
Mark Cuban: Robots will ‘cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it’ - hellomellow
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/20/mark-cuban-robots-unemployment-and-we-need-to-prepare-for-it.html
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sigmaprimus
"Meanwhile, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recommended last week that robots who
took over human jobs should pay taxes." sounds good to me, let's start with
the combines and weaving looms as they took away a lot of jobs, not to mention
all the stable hands put out of work from those horse less carriages.

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Nomentatus
Slowing down that long-past change a bit with a small tax (Gates is talking of
slowing, not stopping this change with taxes) might have been useful: the
Scottish clearances might not have happened so suddenly (which affected my
family), cities might have had more time to cope with the population influx
that caused widespread cholera and typhoid epidemics, just for starters.
Surely there's some room for maneuver between a medieval rejection of change
on the one hand, and absolute pitilessness on the other.

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sigmaprimus
I guess I was reading a different article, as there was no mention of slowing
or stopping. I would say that companies should be taxed more when they use
more efficient robots to replace workers for the simple reason they are more
profitable. Most companies probably do not pay the same amount of taxes as
inefficient human workers employed by them would but that is not an issue with
the robots but corporate tax breaks. I don't have the answer but taxing robot
workers is not realistic, where do you draw the line? I also find ironic the
fact that now that Bill Gates has made his billions by selling products that
have done and continue to do exactly what he suggests cost jobs, should
somehow be taxed. I agree that innovation disrupts the status quo and produces
a redistribution of wealth that in many cases is very uneven but keep
government out of it please.

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Nomentatus
I remember margarine being taxed, not being allowed to be colored, etc. The
most remarkable taxes are "practical" in the only important sense - that they
bring in more than it costs to adminster them. Taxing profits wouldn't slow
automation, without a differential in the tax. Mr. Gates seems quite unafraid
of irony, I agree. I think it's part of having lived for a long time.

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allthatglitters
non compos mentis

