Will Robots Pay Income Taxes If it takes My Job.

For some time now we have been some time to commentary about the impending Robot revolution, and the resulting jobs losses as a result An industrial robot is a  system used in the manufacturing of various mechicanical products.  The Industrial robot are automated, programmable and capable of movement on two or more axes.  They are also notioriously slow to reprogramme to perform the next task.   The multi tasking robot hasnt been discovered yet.   Certainly more and more robots will be installed in the work place.  Mostly performing set tasks with human supervision.

Do Robots Pay Taxes

But how will the effect society as a whole.  Skilled trades men ourside a set manufacturing enviroment will always be in high demand.  Its important that that Governents encourage younger people to maintain this trade tradition. 
I have come across an number of articles recently in relation to robots in the work place one such on was in the Huffington Post by Laura Paddison. "If robots steal our jobs, maybe we should make them pay tax".

Another arrticles was in the South African fin24 website outlines the ordering procedure in San Francisco restaurant.   It goes on to say walk into a restaurant in San Francisco and you are greeted by a wall of numbered cubbyholes with acrylic doors. Dotted around the room are screens for placing orders. What you won’t find is a person to serve you. There’s no counter and no human to take your order or hand over the food.

Eatsa San Francisco

Instead, customers scroll through the menu of quinoa and rice bowls on the in-store screens or on a mobile app, tap in their order and wait for their name to flash on one of the cubbies, where their food will be waiting.

This restaurant is Eatsa, an automated restaurant. Well, sort of. There are still humans preparing food behind the scenes. But the company hopes to eventually automate this process, too.

The concept restaurant, while it has had recent setbacks, represents another step in the onward march of automation. To some, Eatsa is a sign of innovation, providing people with fast, smooth service without the need to speak to another person. But for others, “there’s a big question mark about what this means for us as a society”. Not only what it means to have less human interaction, but also what it will do to jobs.

This is according to Jane Kim, who sits on the board of supervisors for the district the restaurant is in. Automation has been on Kim’s mind.

“This is one of the biggest issues that is facing our country over the next decade,” she says.

In response to her growing concerns about how it will play out in a city with one of the fastest-growing income gaps between rich and poor, she has an idea – tax the robots and use the money to help stem inequality.

The idea of a robot tax has bubbled up over the past couple of years, thanks to the backing of some high-profile figures, who propose it as a way to prevent all the benefits of automation from flowing to a tiny slice of wealthy people.

Perhaps the most famous advocate is Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates. He told news website Quartz last year: “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50 000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

He believes taxing machines could slow the pace of automation, giving people a chance to retrain and giving governments time to put in place policies to protect people from intensifying inequality.

There will always be tasks humans to perform certain task. One such task I am familar with is replacing stove glass in a stove.  Can never see a robot programmed to do that task.


Tags: robots, stove glass, stove, Bill Gates, San Francisco, Microsoft, South Africa,