Bill Gates: the robot that takes your job should pay taxes.

[Delana]

Having to do specific types of labor (manufacturing or working in a fast food kitchen) isn't necessary for the human condition, nor does it always improve upon the lives of those who do that work.

Something like a Universal Basic Income would have to come with a massive shift in society to how we view our own purpose. A shift that would have to start from ground up, from education. We would have to nurture curiosity, creativity, philanthropy etc to give ourselves purpose.

What if all you want to do your whole life is to travel the world and surf? Why not?

What if you want to be an artists (even tho objectively speaking you are not very good)? Go for it.

And so on. People don't only do things because they need to, people can have a wide range of other motivators that we could nurture.

To do this, you strip almost everything but art and entertainment from Humanity. Most notably the pursuits of knowledge, progress, and success. Essentially humanity would be the glorified pets of our machine (and AI?) overlords. I suppose they may be benevolent, but it ceases to be our civilization if they do everything of substance.

I understand people are naturally a little lazy. So am I. But I don't understand why we want this future. It just strikes me as a childish thing to want. Like pizza and ice cream for every meal.

[Mihalik]

Most notably the pursuits of knowledge, progress, and success.

Not necessarily. You assume that the pursuits of knowledge, progress and success can only be motivated by financial gain. In the cases of pursuit of knowledge and progress they are rarely motivated by financial gain, just that the occasional exceptions tend to be fairly spectacular (Gates, Musk), but then again most scientists, engineers etc. aren't in it for the money.

Success is a thing that is objective and doesn't necessarily needs to be measured in financial gain.

[Total Crica]

Nothing to do with socialism. Offering the very basic to your population is what any developed country ought to be doing.

basic education
basic health services
basic public transportation
basic amenities
basic access to internet , energy

These are essential to a country and cannot be left to speculation.

No no no!

All people MUST work, but NO ONE can help ANYONE be able to work by giving them anything for FREE!

You leave the poor to their own luck, that way more people are born poor and they will grow up not being able to afford any of this and then you can profit off them via prison labor when they commit crimes on the rich due to lack of the basics!

That way no robots will take anyone's jobs!

Am I doin' it right?

[psyquest]

No no no!

All people MUST work, but NO ONE can help ANYONE be able to work by giving them anything for FREE!

You leave the poor to their own luck, that way more people are born poor and they will grow up not being able to afford any of this and then you can profit off them via prison labor when they commit crimes on the rich due to lack of the basics!

That way no robots will take anyone's jobs!

Am I doin' it right?

Oh you magnificent troll :-)

[sheggaro]

Well it's a good thing then that Trump's forcing factories back into the US.

After all if you want to tax robots, you gotta have them in your country.

[Mihalik]

Well it's a good thing then that Trump's forcing factories back into the US.

After all if you want to tax robots, you gotta have them in your country.

Yeah no. He ain't forcing back crap.

[Trassk]

Sounds like a good setup, but it begs the question on robot manufacturing. Obviously it's the manufacturers who give the robots to companies that will be taxed, which might just make the process of creating robots for companies they then have to pay into push them away from wanting to, since the original idea of robot workers would be "no workers pay needed, only occasional maintenance".

[Unhinged]

If industry want to go to full automation they will have to accept paying extra taxes for universal income or they will have no one left to buy their stuff.

[Total Crica]

If industry want to go to full automation they will have to accept paying extra taxes for universal income or they will have no one left to buy their stuff.

The rich can always trade between themselves without ever lifting a finger. They even trade crap between themselves that doesn't even exist. The reason is because they will OWN everything. That is the point to being rich. Not to have alot of money, but to own as much as you can. If they own everything, including the robots that do all the work, they won't NEED very many people to work for them, so why would they bother to feed/house/educate those that have no jobs? They will just ensure everyone else stays poor so they can use the robots to put them in prison and then educate the ones they actually need to work for them, which by the time full automation happens, wont be anyone!

[Berengil]

I reckon this tax money will be the first step towards Universal Basic Income. If a fully functional AI is ever created it is inevitable that every job is replaced by AI units that can perform every job better than humans.

Yep, this is the road it's headed down.

It's ironic; Marx was right. Capitalism does contain within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

It's just taking a bit longer than he thought.

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Having to do specific types of labor (manufacturing or working in a fast food kitchen) isn't necessary for the human condition, nor does it always improve upon the lives of those who do that work.

Something like a Universal Basic Income would have to come with a massive shift in society to how we view our own purpose. A shift that would have to start from ground up, from education. We would have to nurture curiosity, creativity, philanthropy etc to give ourselves purpose.

What if all you want to do your whole life is to travel the world and surf? Why not?

What if you want to be an artists (even tho objectively speaking you are not very good)? Go for it.

And so on. People don't only do things because they need to, people can have a wide range of other motivators that we could nurture.

Also this. 100% agree. It frees people from the concern of survival, to do whatever they want.

Screw all the time? Yeeehaw!

Paint/sculpt? Sure.

Spend the rest of your life reading everything you can while listening to Chopin? Have at it.

[Mihalik]

Not to have alot of money, but to own as much as you can. If they own everything, including the robots that do all the work, they won't NEED very many people to work for them, so why would they bother to feed/house/educate those that have no jobs?

Mostly because you don't want the unwashed masses to eat you.

[Masark]

lolwut

10char

He predicts we'll get America rather than Australia.

[frogger237]

how do you have access to affordable ownership in a world where the 1% owns the robots and the 99% has no job and no income?

or as a more right-now scenario: how do financially survive until you can get a new job if you just got replaced by a robot, and most jobs that require similar or less education are also being replaced by robots, if not for the states help?

Obviously you kill off the 99% so that 100% of the people alive have jobs!

[Deleted]

New technology has always made people jobless, but it have been followed by reduced working hours so its "enough" work left. The problem is that we are still stuck at 8h working day but the technology have advanced by leaps and bounds.

[Total Crica]

Mostly because you don't want the unwashed masses to eat you.

Meh, let them eat themselves while you sit in your fully automated life sustaining tower they can't climb due to being unwashed masses that don't own robots.

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reduced working hours

Hasn't changed since the great depression (world war 2) in the US.

[Draco-Onis]

I may have been unclear in what I said.

I don't think capitalism can survive in an economy that will obviously stagnate -- since the sole reason Capitalism is to grow on debt and expansion. The way we fall in the loop of equal salary for all, we're obviously going to be limited with our current system. Banks would lose most of their capital, too.

Which is why I think our system is unfit for automation. I do believe that automation is good and that we should have a new economic structure when automation will be well implemented.

Financial engineering might the solution perhaps something akin to bitcoin creation where processing power can be used to generate income. It is not an impossible task for capitalism to adapt to ever evolving technology. What I think we should all worry about is that our politicians are focused on the problems of yesterday instead of putting in policies that will help us in the future.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Financial engineering might the solution perhaps something akin to bitcoin creation where processing power can be used to generate income. It is not an impossible task for capitalism to adapt to ever evolving technology. What I think we should all worry about is that our politicians are focused on the problems of yesterday instead of putting in policies that will help us in the future.

Yeah well again, that's the problem of modern capitalism -- A system built around the expectation of constant, exponential growth :P

[IIamaKing]

Id be fine taxing the owner of the robot the amount an employee would have paid in taxes.

[Docturphil]

If humans helped fund these robots through taxes, it is therefore only logical that a tax be applied on the robots, as some kind of Robot taxes. Considering all the money that the industries will save through automation, a tax will be a minimal cut in their budget while allowing living workers to find something new and/or refresh themselves in a new domain.

While I would oppose many aspects of socialism with our current economic model, if enough automation begins to occur where the difficulty to find a job passes a certain threshold I feel like this becomes a good idea.

As of right now, I don't think we're past that threshold.

[Zan15]

Would just end up being passed on and tax the individual, corporations don't pay taxes.