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I think a big problem is that the number of employees required to run many types of businesses has been steadily decreasing over time as technology improves. Mc

I think a big problem is that the number of employees required to run many types of businesses has been steadily decreasing over time as technology improves. McDonald's for example went from 440,000 employees to 205,000 from 2012 to 2019 [1]. Multiply that out to include manufacturing companies and it's pretty easy to find the reason governments are strapped for cash. Maybe it's time to tax automation? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/819966/mcdonald-s-number-of-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/819966/mcdonald-s-number...

mikepurvis 6y ago
> Maybe it's time to tax automation? 1000% yes; I work in industrial mobile robots and it's obvious that governments need to find a way to capture some of the value which is being created there, particular when it's a more-or-less direct trade of a wage-earning employee for a one-off capital investment. Are there are any major proposals yet for how this might work, or has already worked? The "existing" section on this suspiciously-OR Wikipedia article is pretty scant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax#Existing_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax#Existing_laws
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Are there are any major proposals yet for how this might work, or has already worked? I don't know of any direct proposals, but I know of one thought: if you look at it, tax on fuels is partially a tax on automation already - machines use energy (be it electricity, heat or pressure), so there's a tax here that is proportional to use of machines. Of course it seems very low if treated as "tax on automation", and it's going to be easy to work around with off-the-grid, local power generation.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Interesting idea, but I don't think that's a realistic proxy, particularly when you look at the automation-per-dollar "efficiency" of computers relative to other industrial processes— like, how much compute do you get for the power that it takes to boil water or weld together a car or something? Or what about a case like a self-serve till at the grocery store? The power those consume is probably actually comparable to the power consumed by a till with a person operating it. There are good reasons to tax energy and carbon, but critics are right that it ultimately is a tax on everything. An automation tax needs to find a way to specifically tax the gains made by putting humans out of a job, similar to what organized labour achieved for a generation of longshoreman when containerization killed their industry in the 60s and 70s (as documented in Marc Levinson's excellent book The Box).
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  UBI is the only one that makes sense to me. There has to be a domestic market of people buying stuff for the rest of the economy to exist. If all the people are automated out of jobs, then that domestic market has to be provided by UBI. The funds for that provision have to come from corporate taxes. Probably a tax on capital spending or depreciation - if you're replacing labour with capital and the government relies on taxes on labour for its revenue, then the government has to switch to taxing capital. If there was a way of not involving the government in this, that would probably work better. The dream, of course, being The Culture - no government at all, just people acting in their enlightened self-interest in a post-scarcity world.
maxerickson 6y ago
Is that the McDonald's headcount or the McDonald's plus franchisee headcount? If it is direct employees, some of the explanation would be that they sold locations to franchisees https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-revenue-falls-as-company-sells-restaurants-to-franchisees-1532611803 https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-revenue-falls-as-comp...
xapata 6y ago
Maybe not automation, but it is reasonable to tax the externality, which is disruption. Taxing the speed of change of number of employees commensurate to the difficulty those employees have in finding new employment. Then pump the proceeds of that tax into unemployment benefits and training. Tough to implement.
ianai 6y ago
There could easily be a tax for eliminating someone's position entirely. i.e. Incentivize having way more people than needed to watch the machine do its thing. Ok radical idea - I'm starting to think of these ever larger/automated companies as having "won" the capitalism game or discovered a fundamental solution to some problem. But the economy doesn't have a great endgame scenario for such entities. One option might be regulating them as public utilities instead of corporate entities. i.e. The point of making a huge corporation changes from eternally extracting rent to becoming so ubiquitous that society adopts it as a fundamental exercise like Fire Departments or roadways.
LorenPechtel 6y ago
McDonalds employs fewer people but now we have jobs making and maintaining that automation and those jobs pay an awful lot better than do-you-want-fries-with-that. I don't believe taxing automation is a good thing in the long run.
prepend 6y ago
> Maybe it's time to tax automation? Special taxes are dumb because of the overhead and externalities. Automation is already covered in that it results in either greater profits or greater payroll through higher wages, so either way it’s already taxed. The incentive is for companies to be efficient by increasing productivity. This productivity is taxed through existing means. So unless you want to disincentive automation a special tax for it is bad.

mikepurvis 6y ago

> Maybe it's time to tax automation? 1000% yes; I work in industrial mobile robots and it's obvious that governments need to find a way to capture some of the value which is being created there, particular when it's a more-or-less direct trade of a wage-earning employee for a one-off capital investment. Are there are any major proposals yet for how this might work, or has already worked? The "existing" section on this suspiciously-OR Wikipedia article is pretty scant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax#Existing_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax#Existing_laws

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Are there are any major proposals yet for how this might work, or has already worked? I don't know of any direct proposals, but I know of one thought: if you look at it, tax on fuels is partially a tax on automation already - machines use energy (be it electricity, heat or pressure), so there's a tax here that is proportional to use of machines. Of course it seems very low if treated as "tax on automation", and it's going to be easy to work around with off-the-grid, local power generation.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Interesting idea, but I don't think that's a realistic proxy, particularly when you look at the automation-per-dollar "efficiency" of computers relative to other industrial processes— like, how much compute do you get for the power that it takes to boil water or weld together a car or something? Or what about a case like a self-serve till at the grocery store? The power those consume is probably actually comparable to the power consumed by a till with a person operating it. There are good reasons to tax energy and carbon, but critics are right that it ultimately is a tax on everything. An automation tax needs to find a way to specifically tax the gains made by putting humans out of a job, similar to what organized labour achieved for a generation of longshoreman when containerization killed their industry in the 60s and 70s (as documented in Marc Levinson's excellent book The Box).
marcus_holmes 6y ago
UBI is the only one that makes sense to me. There has to be a domestic market of people buying stuff for the rest of the economy to exist. If all the people are automated out of jobs, then that domestic market has to be provided by UBI. The funds for that provision have to come from corporate taxes. Probably a tax on capital spending or depreciation - if you're replacing labour with capital and the government relies on taxes on labour for its revenue, then the government has to switch to taxing capital. If there was a way of not involving the government in this, that would probably work better. The dream, of course, being The Culture - no government at all, just people acting in their enlightened self-interest in a post-scarcity world.

maxerickson 6y ago

Is that the McDonald's headcount or the McDonald's plus franchisee headcount? If it is direct employees, some of the explanation would be that they sold locations to franchisees https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-revenue-falls-as-company-sells-restaurants-to-franchisees-1532611803 https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-revenue-falls-as-comp...

xapata 6y ago

Maybe not automation, but it is reasonable to tax the externality, which is disruption. Taxing the speed of change of number of employees commensurate to the difficulty those employees have in finding new employment. Then pump the proceeds of that tax into unemployment benefits and training. Tough to implement.

ianai 6y ago

There could easily be a tax for eliminating someone's position entirely. i.e. Incentivize having way more people than needed to watch the machine do its thing. Ok radical idea - I'm starting to think of these ever larger/automated companies as having "won" the capitalism game or discovered a fundamental solution to some problem. But the economy doesn't have a great endgame scenario for such entities. One option might be regulating them as public utilities instead of corporate entities. i.e. The point of making a huge corporation changes from eternally extracting rent to becoming so ubiquitous that society adopts it as a fundamental exercise like Fire Departments or roadways.

LorenPechtel 6y ago

McDonalds employs fewer people but now we have jobs making and maintaining that automation and those jobs pay an awful lot better than do-you-want-fries-with-that. I don't believe taxing automation is a good thing in the long run.

prepend 6y ago

> Maybe it's time to tax automation? Special taxes are dumb because of the overhead and externalities. Automation is already covered in that it results in either greater profits or greater payroll through higher wages, so either way it’s already taxed. The incentive is for companies to be efficient by increasing productivity. This productivity is taxed through existing means. So unless you want to disincentive automation a special tax for it is bad.