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Comment by yanilkr | Hacker News Reader

It makes very less economic sense. If we want to dig ditches, digging with a spoon and fork creates thousands of jobs but using a robot, one person can do 1000 people work. Making this robot pay the taxes of many spoon & fork workers will make it un necessarily expensive and creates hurdles for progress and limits the human potential.

The human capital freed from innovative technology can be utilized some where else. That free time can be used to invent new things or focus on some other problems that make our lives better.

Taxing natural resources makes sense but taxing innovative products/services that consume less natural resources is very bad idea.

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It's not only Bill who has this opinion but it's also a proposal at the European Parliament[1]. If there are fewer workers to tax, where is the government going to collect taxes to afford UBI or other welfare programs? Increase corporate tax rates, real estate taxes, let people fend for themselves?

In one view, robots are a regressive tax on the non-professionals.

[1]http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/technology/europe-robots-tax...

This will never, not in a million years, get through the European Parliament. We can't even agree on unifying the tax base.

And there is no point for one country to introduce this, because production will then just be shifted to other EU countries.

If they're not going to unify the tax base, we might as well throw in the towel and disband the EU. The existing problems are still there, and you need more unification for the project to succeed. At the same time, most countries don't want this.. so, where does this leave us?

>If there are fewer workers to tax, where is the government going to collect taxes to afford UBI or other welfare programs?

Tax wealth instead of income.

Well they could TAX the companies that make the profit, I know countries/Unions seem to fail at taxing companies but it is there job to do that and one in which they always seem to fail and push the problem onto the individuals.

Then there is the aspect of what do robots run on, electricity! They TAX that already in the EU, as they equally do water and food. Indeed on one hand they pollute the air and on the other they TAX the people to get cleaner air.

It is a vicious circle and all gets down to governments failing at the job they are tasked with and punishing the individuals for the crimes of organised companies.

Whilst I agree robots do remove the lesser professional jobs and the fread in the 60's/70's was for this to happen and give everybody more free time. But have we really seen working hours/week reduced? That is one aspect that sadly we have not and in IT at least the pressure to endure more and longer hours burning the candle towards burnout is alas still happening today for many.

>The human capital freed from innovative technology can be utilized some where else. That free time can be used to invent new things or focus on some other problems that make our lives better.

This sounds great in principle, but when it comes to paying the bills, the average person does not have the ability to make money doing this. I personally think universal income makes more sense from an economic standpoint. However Gates' solution is likely easier to achieve political and also solves the loss of purpose than many people feel when unemployed.

How does taxing somebody based on his owning a robot solve the loss of purpose that many people feel when unemployed?

It moves the cost point where automation makes financial sense resulting in people doing jobs that robots would have been doing without the tax.

> It makes very little economic sense.

Well, if all the capital is in the hands of few, then the economy itself might start to make very little sense :)

The making of the robot will produce tax revenue, however will not necessarily produce the tax revenue in the same jurisdiction. Also new wealth produced by the robot is likely to be more concentrated.

It could be less tax than humans to incentivise the 'new world economy' but someone needs to pay for those that cannot work.

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