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A VAT does tax all of those in a perfectly sensible way. A business income tax arguably works as well. The point here is that robots are displacing humans, caus

by 794CD01 10y ago

A VAT does tax all of those in a perfectly sensible way. A business income tax arguably works as well. The point here is that robots are displacing humans, causing less money to be paid into targeted social programs that are funded based on taxing humans.

illumin8 10y ago
Agreed about VAT. However, has there been any historical precedent to taxing automation? Up until about 100 years ago, a huge percentage of the population was agrarian. Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people, and I don't believe we tried to put a tax on the few farmers remaining to pay for the societal costs.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  > Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people Modulo a world war, a revolution in a major country, a Great Depression and its accompanying famines, another world war, another revolution in another major country, multiple revolutions in multiple minor countries, and multiple localized famines in minor countries. Oh, and repeated genocides. There was no comfortable transition from pre-industrial agrarianism to social democracy. There was horror, pain, and death at levels to which we've now learned to say, "Never again."
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    I'm not sure how automation caused this, or more to the point how taxing it can update have changed the outcome in any way. Are you suggesting that if we taxed the steam and internal combustion engines we could have avoided WW2? Or are you just saying the transition was painful before and we ought to do something to help with the current one (without saying whether this tax is necessary)
  - illumin8 10y ago
    Good point, but I'm not sure correlation = causation here.
xyzzy123 10y ago
A VAT taxes consumption, not lowering cost of production. If I am reading this right, what the EU are considering seems like a new type of tax, a tax on improvements in production efficiency (specifically, lowering labour input). Note that this is also different than company tax. When goods become cheaper to make through automation yes, some or all of that might turn up as profit. But it also might result in lower prices being passed on to customers and a more competitive company. Company tax wouldn't capture this. For industries which are almost fully automated already (e.g. textile manufacturing) it does not seem there would be much impact. But it would (from my point of view, arbitrarily) punish new types of automation introduced after such a tax were applied.

by 794CD01 10y ago

illumin8 10y ago

Agreed about VAT. However, has there been any historical precedent to taxing automation? Up until about 100 years ago, a huge percentage of the population was agrarian. Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people, and I don't believe we tried to put a tax on the few farmers remaining to pay for the societal costs.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
> Somehow we still managed to employ or re-employ all of those people Modulo a world war, a revolution in a major country, a Great Depression and its accompanying famines, another world war, another revolution in another major country, multiple revolutions in multiple minor countries, and multiple localized famines in minor countries. Oh, and repeated genocides. There was no comfortable transition from pre-industrial agrarianism to social democracy. There was horror, pain, and death at levels to which we've now learned to say, "Never again."
- mattnewton 10y ago
  I'm not sure how automation caused this, or more to the point how taxing it can update have changed the outcome in any way. Are you suggesting that if we taxed the steam and internal combustion engines we could have avoided WW2? Or are you just saying the transition was painful before and we ought to do something to help with the current one (without saying whether this tax is necessary)
- illumin8 10y ago
  Good point, but I'm not sure correlation = causation here.

xyzzy123 10y ago

A VAT taxes consumption, not lowering cost of production. If I am reading this right, what the EU are considering seems like a new type of tax, a tax on improvements in production efficiency (specifically, lowering labour input). Note that this is also different than company tax. When goods become cheaper to make through automation yes, some or all of that might turn up as profit. But it also might result in lower prices being passed on to customers and a more competitive company. Company tax wouldn't capture this. For industries which are almost fully automated already (e.g. textile manufacturing) it does not seem there would be much impact. But it would (from my point of view, arbitrarily) punish new types of automation introduced after such a tax were applied.