> bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do
> than they have enthusiasm. That means they won’t shape it for the positive
> things it can do. And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to
> handle it than just banning some elements of it. But [innovation] appears in
> many forms, like self-order at a restaurant—what do you call that? There’s a
> Silicon Valley machine that can make hamburgers without human
> hands—seriously! No human hands touch the thing. [Laughs]And you’re more on
> the side that government should play an active role rather than rely on
> businesses to figure this out?Well, business can’t. If you want to do
> [something about] inequity, a lot of the excess labor is going to need to go
> help the people who have lower incomes. And so it means that you can amp up
> social services for old people and handicapped people and you can take the
> education sector and put more labor in there. Yes, some of it will go to,
> “Hey, we’ll be richer and people will buy more things.” But the
> inequity-solving part, absolutely government’s got a big role to play there.
> The nice thing about taxation though, is that it really separates the issue:
> “OK, so that gives you the resources, now how do you want to deploy it?”
>


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Barrack O. Otieno
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