A tax on robots? | | Al Jazeera
Originally shared by Rob Jongschaap
A tax on robots? | | Al Jazeera
Unlike suggested, a tax on robots would not ease inequality and offset the social costs implied by automation.
By
Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is professor of economics at the University of Athens.
'Ken makes a decent living operating a large harvester on behalf of farmer Luke. Ken's salary generates income tax and social security payments that help finance government programmes for less fortunate members of his community. Alas, Luke is about to replace Ken with Nexus, a robot that can operate the harvester longer, more safely, in any weather and without lunch breaks, holidays or sick pay.
Bill Gates thinks that, to ease the inequality and offset the social costs implied by automation's displacement effects, either Nexus should pay income tax, or Luke should pay a hefty tax for replacing Ken with a robot.
And this "robot tax" should be used to finance something like a universal basic income (UBI). Gates's proposal, one of many variants on the UBI theme, allows us to glimpse fascinating aspects of capitalism and human nature that rich societies have neglected for too long.
Problems with the 'robot tax'
The whole point of automation is that, unlike Ken, Nexus will never negotiate a labour contract with Luke. Indeed, it will receive no income.
The only way to simulate an income tax on behalf of Nexus is to use Ken's last annual income as a reference salary and extract from Luke's revenues income tax and social security charges equivalent to what Ken paid.
There are three problems with this approach. For starters, whereas Ken's income would have changed over time had he not been fired, the reference salary cannot change, except arbitrarily and in a manner setting the tax authorities against business.
The tax office and Luke would end up clashing over impossible estimates of the extent to which Ken's salary would have risen, or fallen, had he still been employed.
Second, the advent of robot-operated machines that have never been operated by humans means that there will be no prior human income to act as a reference salary for calculating the taxes these robots must pay.
Finally, it is hard philosophically to justify forcing Luke to pay "income" tax for Nexus but not for the harvester that Nexus operates.
After all, they are both machines, and the harvester has displaced far more human labour than Nexus has. The only defensible justification for treating them differently is that Nexus has greater autonomy.
...'
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/tax-robots-170227121202811.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/tax-robots-170227121202811.html
A tax on robots? | | Al Jazeera
Unlike suggested, a tax on robots would not ease inequality and offset the social costs implied by automation.
By
Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, is professor of economics at the University of Athens.
'Ken makes a decent living operating a large harvester on behalf of farmer Luke. Ken's salary generates income tax and social security payments that help finance government programmes for less fortunate members of his community. Alas, Luke is about to replace Ken with Nexus, a robot that can operate the harvester longer, more safely, in any weather and without lunch breaks, holidays or sick pay.
Bill Gates thinks that, to ease the inequality and offset the social costs implied by automation's displacement effects, either Nexus should pay income tax, or Luke should pay a hefty tax for replacing Ken with a robot.
And this "robot tax" should be used to finance something like a universal basic income (UBI). Gates's proposal, one of many variants on the UBI theme, allows us to glimpse fascinating aspects of capitalism and human nature that rich societies have neglected for too long.
Problems with the 'robot tax'
The whole point of automation is that, unlike Ken, Nexus will never negotiate a labour contract with Luke. Indeed, it will receive no income.
The only way to simulate an income tax on behalf of Nexus is to use Ken's last annual income as a reference salary and extract from Luke's revenues income tax and social security charges equivalent to what Ken paid.
There are three problems with this approach. For starters, whereas Ken's income would have changed over time had he not been fired, the reference salary cannot change, except arbitrarily and in a manner setting the tax authorities against business.
The tax office and Luke would end up clashing over impossible estimates of the extent to which Ken's salary would have risen, or fallen, had he still been employed.
Second, the advent of robot-operated machines that have never been operated by humans means that there will be no prior human income to act as a reference salary for calculating the taxes these robots must pay.
Finally, it is hard philosophically to justify forcing Luke to pay "income" tax for Nexus but not for the harvester that Nexus operates.
After all, they are both machines, and the harvester has displaced far more human labour than Nexus has. The only defensible justification for treating them differently is that Nexus has greater autonomy.
...'
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/tax-robots-170227121202811.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/tax-robots-170227121202811.html
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