
Ask HN: Should we tax robots? - miguelrochefort
Recently, Bill Gates has claimed that we should tax robots, as a solution to the unemployment they contribute to.<p>I don&#x27;t see how that would work.<p>Let&#x27;s say someone build a free software that automates the job of 100 million people. Surely, this would contribute to massive unemployment. Who should pay taxes, and how much?
======
onion2k
Bill Gates is suggesting that we move from taxing "income paid to employees"
to taxing "value of work done".

If my employer replaces me with a robot, _and nothing else changes_ , then my
employer saves the cost of my wages minus the cost of the robot. I'm worse
off, the robot manufacturer is better off, my employer is much better off, but
society as a whole is worse off as it now has less tax income but one more
unemployed person to support. Gates' suggestion means that I'd still be worse
off, the robot manufacturer would still be better off, my employer would still
be better off (but slightly less so), but society _wouldn 't_ be as worse off
because tax revenue stays the same which (theoretically) covers the cost of my
unemployment. Everyone wins (except me).

In the case of "Let's say someone build a free software that automates the job
of 100 million people.", why should employers who replace people with said
software get the benefit of the software _and also_ reduce their contribution
to society? Why can't they 'just' get the benefit of the software?

~~~
corecoder
The first problem I see is that it's relatively easy to track an existing
company that fires ten people and replaces them with machines; it's not so
easy with the new company someone creates today. How many people are they not
employing? How the hell do you determine that?

If you don't get it exactly right, and new companies are at an advantage, old
companies will be replaced by new ones. If, on the other end, new companies
are at a disadvantage, you risk stagnation.

~~~
onion2k
That depends entirely on how it was implemented. A reasonably simple way would
be to tax the value of transactions between companies.

Essentially, as I understand it, Bill Gates was suggesting we need to move
away from taxing _people_ because the number of people employed in a company
is going to fall away to somewhere close to zero. Instead, if we want to raise
taxes, we need to move towards taxing something else - that could be work
done, or revenue, or transactions between companies, or electricity used, or
CPU time.

Bill Gates isn't wrong. If we continue to link taxation to people as we always
have then we will end up with tax revenues that don't even _begin_ to cover
the costs of running a functional society.

