Should we tax robots?

[ponderingturtle]

It will become cheaper and cheaper to provide the bare necessities for everyone. And enlightened self-interest of the wealthy will cause them to pay for this basic level of comfort.

But it is important to have people who fail to produce be punished. By that logic there would be no hunger in the US, we can certainly afford to feed everyone and have plenty of food. But if you make it to easy on the destitute the poor will realize they are also being screwed.

Beyond that, any company needs consumers, so they have to find ways to employ and pay people who can then afford their products: even Ford knew as much.

Not really Ford knew he had large problems with labor turnover and that raising wages would reduce it. The economic argument was a post hoc rationalization for basic business decisions.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Not really Ford knew he had large problems with labor turnover and that raising wages would reduce it. The economic argument was a post hoc rationalization for basic business decisions.

Quite possible.


About dealing with the poor: besides placating them with consumer goods, the only other option for the rich would be to kill them all - a project unlikely to succeed.
No, the Rich and Powerful have to pay the rest of society to be allowed to remain in wealth and power: either by wealth transfer or by supporting a brutal police state.

 

[applecorped]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317662

 

[ponderingturtle]

Quite possible.


About dealing with the poor: besides placating them with consumer goods, the only other option for the rich would be to kill them all - a project unlikely to succeed.
No, the Rich and Powerful have to pay the rest of society to be allowed to remain in wealth and power: either by wealth transfer or by supporting a brutal police state.

Having an even lower rung of society has been a popular method through out history. Why should that change?

 

[acbytesla]

Robots set to replace half of Retail Jobs and other news.

ROBOTS AIN'T JUST COMING for warehouse and factory jobs, they are eyeing up retail too.

So says Financial services outfit Cornerstone Capital Group, which claims that over the next 10 years, as many as 7.5 million retail positions in the US 'could' be replaced by robots, representing almost half of the country's 16 million-strong retail work force.
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquire...t-to-replace-half-of-retail-workers-in-the-us

Large job losses expected for truck drivers.

When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research.

Truck drivers, more so than bus or taxi drivers, will see the bulk of that job loss, according to the report. That makes sense, given today's employment: In 2014, there were 4 million driver jobs in the U.S., 3.1 million of which were truck drivers, Goldman said. That represents 2 percent of total employment.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/22/goldman-sachs-analysis-of-autonomous-vehicle-job-loss.html

No wants to be chicken little and frankly I think that robots replacing humans is a good thing if we are willing to address the negative effects as opposed to thinking somehow it will all just work out.

 

[acbytesla]

Robots Are Lowering the Wages of Those With Jobs

Robots Are Lowering the Wages of Those With Jobs

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo looked at data from a period spanning 17 years (1990–2007) for their analysis and concluded that wage decreases are coupling with job loss to further widen the wage gap between the rich and the poor. They estimate that automation has potentially increased the gap between the top 90 percent and the bottom 10 percent by up to an entire percentage point. According to their numbers, wages for impacted workers have been slashed by between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent.

 

[Distracted1]

As I mentioned, people don't like doing jobs a machine could do. So once we have robot servants, employing a human would be very expensive.

No, I can't see that happening.

When the mansion on the hill is the only game in town, whipping boys are cheap

 

[Cain]

People keep insisting that robots/automation/zero work means we must have a universal basic income, but the alternative solution is far more efficient: Instead of robots that merely displace labor, elites should create killer machines. Why go through the hassle of starving people out?

 

[acbytesla]

People keep insisting that robots/automation/zero work means we must have a universal basic income, but the alternative solution is far more efficient: Instead of robots that merely displace labor, elites should create killer machines. Why go through the hassle of starving people out?

I can imagine that. I bet the wealthy would be pleased if they could still have all their stuff and not have to deal with the great unwashed.

Who'd have thought that the NAZIS would kill 6 million Jewish people. Or Pol Potter killing half of all Cambodians?

Makes it easier to get a hotel room or a flight.

 

[Distracted1]

I can imagine that. I bet the wealthy would be pleased if they could still have all their stuff and not have to deal with the great unwashed.

Who'd have thought that the NAZIS would kill 6 million Jewish people. Or Pol Potter killing half of all Cambodians?

Makes it easier to get a hotel room or a flight.

Having all that "stuff" is worthwhile only when there are those without stuff to envy you.

As TGZ pointed out- it's all relative.

 

[dudalb]

Have you even considered the problem of "What is a robot?" For example, if someone buys a self-driving car, is that a robot? If someone hires out their self-driving car as an Uber-type vehicle, is that a robot?

Overall, put me on the skeptical side of the question of whether automation is going to kill a lot of jobs.

OH, automation will kill a lot of jobs, no doubt about it,question is will the technology involved create new jobs to replace the jobs abolished.

 

[acbytesla]

]Having all that "stuff" is worthwhile only when there are those without stuff to envy you.[/HILITE]

As TGZ pointed out- it's all relative.

While I think there is definitely something to that. But I don't believe that envy is the driving factor you make it out to be when you compare it to no traffic jams and no waiting in lines.
I'm sure that a few people could be kept around for envy.

 

[fuelair]

It's clear in the coming years if we are not there already that increased automation will destroy more jobs and opportunities than it creates leading to more unemployment and making permanent the socioeconomic strata.

Some ideas to deal with these problems include taxing robots and universal basic income. What should the government do? Implement these solutions, nothing, or something else?

Heinlein covered that in the latish 40s/early 50s : Guaranteed living income with boosts if you get paid by others for your skills (performance/writing/specialized engineering etc.) No anti-sex crap either - all types (absent children and animal and unwanted various).

 

[fuelair]

Luddites would be Luds, not Ludes (or Ludies)!!! For more than one reason

 

[Emily's Cat]

The whole point of automation is to make products cheaper.
While a UBI could lower the cost of labor so much that robots would become the more expensive option, once a cost-effective labor-saving device exists it is hard to find humans willing to do the job of a machine.
So taxing robots of subsidizing human workers both would just hinder innovation and keep prices higher than they would need to be.

I have my reservations about a UBI, since it would solve only a tiny part of the problem whilst still leaving the most vulnerable members of society in a fragile state.

We should simply tax the **** out of top earners, and they will secretly thank us for it: no one wants to have $10 billion, they just want to be as rich as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates; easy thing to solve: make sure no one has more than $100 million and put a 95% tax rate on incomes over $1Million.
That way, relative wealth stays the same and the country can afford decent education, infrastructure and health-care.

Genuine question.

1) You can work 40 hours a week to process 100 items, and get paid $5000.

--Or--

2) You can work 50 hours a week to process 200 items, and get paid $5000.

--Or--

3) You can spend 300 hours of your private time to invent a new process that will let you work 40 hours a week to process 1000 items, and get paid $5000.

Which option would you choose?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Why not just tax all corporations at a fair rate?

But why tax a corporation that uses robots domestically different than a corporation who uses a sweatshop in Dhaka?

Introduce progressive corporate taxes. Change the order in which taxes occur - after basic salary and operating expenses, before profit or performance based bonuses and contribution to capital.

I'm not entirely sure exactly how corporate taxes get applied now, in terms of what's above and what's below the line. I vaguely recall that some things that I would consider "profit" don't get taxed for some smoke-and-mirrors kind of accounting reasons... but I'm not an accountant.

 

[Emily's Cat]

We will see a sharp drop in population in the decades to come.

Depends. IIRC, the largest correlate to birth rate is education level, and it's a negative correlation. The more educated a population is, the lower the birth rate. I believe that the correlation was even stronger when you look at the education level of females in the population - the more educated the women are, the lower the birth rate.

So if we as a species are successful at substantially improving the breadth and quality of education across the globe in coming decades, I would guess that your prognostication is correct. If, however, certain religions and religious states that view women as either second-class citizens or as property subservient to their men continue to gain ground... I wouldn't take that bet.

 

[Emily's Cat]

As I mentioned, people don't like doing jobs a machine could do. So once we have robot servants, employing a human would be very expensive.

No, I can't see that happening.

I can. Humans enjoy companionship. I can see a lot of stuff happening simply because humans like hanging out with other humans.

I can see having a human performing robot tasks as a very expensive luxury.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It will become cheaper and cheaper to provide the bare necessities for everyone. And enlightened self-interest of the wealthy will cause them to pay for this basic level of comfort.
A progressive consumption tax, like many think tanks on both sides support, could be the way to finance this.


Beyond that, any company needs consumers, so they have to find ways to employ and pay people who can then afford their products: even Ford knew as much.

A progressive consumption tax is also something I support. Define items by type, cost, amount above benchmark, and tax accordingly. So basic whole unprocessed foods might have a tax of $0, but restaurant entrees might be taxed according to the bracket that their average bill cost falls into. Maybe a reasonably priced mom & pop falls into a 5% bracket, and the luxury 5-star falls into the 40% bracket.

A combination of a progressive consumption tax and a progressive corporate tax and a progressive capitol gains tax could essential replace income tax altogether. It could also be significantly more sustainable, without having so much of our tax revenue concentrated in so few people.

 

[Emily's Cat]

About dealing with the poor: besides placating them with consumer goods, the only other option for the rich would be to kill them all - a project unlikely to succeed.

I assume this is sarcasm?

On the off chance that you're not attempting humor... Neither of those is a good option. That old adage of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him fish has stuck around for a reason. Giving poor people consumer goods is a short-term approach that treats the symptoms without addressing the cause. There are some elements of poverty that create a feedback loop, and at least some of the symptoms really do need to be addressed on their own before any meaningful progress can be made.

Here's my bad analogy for the day: If you show up at the ER hemorrhaging from a large cut, the most immediate need is to stop the bleeding - that's what keeps you from dying. You bind the wound, and provide IV liquids to stabilize blood pressure. But if the patient was only hemorrhaging because they were severely anemic and lacked sufficient red blood cells to properly clot, then binding and stabilization isn't going to fix the problem. You still need to treat the anemia if you want the patient to recover and become healthy.

Part of the feedback cycle of poverty has to do with things like childhood nutrition, a sense of security, and basic hygiene supplies. These are, in my opinion, some of the most immediate elements that need to be treated. Nutrition, for example, has impacts on cognitive development, ability to focus, and propensity to learn.

Longer term elements of poverty are more a matter of education and culture. Those two items aren't independent of one another - culture influences education, and education influences culture. Longer term strategies to alleviate poverty need to focus on ensuring adequate and equitable educational opportunities, and fostering a culture that values and supports learning and self-sufficiency.

[/soap box]