
Bill Gates says robots that take your job should pay taxes - doener
http://www.businessinsider.de/bill-gates-robots-pay-taxes-2017-2?r=US&IR=T
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detaro
duplicate, please check before submitting:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13666124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13666124)

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wahern
Makes sense. It'll be political infeasible to increases taxes enough on the
entities that will directly derive the most value from automation--robot
manufacturers, businesses switching to automation, etc.

And because most of those profits will accumulate within a small segment of
the population, it's not possible to tax the profits indirectly. Not enough
will trickle down.[1] And it's politically difficult to increase taxes on the
super rich much more than we already do. Taxing financial instruments--which
is where the rich move and grow their wealth--is problematic. Taxing income
and assets at a point where they're readily identifiable and easily
enforceable is the most efficient and most equitable.

Plus, there's ample precedent in terms of personal property tax. Most basic
example: some states tax cars. That's probably how a thing like this would be
implemented--not as a type of income tax, but as a property tax.

[1] Lower prices of goods and services notwithstanding.

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jordif
This is a great topic. We can think in this solution or in the Elon Musk
solution, about that every person must to be a salary, working or not. I don't
know what solution should be, but this is one of the main topic for the next
decade.

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boona
You mean like taxing the hell out of Microsoft because they automated tons of
jobs due to computers? Pay up Bill.

