Bill Gates says that job-stealing robots should pay taxes

There is plenty of work to be done with or without robots. Our roads are terrible. Our infrastructure is crumbling in much of the country. People cannot afford all the things they want and would buy more if the cost were reduced. The answer is not for the Government to grab more of the nation's wealth. It is to put people whose jobs are eliminated to work doing other things that are not currently being done. In fact, we are bringing in immigrants to do work for which companies allegedly cannot find Americans to do. If jobs are being eliminated, we can simply reduce the number of immigrants and put Americans to work doing the jobs that might otherwise be filled by immigrants....[ ].....

Well, it seems that this generation is oblivious to FDR's "New Deal", and "a chicken in every pot" politics. It did work, and whether or not anybody gets it, Trumps concepts are a retread of the "New Deal", or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The trouble is, we've taken Social Security 's socialist ideals and prostituted than to the point where all you have to do is have an illegitimate child, to have it be able to collect SS from birth. The system was never designed to be able to sustain such burdens.

But it does breed the Democrats future voters. And don't forget, FDR wasn't dealing with the level of government deficit that the USA is now.
 
I'm going to ignore your comment, since you didn't seem to understand mine.
I understand you Cliff, and I'm here for you! :D(y)

OMG lets go back and figure out how many jobs have been lost over tech improvements and start charging back taxes. If this robot doesn't have a citizenship, collect a paycheck, and go on vacation you can't charge it taxes.
I don't see how we can do that Cliff, since the robots have already been mostly "deported" to China!
 
He is right though. Robots don't pull a paycheck or benefits, and after the initial recovery of investment, they are nearly pure-profit (ignoring electricity usage, that might be offset from lower lighting levels than what humans require). Any company competing with a human workforce against a robotic one will lose. A tax will be needed both to help balance the transition (so you don't have a collapse of every company that can't afford an as-rapid transition to automation as their competition can), and to help fund the government as the workforce dwindles.

http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevolution/responsestoIR.html

The Luddites

“Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood
His feats I but little admire
I will sing the achievements of General Ludd,
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire” (547).

The most dramatic uprising against the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain began around what was left of the deforested Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, the land of the fabled Robin Hood. The rebels were skilled weavers and other pre-industrial artisans who saw in the new textile machines the destruction of their traditional craft, their livelihood, and their community. In 1811, when the uprising began, about half the families in the Nottingham region were unable to support themselves and were reduced to Poor Law charity (Sale 66). And because the government had passed laws making it illegal for workers to meet, form a union, or go on strike, this desperate group met covertly and swore secret oaths of allegiance to each other. These rebellious artisans wrote anonymous letters to factory owners warning them to close down or face the consequences. Then they raided factories at night and destroyed the new textile machines that took away their jobs. Neither the sheriff of Nottingham nor the new factory owners knew precisely who the secret members were. But the rebels signed their first letter of demands, “From Robin Hood’s Cave” (3).

These rebellious and skilled artisans became known as the “Luddites”
 
Don't get me wrong, I think automation is a good thing at nearly all levels. I also think that a "robot tax" is inevitable - when was the last time you saw a government miss an excuse to tax something? Any tax on automation will just get rolled into the calculations for a corporation's tax.
 
Don't get me wrong, I think automation is a good thing at nearly all levels. I also think that a "robot tax" is inevitable - when was the last time you saw a government miss an excuse to tax something? Any tax on automation will just get rolled into the calculations for a corporation's tax.
It will also get rolled into calculations on whether or not to move a particular factory, robots and all, to another country altogether. So instead of a few jobs lost to robots, all the factory's jobs will be lost to another country (as if that hasn't happened already).
 
Why not tax job stealing slave labour in Mexico or China? And retrain USA/Canada workers who've lost their jobs?

Or tax job stealing H1-B visa holders?
 
Well, it seems that this generation is oblivious to FDR's "New Deal", and "a chicken in every pot" politics. It did work, and whether or not anybody gets it, Trumps concepts are a retread of the "New Deal", or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The trouble is, we've taken Social Security 's socialist ideals and prostituted than to the point where all you have to do is have an illegitimate child, to have it be able to collect SS from birth. The system was never designed to be able to sustain such burdens.

But it does breed the Democrats future voters. And don't forget, FDR wasn't dealing with the level of government deficit that the USA is now.


While FDR politics certainly worked and did in fact did bred some significant perpetual liberal voting blocs lend lease and WW II production is what got us out of the depression not so much the new deal which was nothing more than deficit spending and a lot of pork aside from a few legitimately needed large projects including some highways and rural electrification and so on .

The narrative surrounding the new deal is some bit of liberal revisionist history and propaganda noting FDR was a democrat .

We haven't stopped deficit spending or growing government ,a corrupt body politic ,parasitic liberal academia ,crony capitalism for profit diploma mills , government subsidies. the corporate welfare state ,entitlements ,the federal and state fraud waste and abuse of power and effective middle income taxes since WWII and transformative immigration and illegal immigration for perpetual democratic voting blocs .

The treason trying to destroy America is the liberal media press & news ,liberal silly con valley oligarchs , an alt -left body politic aka democrats , liberal voting blocs ,globalists and globalist corporations ,the greens ,liberal academia ,liberal teachers unions ,Hollywood liberals and posers EPA ,DoE, Energy,IRS , and , democrats on the hill and so on.
 
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From 1940 to 1960 Democratic Pres. Johnson voted with the South 78% on civil rights issues. Before 1957, voted 100% against civil rights issues. He also voted against the C.R.A. (Civil Rights Act’s ) of 1957 and 1960." - Leon Rogers at Quara -

" LBJ reversed his position on race 180%, likely because he was a consummate politico who realized he was going to need the black vote , rather than any sense of brotherhood or equality. In Congress, LBJ repeatedly voted against legislation to protect black Americans from lynching. " - Leon Rogers at Quara -

About the time of the civil rights act of 1964 this quote was allegedly attributed to LBJ
" I'll have those G.D. N***** 's voting democratic for the next 100 years "

The implications of transformative liberal immigration ,sanctuary cities and refugee policies by the alt-left democrats and body politic ,liberal proletariat and the globalists are wholly obvious here .

The liberals and liberal media haven't automated liberal voting and the entitlement state to the degree they would like .
Gates and the other globalists would tax the air and everything more than they do now and redistribute our wealth while lining thier pockets and pandering to perpetual misled and uninformed voting blocs they would grow from the legions of ignorant liberals and deliberately ignorant liberals they have now ..
The enemies of the state lie from within and outside our borders wanting to get in
 
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It does make sense, maybe the phrasing, or interpretation came out really wrong.

This makes sense to me, you are taking jobs out of the economy. The economy relies on that workers taxes to help contribute to the over all health of the economy, now that you've taken that away, the money has to come from somewhere else.

The U.S. economy relies on consumer spending. Taxes reduce spending by reducing available income to spend. Unless having less money means you can spend more money, your statement is false.
Yes, and no. The US implements their policies and supports the whole system based on money they have, this money they have comes out of taxes. That people make more useful money doesn't mean that they will consume more and by that improve the economy. If you have less employable workforce, it means you have more unemployment, which following your logic, means no income, more social benefits (That comes out of taxes, which means less money for everyone) and in the end it all leads to a reduction in money people have to spend to fuel the economy, not only not fuelling the economy but using reserves and destroying the "murican dream".
 
Bill Gates should think further ahead ........ and as we head into the future when robots build robots, build robots, build robots, and build robots to perform every task which humans perform ... redundant humans on Virtual Reality vacations, continuously .... ad infinitum.
As an alternative, as the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of Creation don't fit together we should stop where we are now and work on making the pieces fit in the correct places.
 
Very difficult and perhaps impossible application to be fair. Aren't companies already paying increased tax because of increased productivity? I think company should be encouraged to increase efficiency and thereby paying a higher tax because of this productivity. I'm sure some economists will start evaluating the difference between a tax on automated manufacturing cells and the tax revenues derived from increased profitability.
 
Very difficult and perhaps impossible application to be fair. Aren't companies already paying increased tax because of increased productivity? I think company should be encouraged to increase efficiency and thereby paying a higher tax because of this productivity. I'm sure some economists will start evaluating the difference between a tax on automated manufacturing cells and the tax revenues derived from increased profitability.

They might be paying increased totals, but not increased rates. A rate increase for automation will probably be appropriate. companies that are automating today are seeing increased production output, increased quality, decreased waste, and decreased costs. Not by 'just a few percentage points' either, think 10-30%, the kind of increases that haven't been seen since Ford perfected the assembly line or the creation of the industrial loom. Just look at what Foxconn has been able to achieve - they've laid off tens of thousands of workers in the last year to replace them with robots, and they are seeing some of the best improvements of anyone automating.

Foxconn may be Chinese, but how long until American manufacturers start to adopt automation?
 
Very difficult and perhaps impossible application to be fair. Aren't companies already paying increased tax because of increased productivity? I think company should be encouraged to increase efficiency and thereby paying a higher tax because of this productivity. I'm sure some economists will start evaluating the difference between a tax on automated manufacturing cells and the tax revenues derived from increased profitability.
About the only place the advantages of automation fully manifest themselves are in the tech sector. You just have to compare the price of things now, to the same item 10 years ago, to be practically slapped in the face by it.

But, if you take your vanity with you when you go shopping, you'll wind up paying as much for a new pair of Nike sneakers, as you would for a new motherboard!

So, it's pretty obvious more automation would help the little children in clothing sweatshops. Sadly, it might even put them out of work.

Perhaps, reporting the sales of automation machinery to governments should be tasked to the makers of said machines or robots, giving the people at least some slim chance of reaping benefits from the taxation imposed.

In other words, (in the US anyway), give a robot son of a b*****, a Social Security number, "at birth".
 
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