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It would help if they first understood what tax is for. Tax is there, not to raise money, but to move manpower from the private sector to the public sector - i

It would help if they first understood what tax is for. Tax is there, not to raise money, but to move manpower from the private sector to the public sector - in other words to stop the private sector having the money available to issue job offers that bid people away from the public sector jobs we need doing. If the robots are making people unemployed, then you don't need to tax any more in the first place. Just hire the people to work for the public good and pay them a living wage. They will then buy the output generated by the robots and the robot owners will save the money (because if they were spending the money then everybody would be employed sufficient to earn a living anyway). Increased turnover with existing tax percentages over a spending series then works its magic. Think a stone skipping across a pond. Robots improve our standard of living. It's bad economics that insists everybody has to have a private sector job that is, perversely, incentivising the private sector to use labour rather than capital. Ideally next to nobody should be working in the private sector. It should all be done by robots. We'd all then have a guaranteed job at a guaranteed living wage, yet we'd all have everything we want. The Star Trek economy isn't as far out of reach as we think. It's 20th century economic thinking that is holding us back.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
I see it from a different, but quite related, perspective (maybe unpopular in HN as this comes from a left-wing mindset that seems to be outside the Overton window in many places, and particularly in the US). If things get automated so much that a company ends up being a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. At that point, whatever the company does has been trivialized so much that the usual advantages of the private sector (competitiveness, etc.) become moot. If it also creates no jobs, there isn't really much to lose for the state (and thus its citizens) from expropiating it and using the profits to give citizens a living wage (be it for working or just a guaranteed wage like an UBI). And then there's no need to tax the robots, the money goes to the state anyway.
- notpushkin 3y ago
  Then nobody will bother starting new automated businesses – in your jurisdiction, at least. Just like I didn't start a company in my home country, where any reasonably successful business will be “expropriated” (although the beneficiaries will be some oligarch friends of Putin in this case).
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    No one will start them if no one can buy the products. You are just being a drain on local resources. Few companies produce no waste, no noise, use no electricity, use no water, make no use of roads... and so on. Your company is simply exploiting the land and resources without bringing value to the folks that live there - and that is the point. Act like you are part of the community and wider world you live in or don't be in business, in other words.
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      No one will start them if they are not profitable. [1] So yeah, you can tax those a little bit, but there's some threshold. And starting a business elsewhere is an option for an automated company, so if it's more profitable (or convenient, or reputable) to do it people will do it. Point in case #1: Delaware. No corporate income tax, favorable court system, and no questions from your business partners have made it the preferred state for US startups nowadays. Point in case #2: Estonia and its e-Residency program. No corporate income tax, fully digital company registration and management even for foreigners, and absolute minimum of bureaucracy for SMBs (admin time is like 1 hr/year, to fill out an annual report). Not sure why we don't see more companies registered there. [1]: If you start a business that you know for sure wouldn't bring you profit, you're starting a non-profit :^) --- And of course, in the country you live in, you're also paying income taxes on your salary, and VAT on your purchases. (I'm paying mine all right, in case you're wondering.) I don't like the notion that you must pay taxes to be considered ”bringing value to the community”, but it's not like you as a business owner can avoid taxes completely anyway.
- badcppdev 3y ago
  I am really impressed with how you take the generally accepted wisdom of, "the government is less efficient that private industry" and then add if this organisation is so robotically efficient then the logic against governments doesn't apply. It's an interesting piece in the puzzle of how to make society work when AGI and robots take our jerbs.
  - ludston 3y ago
    The wisdom of, "private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency: Specifically, there must be competing private businesses to lower costs, and the market consumers must not suffer from extreme negative consequences (e.g. death or homelessness) for refusing to participate.
    - fuzzfactor 3y ago
      >"private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency OTOH, depending on the government and the tax rate, the incentive for inefficiency in government itself can overwhelm any existing efficiency or incentive for that kind of thing elsewhere.
- chii 3y ago
  > a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. i dont think the logic follows. Those "few guys" are the people who put up the risk capital. If the risk pans out, and they succeed, only to get their reward expropriated, then why would anyone ever take that risk? Corporate taxes should be sufficient.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    Not my downvote, but, >Corporate taxes should be sufficient. As we have seen, these type of taxes on predatory corporations are proven insufficient to curtail the predatory activity. If this was corrected, then non-predatory corporations and ordinary workers would not need to be taxed at all once a jurisdiction had reached a certain level of prosperity overall.
fulafel 3y ago
Taxes on non labor things can be used for income transfers and wage subsidies. It's how welfare states were built after industrialization too, taxing industrial production where big capital owned the means of production producing a lot of surplus value.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  Those aren’t taxes. They are levies and duties. Which are then associated with subsidies and grants. And they are political choices not economic necessities. Using one word for two separate jobs confuses matters. English has many words for taking money off people. Fuel duty and wealth levies do the political job. Taxes do the economic job of releasing resources for the public good
nmstoker 3y ago
Do you have more background or sources on where this idea comes from? It seems like this is more just one particular interpretation of a use of tax rather than it being the "one true purpose" of all taxes. I would be interested to see examples of places where this was explicitly the stated aim of a newly introduced tax. From my distant memories of discussing tax in history at school, generally it was to pay off national debt. I suppose one could argue that the debt existed in connection with the public/private manpower point above. And there are plenty of taxes introduced for other stated means.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781802208092/9781802208092.xml https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781802208092/97818... Chapter 1 goes through the monetary accounting Chapter 9 goes through the tax process.
DougN7 3y ago
> If the robots are making people unemployed, then you don't need to tax any more in the first place. Just hire the people to work for the public good and pay them a living wage. Where does the money come from to do this? Imagine the extreme where all private work is done by robots. Now only government workers are paying themselves taxes, doing ever less needed work (since robots are now doing so much). And, their taxes have to equal their salary, or the government coffers will soon empty. That doesn’t seem to be a workable solution.
- neilwilson 3y ago
  The money comes from spending the money. It’s a simple geometric series that your average 15 year old can do. You spend £100, that is taxed at 20%, leaving £80 to spend. That £80 is earned as income which is taxed at 20% leaving £64 to spend, and so on. Like a stone skipping across a pond. Robots have owners and maintainers. They eat food and live in houses like you and me. Their choices are the same - spend or save.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

I see it from a different, but quite related, perspective (maybe unpopular in HN as this comes from a left-wing mindset that seems to be outside the Overton window in many places, and particularly in the US). If things get automated so much that a company ends up being a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. At that point, whatever the company does has been trivialized so much that the usual advantages of the private sector (competitiveness, etc.) become moot. If it also creates no jobs, there isn't really much to lose for the state (and thus its citizens) from expropiating it and using the profits to give citizens a living wage (be it for working or just a guaranteed wage like an UBI). And then there's no need to tax the robots, the money goes to the state anyway.

notpushkin 3y ago
Then nobody will bother starting new automated businesses – in your jurisdiction, at least. Just like I didn't start a company in my home country, where any reasonably successful business will be “expropriated” (although the beneficiaries will be some oligarch friends of Putin in this case).
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  No one will start them if no one can buy the products. You are just being a drain on local resources. Few companies produce no waste, no noise, use no electricity, use no water, make no use of roads... and so on. Your company is simply exploiting the land and resources without bringing value to the folks that live there - and that is the point. Act like you are part of the community and wider world you live in or don't be in business, in other words.
  - notpushkin 3y ago
    No one will start them if they are not profitable. [1] So yeah, you can tax those a little bit, but there's some threshold. And starting a business elsewhere is an option for an automated company, so if it's more profitable (or convenient, or reputable) to do it people will do it. Point in case #1: Delaware. No corporate income tax, favorable court system, and no questions from your business partners have made it the preferred state for US startups nowadays. Point in case #2: Estonia and its e-Residency program. No corporate income tax, fully digital company registration and management even for foreigners, and absolute minimum of bureaucracy for SMBs (admin time is like 1 hr/year, to fill out an annual report). Not sure why we don't see more companies registered there. [1]: If you start a business that you know for sure wouldn't bring you profit, you're starting a non-profit :^) --- And of course, in the country you live in, you're also paying income taxes on your salary, and VAT on your purchases. (I'm paying mine all right, in case you're wondering.) I don't like the notion that you must pay taxes to be considered ”bringing value to the community”, but it's not like you as a business owner can avoid taxes completely anyway.
badcppdev 3y ago
I am really impressed with how you take the generally accepted wisdom of, "the government is less efficient that private industry" and then add if this organisation is so robotically efficient then the logic against governments doesn't apply. It's an interesting piece in the puzzle of how to make society work when AGI and robots take our jerbs.
- ludston 3y ago
  The wisdom of, "private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency: Specifically, there must be competing private businesses to lower costs, and the market consumers must not suffer from extreme negative consequences (e.g. death or homelessness) for refusing to participate.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    >"private sector is more efficient than government" only applies when there are market incentives for efficiency OTOH, depending on the government and the tax rate, the incentive for inefficiency in government itself can overwhelm any existing efficiency or incentive for that kind of thing elsewhere.
chii 3y ago
> a few guys in suits collecting the profits while the robots do the work, the governments might as well expropiate it. i dont think the logic follows. Those "few guys" are the people who put up the risk capital. If the risk pans out, and they succeed, only to get their reward expropriated, then why would anyone ever take that risk? Corporate taxes should be sufficient.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  Not my downvote, but, >Corporate taxes should be sufficient. As we have seen, these type of taxes on predatory corporations are proven insufficient to curtail the predatory activity. If this was corrected, then non-predatory corporations and ordinary workers would not need to be taxed at all once a jurisdiction had reached a certain level of prosperity overall.

fulafel 3y ago

Taxes on non labor things can be used for income transfers and wage subsidies. It's how welfare states were built after industrialization too, taxing industrial production where big capital owned the means of production producing a lot of surplus value.

neilwilson 3y ago
Those aren’t taxes. They are levies and duties. Which are then associated with subsidies and grants. And they are political choices not economic necessities. Using one word for two separate jobs confuses matters. English has many words for taking money off people. Fuel duty and wealth levies do the political job. Taxes do the economic job of releasing resources for the public good

nmstoker 3y ago

Do you have more background or sources on where this idea comes from? It seems like this is more just one particular interpretation of a use of tax rather than it being the "one true purpose" of all taxes. I would be interested to see examples of places where this was explicitly the stated aim of a newly introduced tax. From my distant memories of discussing tax in history at school, generally it was to pay off national debt. I suppose one could argue that the debt existed in connection with the public/private manpower point above. And there are plenty of taxes introduced for other stated means.

neilwilson 3y ago
https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781802208092/9781802208092.xml https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781802208092/97818... Chapter 1 goes through the monetary accounting Chapter 9 goes through the tax process.

DougN7 3y ago

> If the robots are making people unemployed, then you don't need to tax any more in the first place. Just hire the people to work for the public good and pay them a living wage. Where does the money come from to do this? Imagine the extreme where all private work is done by robots. Now only government workers are paying themselves taxes, doing ever less needed work (since robots are now doing so much). And, their taxes have to equal their salary, or the government coffers will soon empty. That doesn’t seem to be a workable solution.

neilwilson 3y ago
The money comes from spending the money. It’s a simple geometric series that your average 15 year old can do. You spend £100, that is taxed at 20%, leaving £80 to spend. That £80 is earned as income which is taxed at 20% leaving £64 to spend, and so on. Like a stone skipping across a pond. Robots have owners and maintainers. They eat food and live in houses like you and me. Their choices are the same - spend or save.