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,, But a proper goal for policy should be for automation to complement rather than replace workers'' This is actually trivial to do: get rid of income tax. Tax
by xiphias2 5y ago
,, But a proper goal for policy should be for automation to complement rather than replace workers''
This is actually trivial to do: get rid of income tax. Taxing land property by its value makes much more sense, as it correlates with the burden a property has on the government (city, country infrastructure), but I guess that policy is not that popular with the older generation.
- zepto 5y ago> Taxing land property by its value makes much more sense, as it correlates with the burden a property has on the government This is trivially false. The same house will cost vastly different amounts depending on where it is, and yet assuming the same occupancy, the burden will be approximately the same.
- xiphias2 5y agoI'm not that sure about it. In an expensive area people expect more money to go towards making the area nicer as well, and costs of people to do maintenance is higher as well. Anyways, my main point is that taxing people who want to work just tells them a signal not to.
- kittiepryde 5y agoI always thought a good tax would be on automation. It's hard to define. But, at 100% automation, where no human is efficient at working -vs- machine labor, then all automation output should flow to the people, or a 100% automation tax. Conversely, at 0% automation, tax is 0%; the part of the middle is hard.
- inglor_cz 5y agoThe thing is: it is much easier to move robots to another jurisdiction than to move workers. That is why robots won't be taxed anytime soon. Whoever starts with it, will cripple competitiveness of their own industry on the world markets.
- jwalton 5y agoHopefully we can agree that automation is, on the whole, a good thing. If all work were automated, we could all live a life of idle luxury. If I were an employer running a factory with little automation, then I could spend some R&D money to develop machinery to automate my manufacturing, and then spend money to retool my lines to use that automation, and then under your proposal I would now lose all of my profits, since 100% of my profit would now be taxed. This would seem like a pretty big disincentive for me to invest in automation.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y agoA 100% tax on 100% automation means there's no incentive to achieve 100% automation
- kittiepryde 5y agoI can tell from the downvotes that people heavily disagree with me. But if no one is able to work, and one person ( the automation owner ) now has all the money. I don't see that as a good thing. But, we'll see how that plays out.
- llimos 5y agoI've been wondering for a while why individuals pay tax on income, while companies pay tax on profit. But even if we stick with that - perhaps using profit-per-employee to determine corporate tax bands would be the way to go. Or, allowing them to count salaries at 2-3x other expenses when calculating expenditures.