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Commenters seem to be dismissing this concept outright while ignoring the fact that the owners of these robots, through corporate schemes, offshoring, and legal

by elif 4y ago

Commenters seem to be dismissing this concept outright while ignoring the fact that the owners of these robots, through corporate schemes, offshoring, and legal tax manipulation, end up paying 0-10% tax compared to 20-45% taxes paid by human workers currently. It is not a zero-sum calculation and AI/robots represent a huge transfer of social wealth (taxes collected for use by society) to the rich. This "income tax for robots" idea is one of Bill Gates' ideas that has been kicking around for over a decade, and will surely fall victim to the same type of loopholes the rich presently exploit. Yanis Varoufakis has been criticizing this Gates approach and proposing an alternative concept which he calls Universal Basic Dividend. Under this scheme, the use of automation to generate capital would be socialized through the generation of shares, say 10% ownership of the firms which utilize automation to replace labor, which are owned by a public trust which distributes dividends from the firm's profit to every human in the country equally.

version_five 4y ago
Why is it important to start this ~200 years into the industrial revolution? What is actually different now? If anything we're (well) into diminishing returns.
- elif 4y ago
  Capitalism until now has functioned on the premise that reward for human labor was a necessary component of generating capital.
  - version_five 4y ago
    That doesn't mean anything to me but maybe it's persuasive for somebody. We already have mechanical harvesters and computers and looms and whatnot. I don't see a step change at llms. One thing that's different (if you buy into the hype) is that the jobs that are threatened this time are held by educated people. When it was truck drivers (now a lucrative job in no danger of replacement) being threatened, we told them they could learn to code. Now that people writing code and doing powerpoints (if you believe the hype) are threatened, we need UBI
    - elif 4y ago
      Yanis was proposing this a decade ago when it was the blue collar workers you mention being displaced. The problem is merely increasingly visible as more classes of people become affected.
    - beepbooptheory 4y ago
      You guys are both right. It just needs to be understood that UBI itself is a weak band-aid for otherwise intractable problems or contradictions that will continue to unfold as we progress in the experiment, but were always inherent in the design. That's why it at once seems immediately necessary and also too late. There is no "right time" for it, or it has always been the right time for it, depending on where you hang your hat around more fundamental issues.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Even then I don't see how this is currently any more than a productivity enhancer like an IDE, refactoring tools or a higher level language. Game engines like Unity are a huge productivity gain compared to hand coding a new engine for every game, but nobody is bringing in a special game engine tax. I do think capital returns should be taxed similarly to income, but it's not simple to accomplish. One thing to bear in mind on taxing return on capital is that it's already taxed several times, once as corporate income tax and then again on dividends or share price gains. So the real tax on capital returns is the combination of these, and sometimes other taxes as well. There are some common loopholes that should really be closed though, such as exemptions for inherited capital.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
bparsons 4y ago
Progressive corporate income tax for extremely large enterprises could achieve a similar outcome.
- elif 4y ago
  That would only recover the small portion of the lost social wealth which goes to the government via taxes. The larger portion of social wealth lost is the income to current laborers which is lost to increasing automation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zaphar 4y ago
I suspect the in practice effect of something like this would result in people getting a 10 dollar check once a month or something. Which would be something, but wouldn't actually mitigate any of the assumed harms of automation. Taxes at least could build infrastructure which might facilitate the growth of new forms of employment. But everyone getting a pittance once a month is unlikely have very much positive benefit to the impacted people.
- elif 4y ago
  10% of 2.09 trillion corporate profits represents $627 per person annually. The 10% is an arbitrary starting point and should be adjusted based upon what is the appropriate representation of the displacement of labor by automation, which will surely increase along with corporate profits increasing with less salaries being paid. The idea isn't to fully socialize and subvert capitalism, but to keep capitalism alive long enough to ethically support humanity as long as it is necessary.
  - zaphar 4y ago
    I'm actually surprised I was so close on my estimate. The point still stands. You could triple that return and it would still make almost no substantial mitigating impact.
    - elif 4y ago
      $54/mo is 5x off from your estimate, and though it seems ignorable to you, is remarkably close to the $57/mo international poverty line, which 9.2% of the world lives under. That is twice as many people as there are Americans.
Etrnl_President 4y ago
Who pays the corporate tax?

by elif 4y ago

version_five 4y ago

Why is it important to start this ~200 years into the industrial revolution? What is actually different now? If anything we're (well) into diminishing returns.

elif 4y ago
Capitalism until now has functioned on the premise that reward for human labor was a necessary component of generating capital.
- version_five 4y ago
  That doesn't mean anything to me but maybe it's persuasive for somebody. We already have mechanical harvesters and computers and looms and whatnot. I don't see a step change at llms. One thing that's different (if you buy into the hype) is that the jobs that are threatened this time are held by educated people. When it was truck drivers (now a lucrative job in no danger of replacement) being threatened, we told them they could learn to code. Now that people writing code and doing powerpoints (if you believe the hype) are threatened, we need UBI
  - elif 4y ago
    Yanis was proposing this a decade ago when it was the blue collar workers you mention being displaced. The problem is merely increasingly visible as more classes of people become affected.
  - beepbooptheory 4y ago
    You guys are both right. It just needs to be understood that UBI itself is a weak band-aid for otherwise intractable problems or contradictions that will continue to unfold as we progress in the experiment, but were always inherent in the design. That's why it at once seems immediately necessary and also too late. There is no "right time" for it, or it has always been the right time for it, depending on where you hang your hat around more fundamental issues.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Even then I don't see how this is currently any more than a productivity enhancer like an IDE, refactoring tools or a higher level language. Game engines like Unity are a huge productivity gain compared to hand coding a new engine for every game, but nobody is bringing in a special game engine tax. I do think capital returns should be taxed similarly to income, but it's not simple to accomplish. One thing to bear in mind on taxing return on capital is that it's already taxed several times, once as corporate income tax and then again on dividends or share price gains. So the real tax on capital returns is the combination of these, and sometimes other taxes as well. There are some common loopholes that should really be closed though, such as exemptions for inherited capital.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

bparsons 4y ago

Progressive corporate income tax for extremely large enterprises could achieve a similar outcome.

elif 4y ago
That would only recover the small portion of the lost social wealth which goes to the government via taxes. The larger portion of social wealth lost is the income to current laborers which is lost to increasing automation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

zaphar 4y ago

I suspect the in practice effect of something like this would result in people getting a 10 dollar check once a month or something. Which would be something, but wouldn't actually mitigate any of the assumed harms of automation. Taxes at least could build infrastructure which might facilitate the growth of new forms of employment. But everyone getting a pittance once a month is unlikely have very much positive benefit to the impacted people.

elif 4y ago
10% of 2.09 trillion corporate profits represents $627 per person annually. The 10% is an arbitrary starting point and should be adjusted based upon what is the appropriate representation of the displacement of labor by automation, which will surely increase along with corporate profits increasing with less salaries being paid. The idea isn't to fully socialize and subvert capitalism, but to keep capitalism alive long enough to ethically support humanity as long as it is necessary.
- zaphar 4y ago
  I'm actually surprised I was so close on my estimate. The point still stands. You could triple that return and it would still make almost no substantial mitigating impact.
  - elif 4y ago
    $54/mo is 5x off from your estimate, and though it seems ignorable to you, is remarkably close to the $57/mo international poverty line, which 9.2% of the world lives under. That is twice as many people as there are Americans.

Etrnl_President 4y ago

Who pays the corporate tax?