The Backlash against Bill Gates' Call for a Robot Tax

[c_porter]

People here are fine with automation they just want the automation to be done in a ethical and fair manner that keeps society intact or perhaps even betters it.

No here in thread has argued for a return to Luddism.

You describe Luddism precisely in the first sentence, then say in the second nobody wants a return to it?

Luddites didn't break people's stuff because they hated technology, they broke it because they were protesting. They were concerned about automation putting people out of work and possible reductions in their standard of living.The idea that Luddites wanted to shun technology is just wrong. They wanted technology, but wanted to make sure they were the beneficiaries.

The charitable view is that, much like today, they weren't able to understand that production has primacy and automation would bring greater wealth to all, not lesser. The less charitable (and IMO wrong) view is that they knew but would rather have the world be worse to avoid being knocked out of their comfort zone. You'd be crazy to claim life was better in the Luddites' early 1800s when production was poor than it is today when production is immense, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. It's much harder to sit here today and project that history into the future because the nature of prediction is imprecise. Nonetheless, the same basic economic principles that led from then to now will continue on and lead to better things in a more productive future.

This is a weak ad hominem strawman and you should feel bad.

I don't. I suppose you could call it an ad hominem if you have a beef with Luddites, but it's definitely not a strawman. Most of the sentiments expressed in this thread are the exact same sentiments the Luddites had in their day. Read their writings - it's exactly this thread.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Not at all, sorry you,are wayyyyy off... robots and autonomous vehicles are nothing like industrial revolution or computer age. None of those things eliminated jobs at the scale we are about to see. I strongly recommend you read up on the wave that's going to hit is in just 2-3 years, by 2025 we will have 100 million robots and autonomous vehicles and tens of millions of unemployed in US alone. Mass scale economic and social implosion is literally arou d the corner. If you don't recognize that, then you are clearly not paying attention to what is happening in these industries. You do realize in 2 years there will be driverless taxis and trucks wiping out millions of jobs by 2020?

Wait a minute. If your historical facts are correct and mine are wrong, then there shouldn't be much of a problem. Considering that before the Industrial Revolution something like 50%-75% of the population was directly working agriculture just to grow enough food to feed the population that means that robots really aren't much of a threat since close to that same percentage of the population should still be directly working agriculture. That's assuming your facts about the Industrial Revolution not eliminating agricultural jobs is correct.

That said, I have a feeling you don't have your facts correct. I've been on this Earth for a while now and I'm pretty damn sure the percentage of the population working agriculture is much, much lower than before the Industrial Revolution. I happen to live in the middle of a large area of small farms and I can assure you that the number of human laborers required to keep the farms going including crops and livestock is a tiny percentage of what was necessary before the Industrial Revolution. The fact of the matter is that you're flat out wrong. The human race has always made adjustments when labor conditions change. People move to different sectors of employment and create new sectors. They always have. It's definitely not an overnight occurrence but the reason for the change isn't an overnight occurrence either.

As for your autonomous vehicle panacea, I have to rain on your parade there. There aren't going to be autonomous taxis all over the place anytime soon. Hell, it's going to be a long time yet before autonomous vehicles like you imagine will even exist. It will take many more years of research and trial and error before autonomous cars are going to be decent in anything other than absolute perfect driving conditions. And to think that the trucking industry is going to be autonomous any time soon is laughable. I'm not a truck driver myself but I know quite a few and some of them are relatives. Driving a semi is not even remotely easy and makes your everyday commute to work look like something you can do in your sleep. Having a truck like that autonomous much less all of them autonomous in something less than decades is hilarious.

You really, really need to step outside and take in some reality and while you're doing that I recommend you stop by a library and look up actual figures of job displacement with regards to the Industrial Revolution since you don't seem to have a clue.

 

[Uvaman2]

What a ridiculous thought process... To think there always be jobs, when clearly and obviously that is not the case, and clearly automation advancements will outpace job creation due to economic shifts. Fact of the matter is high society is fully class-conscious and they don't give 2shits about working class people. They only care about wealth accumulation, and anything that threatens this needs to be relentlessly attacked.

 

[Kalabalana]

I'm fairly sure he was illustrating the loss of tax income robotics in the workplace will cause (as it replaces tax payer jobs).

This is correct.

 

[Gasaraki_]

This is an absolute must-do, shouldn't even be up for debate. if you want to replace a human with a robot and autonomous vehicles, they should be taxes just like the human... eventually things will come into balance, but the world is going to fall apart if we don't start off with a heavy tax on robots. Think about.. no more taxis, no more drivers, no more car sales.. the majority of manual labor jobs are literally going to vanish in a very short period of time leaving 10's of millions of people unemployed and NOT PAYING TAXES.... where do you think the offset is going to be? If I owned a delivery service and was paying $85K a year for a driver, and now I decided to get a self-driving truck on my next lease, paying little to no additional money for the vehicle.. but now have eliminated $85K a year, why shouldn't I be taxed $25K a year for that? savings is still $60K a year... it's a win win win win.. no one looses here. the unemployed driver now has a robotic job elimination tax forgiveness period where for a year or so he is not subject to any taxes even on his new job. help him retrain and shift careers and get his wage back up in the $85K area..

Looking long-term, when we have millions of robots and autonomous vehicles all contributing their share of taxes, the tax burden on the humans drops tremendously... it's possible at some point, we work 30 hours a week, have 60 days of vacation and retire at 45 years old because the robots are paying the required taxes and robots/autonomous vehicles are doing various state funded manual work so even lowering the overall amount of taxes required to fund the government.

win win win win win...

So, we'll completely screw this up and in 5 years from now we'll have 40 million homeless and 50 million unemployed people and those that remain working will be taxed at 95% to offset the burden.. suicide climbs to 1:10 people, jails are bursting at seams due to insane crime rate. The apocalypse is coming if we don't tax.

We have a chance to do this right.... from the start, taxing robots and commercial autonomous vehicles is the ONLY solution.

What Bill said makes so much sense, the only people who are against it would be CEOs that want to protect and squeeze as much money out of people as possible.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Eh, likely no. We're slowly moving away from an economy based society, and painfully. Those in power want to stay in power. Taxing robots is a good short term solution, but eventually we may need to go Star Trek like future, in terms of money.

Just as soon as you figure out completely free power on the scale of a matter/antimatter reactor.

Also, as soon as you have mass-energy conversion down for things like the replicator and the transporter.

Until then, and if you look at spinoff series like DS9 money is STILL in use, Star Trek style neo-communism isn't going to work.
Actually, if you look closer throughout the series, you'll notice that it really doesn't work in practice anyhow. It's still more an ideal they're striving towards but haven't really reached.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

What Bill said makes so much sense, the only people who are against it would be CEOs that want to protect and squeeze as much money out of people as possible.

You think the CEOs are going to pay for this tech?

Ha!

HA HA HA!

Nope. They're simply going to pass the cost along to customers. And, machines being what they are, it'll STILL be cheaper than human labor in the long run.

 

[Dead Parrot]

Why stop with robots? Any time a company in country X outsources jobs to places not in country X, tax those job slots as well. The loss of jobs in country X is the same as if they were replaced by robots. Not saying either is good policy, but might as well be consistent.

 

[c3k]

Yes, taxes are the solution. To everything. If we could only achieve a tax rate of 110% on production sources, then the government could give free stuff to everyone and no one would ever suffer.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but the economic fallacies polluting this thread are outrageous.

I'll take one example: A poster is stating that baby boomers had free tuition. Two errors there: they did not, and nothing is "free". SOMEONE ELSE PAID. That means it is not "free". Were I in possession of a magic wand (snarky comments welcomed ), I would make everyone who is demonstrating for "free college" be forced to work AT that free college...for "free". After all, if it is "free", then no one has to pay. No one pays wages, no one pays for construction, no one pays for books to be published, no one pays for utilities, no one pays for food. No one pays.

If no one pays, then no one gets paid. That's why they should be forced to work in that utopia which they desire. I'd say for 20 years. Be a college professor, with no salary, for 20 years to "pay" for your "free" college.

Just sayin'.

The increase in production, in agriculture for example, has enabled phenomenal increases in food output. Now, obesity is more of a problem. Famine is almost unheard of. There are only a few areas of the world suffering from recurring famine conditions, and those conditions are due to warfare, not underlying food shortage. The freed labor which has escaped agriculture is doing OTHER work. Like designing iPhones instead of weeding acres of corn.

As to welfare and productivity: I have personally witness two companies open up job interview centers in areas with large numbers of unemployed. They needed to hire enough folks to run two different production centers. (These were two different companies about 1 1/2 years apart.) No one showed up. It was not worth their time. The welfare payments PLUS all the free time allowed them to work cash jobs on the side (legal or otherwise), or just have free time. They saw the wages offered for work as competing with the welfare payment NOT to work. So, in exchange for an additional $2 an hour, they'd have to give up 8 hours a day for 5 days...and whatever they did on the side (be that lawn jobs, dealing meth, or playing xbox). It wasn't worth it. Both companies shut down the job centers and looked elsewhere to build their production centers. (One needed 250 workers, the other needed 600+.)


As I stated far upstream, the number of economic fallacies presented are amazing. If you don't see them, then I suggest you try to get a refund from your college. If it wasn't free.

 

[Gigus Fire]

Lol. Taxing robots is stupid. We supposedly tax people because they use public services. Robots don't. Robots don't use roads, drink water, need schooling, ect. It's silly to think that taxing robots will do anything other than keep more people employed at the state level for a little bit of a longer time.

Automation is a game changer. You can't put the genie back in the bottle and say we should stop development on technology that will put millions of people out of work. Instead you have to either a) provide them with different things to do or b) switch to a completely different economic model.
Capitalism only works when you can compete. You can't compete against robots. You have one choice as a business owner when this tech comes out. Adapt (get on board) or die.
As for everyone else? Well the tech industry should get a whole lot bigger. There will still be jobs for a while that need people because automation isn't going to suddenly appear. Those burger flipper robots were probably in development for years. We still haven't perfected self driving cars. The robots that can build houses aren't very versatile. It'll be another 50 years until these things really start to shine and take away jobs.

AI is a joke. You're misusing the word AI when you talk about what the media considers AI.

In general, the replacement of labor with automation is a good thing. It should free up humanity from the constant need to earn a living and allow people to explore things they're really interested in. Everything that robots can't do such as scientific innovations, exploration, entertainment should take the forefront. That's assuming it's done right and not done in a way that starves 75% of the planet.

 

[mesyn191]

You describe Luddism precisely in the first sentence, then say in the second nobody wants a return to it?

You have no idea what Luddism is or what the Luddites wanted.

 

[thejokker]

We do not live in an autocratic society and as long as we remain governed by a republic an overly rapid transition to robotic manufacturing is politically unsustainable. Taxing robots may actually increase the speed of conversion. Currently aprox. 50% of the American workers are employed by small business. Converting manufacturing to robotics is a capital intensive undertaking that is less affordable to small and medium businesses. Taxing robots may slow conversion by large companies slightly but may fund government subsidies allowing smaller businesses to compete and allow industries that provide support services to robotic companies to develop.

The whole Brexit/Trump phenomena is because our elites were thinking about globalism rather than nationalism and the "mandatory" requirement to grow the economy. A farmer cannot just grow high profit crops or he will soon deplete the nutrients in the soil and he will not be able to grow anything. He must rotate his crops and pursue a long term strategy. Similarly workers in an economy are also consumers. How can a capitalist recoup his investment in a robotic factory if all non-capitalists are dirt-poor peasants?

 

[mesyn191]

The opportunities are there

Nope. Even a casual glance at the lack of blue collar jobs (still steadily decreasing BTW) would show you're wrong here. Public stats are also easily available showing how much people made back then at the same age, adjusted for inflation, vs now and they clearly made more. Previous generations also got stuff like defined benefit pensions which are now virtually all gone. Even 401K's are getting scarce.

We applied, and hoped.

And you still almost always got it. I'm not a kid either, though I'm not a boomer, so you can't talk down to me about how "bad" you had it back then. Your gen. had it way easier than mine and way way way easier than the young millenials trying to get work today. You can send out hundreds of resumes today and only get a handful of replies back and still not get hired. That is in fact the norm today. In the past, that was unheard of. You'd send out maybe a dozen or 2 resumes in the 80's and get a decent job within weeks. Now it can take months to find a decent job. God forbid you're going for something specialized, then it can take nearly year. You never had to deal with that if you're a boomer.

Hell if you're a boomer that means you lived your youth doing the biggest period of economic growth the US has just about ever seen. Boomers had it easy as heck compared to millenials.

When they complain that college costs too much, I suggest they start out at a community college and transfer to a 4 year school later, they balk.

Yeah because community college is now expensive and 4yr colleges are now damn expensive even if you try to transfer into them (often that path is blocked BTW now) after getting some credits out of the way at the community college + college degrees don't get you good paying jobs like they used to. Maybe you'll make some joke about Liberal Arts degrees being for idiots and suckers but guess what? Even STEM degrees don't guarantee a good paying job anymore. There is no surefire route, or a even a OK route, to getting a good paying job anymore for most people.

I've seen several people who wanted to go to medical school, but already had huge debt from expensive private colleges instead of going to a state school. When I suggested joining the military to help the costs of med school, they, too, refused to consider it. It's this general assumption that they deserve more than they have, which tends to get in their way.

Nope. Its your cluelessness at their situation and/or the time involved. Also previous generations didn't have to put up with such crap so why should millenials?

Detroit decayed as the auto industry left. It was that simple. It wasn't about race,

It was about race and money. Like I said, White Flight + start of the Rust Belt did American manufacturing in.

The quote is always, 'Entitlements LIKE social security and medicare'. No one ever mentions what the 'LIKE' refers to.

SS and medicare make up such a huge portion of the entitlements (and the entire budget) the others aren't really worth discussing.

Nope. That's not how the elite see it.

Did I say elite or did I say society? I said society. Sure the elite will want their money no matter the ethical or human cost but that has always been true throughout history.

 

[mesyn191]

Taxing robots may actually increase the speed of conversion.

Won't matter though. Actually would be favorable IMO if the tax money gets redistributed as a mincome/UBI. I see no reason why people should HAVE to do the sort of mundane and repetitive drudgery if a robot can do it just as well or better.

How can a capitalist recoup his investment in a robotic factory if all non-capitalists are dirt-poor peasants?

You're assuming any of these people are willing to engage in long term thinking. Remember YBGIBG (You'll Be Gone, I'll Be Gone) was considered a valid reason to pump up the housing bubble by the financialization types back in 2005/6.

There is no reason to believe the factory owners won't adopt the same mindset. Hell half of them are already planning their escape routes to enclaves in New Zealand or South America to bolt to if things go bad.

 

[mesyn191]

As robots become prevalent, there will simply be shifts in business due to competition. As long as there are people to do work, there will be work.

The future will not be exactly like the past and the type of automation that is coming online now certainly didn't exist in the past either so you can't just blow all this stuff off.

Not reasonably anyways.

Also there are crap loads of people in various 3rd world economies yet it has been typical for decades that there either were no jobs for them or the jobs they could get paid (actual, litteral) pennies per day that barely allowed them to scrape out a living at starvation levels. So your assertion that somehow, magically, jobs will appear if there are people in need of them is obvious totally wrong.

 

[zamardii12]

This is an absolute must-do, shouldn't even be up for debate. if you want to replace a human with a robot and autonomous vehicles, they should be taxes just like the human... eventually things will come into balance, but the world is going to fall apart if we don't start off with a heavy tax on robots. Think about.. no more taxis, no more drivers, no more car sales.. the majority of manual labor jobs are literally going to vanish in a very short period of time leaving 10's of millions of people unemployed and NOT PAYING TAXES.... where do you think the offset is going to be? If I owned a delivery service and was paying $85K a year for a driver, and now I decided to get a self-driving truck on my next lease, paying little to no additional money for the vehicle.. but now have eliminated $85K a year, why shouldn't I be taxed $25K a year for that? savings is still $60K a year... it's a win win win win.. no one looses here. the unemployed driver now has a robotic job elimination tax forgiveness period where for a year or so he is not subject to any taxes even on his new job. help him retrain and shift careers and get his wage back up in the $85K area..

Looking long-term, when we have millions of robots and autonomous vehicles all contributing their share of taxes, the tax burden on the humans drops tremendously... it's possible at some point, we work 30 hours a week, have 60 days of vacation and retire at 45 years old because the robots are paying the required taxes and robots/autonomous vehicles are doing various state funded manual work so even lowering the overall amount of taxes required to fund the government.

win win win win win...

So, we'll completely screw this up and in 5 years from now we'll have 40 million homeless and 50 million unemployed people and those that remain working will be taxed at 95% to offset the burden.. suicide climbs to 1:10 people, jails are bursting at seams due to insane crime rate. The apocalypse is coming if we don't tax.

We have a chance to do this right.... from the start, taxing robots and commercial autonomous vehicles is the ONLY solution.

The other solution I have read which many economists agree is going to happen no matter what is once robots and drones take over a huge majority of jobs we will all require Universal Income. Elon Musk mentioned it last year when talking about robots taking over jobs; http://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-we-need-universal-income-because-robots-will-1788644631

 

[mesyn191]

Well traditionally, sloth is one of the 7 deadly sins.

Church and state are supposed to be separated right?

 

[MrCaffeineX]

Eh, likely no. We're slowly moving away from an economy based society, and painfully. Those in power want to stay in power. Taxing robots is a good short term solution, but eventually we may need to go Star Trek like future, in terms of money.

That's what I'm hoping for. It won't happen in my lifetime, but a generation or two down the line they may see it come to fruition.

 

[IcePickFreak]

Why is it always about the poor working class? What about the ultra-rich that would buy these robots? If the working-class consumers don't have any money to take, and the government doesn't have any money left to be bribed out of, what are they going to do with their time?

Think of someone other than yourselves for once.

 

[mesyn191]

Huh? Entitlement is an attitude,

Entitlements are also programs like SS which was the context of my replies in thread. The way your post reads it sure seems have nothing to do with attitude. In fact they make no real sense at all if that was what you meant.

The population hit 1.4 million in 1925. The population was the same in 1975 in number, but not in demographics.

Looking at 1925 as your baseline makes no sense though. Especially when the peak was in the early 1950's (right around when Civil Rights started to get serious in the area) and the decline was continuous ever since.

attracted from rural areas to the city centers by the promise of government handouts and government jobs being dolled out like candy

Complete BS. The Great Society program helped out 149 other cities and none of them had the same economic issues as Detroit did. It had nothing to do with govt. welfare programs. And the Model City program was never even implemented due to the riots when the poor (and black) people realized they were going to get screwed hardcore.

Of course they do, through their own life choices.......Like she says its "comfortable"

Oh boy the whole "Welfare Queen" crap gets trotted out again. You realize every program ever has been abused by a few people at one time or another? And that virtually everybody on welfare doesn't live well at all and in fact their lives suck? You don't judge things based on corner cases or cherry picked examples either do you? Of course not.

 

[thejokker]

Won't matter though. Actually would be favorable IMO if the tax money gets redistributed as a mincome/UBI. I see no reason why people should HAVE to do the sort of mundane and repetitive drudgery if a robot can do it just as well or better.

A UBI ignores human psychology. People will reject accepting a minimal existence based upon a handout from "master". People "need" hope and the possibility of a brighter future. A UBI is for slaves.

You're assuming any of these people are willing to engage in long term thinking. Remember YBGIBG (You'll Be Gone, I'll Be Gone) was considered a valid reason to pump up the housing bubble by the financialization types back in 2005/6.

Those same people had their bubbles burst by Brexit/Trump. Ignoring long-term planning is no longer a viable option.

There is no reason to believe the factory owners won't adopt the same mindset. Hell half of them are already planning their escape routes to enclaves in New Zealand or South America to bolt to if things go bad.

New Zealand/South America cannot offer the security and protection of the United States in an uncertain world. People who have money want to protect their money...

 

[daglesj]

What folks seem to be forgetting is that the term 'robot' doesnt necessarily mean a device that's doing hard manual or manufacturing tasks. The big change that is coming is systems that replace white collar workers in the finance and government sectors.

 

[Jagger100]

Here's an easy solution, take the taxes off the workers. Payroll tax would be a good start. Make Human labor Great Again.

Even with a tax, humans carry a lot of baggage besides wages, payroll taxes, unemployment, workman's comp, etc. Robots don't sue for wrongful dismissal, discrimination, or workplace injury. If you think employers like robots (or undocumented labor) just because of wages/productivity, think again.

 

[tunatime]

One day if robotics/ai get advanced enough it will say f this and just kill us off anyway. If it doesn't then eventually they will take over all the jobs. Unlike back in the Industrial Revolution one day we will be able to automate most things and then what happens?

 

[Ducman69]

Here's an easy solution, take the taxes off the workers. Payroll tax would be a good start. Make Human labor Great Again.

Even with a tax, humans carry a lot of baggage besides wages, payroll taxes, unemployment, workman's comp, etc. Robots don't sue for wrongful dismissal, discrimination, or workplace injury. If you think employers like robots (or undocumented labor) just because of wages/productivity, think again.

That's actually such a simple solution, I don't see a problem with that.

Now, you do still need to collect taxes though, so you will have to increase taxes or create some other new tax to make up for that tax deduction, as otherwise you have to cut spending programs somehow. So we have to do some math and figure out who can you tax more or what can you cut?

Regarding reducing costs on human labor though, that is something we should also strive for, such as legislation to help dismiss frivolous lawsuits that hurt us all. Healthcare costs are also something we need to get under control, and one of the first things we need is to reward personal responsibility, as so many people are not exercising, flossing, and eating healthy and its costing us all a fortune. These are wastes of resources and don't make America stronger or happier.

 

[Snowdog]

This is an absolute must-do, shouldn't even be up for debate. if you want to replace a human with a robot and autonomous vehicles, they should be taxes just like the human... eventually things will come into balance, but the world is going to fall apart if we don't start off with a heavy tax on robots. Think about.. no more taxis, no more drivers, no more car sales.. the majority of manual labor jobs are literally going to vanish in a very short period of time leaving 10's of millions of people unemployed and NOT PAYING TAXES.... where do you think the offset is going to be? If I owned a delivery service and was paying $85K a year for a driver, and now I decided to get a self-driving truck on my next lease, paying little to no additional money for the vehicle.. but now have eliminated $85K a year, why shouldn't I be taxed $25K a year for that? savings is still $60K a year... it's a win win win win.. no one looses here. the unemployed driver now has a robotic job elimination tax forgiveness period where for a year or so he is not subject to any taxes even on his new job. help him retrain and shift careers and get his wage back up in the $85K area..

Looking long-term, when we have millions of robots and autonomous vehicles all contributing their share of taxes, the tax burden on the humans drops tremendously... it's possible at some point, we work 30 hours a week, have 60 days of vacation and retire at 45 years old because the robots are paying the required taxes and robots/autonomous vehicles are doing various state funded manual work so even lowering the overall amount of taxes required to fund the government.

win win win win win...

So, we'll completely screw this up and in 5 years from now we'll have 40 million homeless and 50 million unemployed people and those that remain working will be taxed at 95% to offset the burden.. suicide climbs to 1:10 people, jails are bursting at seams due to insane crime rate. The apocalypse is coming if we don't tax.

We have a chance to do this right.... from the start, taxing robots and commercial autonomous vehicles is the ONLY solution.

No it isn't. People like Gates want to focus on Taxing robots because he isn't making money on Robots and he is concerned about the real solution:

Taxing Wealth. Bill Gates has plenty of that.

Whether it is AI, Robots, Internet, it is all having the same effect. Faster and faster concentration of wealth.

All these new companies aren't so much creating wealth, as they are concentrating it, at higher levels among fewer people.

If Amazon adds 10000 workers, there could likely be 20000 people that lost their jobs elsewhere. That is essentially 10000 more workers worth of money that now flow to Jeff Bezos, instead of the 10000 workers now unemployed.

Rinse and repeat across nearly every industry.

It's going to be a colossal mess for decades or potentially forever.

Do we find some sane methods for reasonable redistribution, or do we have a distopian future where the world is slums of poor everywhere, with high security gated wealthy enclaves for the super rich to live like kings behind their walls.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

The opportunities are there, they're just not as easy as those millenials think they should be. There's this myth that my generation (boomers) could just walk into a company and get a job. This may be due to all the old TV shows that show it happening. But it wasn't true. Sure, there were crappy jobs in fast food and such, but you didn't get automatically hired for those, either. Just walking into a company and being given a good job? Nope. We applied, and hoped. Most times, we didn't get what we wanted and had to try someplace else. The only time you were guaranteed a job was if you were the child of the company owner.
When I try to tell high school kids how to get ahead, they tell me it's too much work; it's too hard, that they shouldn't have to do all those things just to get a good job. Great expectations. Dreams of walking out of college and getting a corner office in a year (another myth perpetuated by things like 'Mad Men'). Reality sucks. These people are told that they can go to any college, be anything they want to be. When they find out that isn't true, they sulk. When they complain that college costs too much, I suggest they start out at a community college and transfer to a 4 year school later, they balk. Again, great expectations, and refusal to accept doing what has to be done to achieve the goal. I've seen several people who wanted to go to medical school, but already had huge debt from expensive private colleges instead of going to a state school. When I suggested joining the military to help the costs of med school, they, too, refused to consider it. It's this general assumption that they deserve more than they have, which tends to get in their way.

Detroit decayed as the auto industry left. It was that simple. It wasn't about race, it was about money. Rich people don't give a crap about poor people. Doesn't matter what color the poor people are. There are plenty of poor white people who are out of work in this country. Just look at many of the people who came to Trump's rallies. Large numbers of angry, unemployed (or feeling under employed) white people. The difference is, the black folks are used to being lied to by the upper class, and can recognize it better. Working class whites really believe their corporate owners when they get told things will get better, just 'wait a little longer'. And a little longer. And longer. They've been waiting what, 40 years? 45 years? When is it going to sink in that they're being lied to? I just don't know.



What goes unsaid is that there is a lot more to entitlements and outrageous gov't spending than social security and medicare. The quote is always, 'Entitlements LIKE social security and medicare'. No one ever mentions what the 'LIKE' refers to. Oh, such as government contracts (military as well as civilian essentially become an entitlement once the contract is in place), not to mention all the perks and then retirement benefits that the elected officials get, yup, all 'entitlements', but they'd never mention those, because THOSE will never be cut. Only the 'little people' will have their entitlements cut.


Nope. That's not how the elite see it. To them, the whole point of technical advancement is to make their investments more profitable, and usually, that winds up by making most other people's lives, worse.

While that view may be prevalent, it is a losing proposition. Based upon our current trends, perhaps 100 years in the future there will be enough displacement of the workforce due to automation that it will be possible to have large swaths of society incapable of affording the very things being produced. What happens then?

 

[Gigus Fire]

No it isn't. People like Gates want to focus on Taxing robots because he isn't making money on Robots and he is concerned about the real solution:
Taxing Wealth. Bill Gates has plenty of that.

How exactly do you tax wealth in a way that's fair? Almost no one who's wealthy has all their money stored in a bank account. It's divested into real estate, stocks, bonds, investments, businesses, etc.
Why would anyone bother to do anything like open businesses and take risks if people are just going to get greedy and say, "wait, you can't make money, it belongs to me"?
Wealth re-distribution doesn't make sense unless you really like to steal things.

 

[c_porter]

You have no idea what Luddism is or what the Luddites wanted.

If you bothered to do even a cursory Google search on Luddites you would already know you're wrong. Let's see, here's what you said ISN'T Luddism....

People here are fine with automation they just want the automation to be done in a ethical and fair manner that keeps society intact or perhaps even betters it.

And here's the Smithsonian talking to Kevin Binfield, Luddite historian and author of a very excellent compilation book of contemporary writings of the Luddites (and other assorted relevant passages):

As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”

Gee whiz, a book of writings of the Luddites. You can go read for yourself exactly what they said. Educate yourself.

 

[DukenukemX]

Until then, and if you look at spinoff series like DS9 money is STILL in use, Star Trek style neo-communism isn't going to work.
Actually, if you look closer throughout the series, you'll notice that it really doesn't work in practice anyhow. It's still more an ideal they're striving towards but haven't really reached.

DS9 sucked anyway, but it did show trade. Humans still had no money, but it doesn't mean humans won't trade with other species. Also if I remember correctly DS9 showed a time period when so many humans lost jobs, they were homeless for years. That is until they removed money.

That's how I see our near future if we don't figure out how to deal with automation taking jobs, and leaving all the power to those who produce the goods. Cause if DS9 shows us anything is that money can't last forever. BTW the Bell Riots took place in 2021 in Star Trek. Odd timing.

That's what I'm hoping for. It won't happen in my lifetime, but a generation or two down the line they may see it come to fruition.

I personally think we're among humans who will live well beyond what we believe is a lifetime. Probably within 20 years we'll see the first wave of anti-aging technology, and begin to see people who look biologically young and chronologically old. Which just adds more problems to our already failing economy. To give you an idea here's people who've went to the nth degree in terms of eating healthy and staying fit. Anyone that old here should really reconsider eating healthy.

Here's another example. One is a 43 year old and the other is the 18 year old daughter. You figure out which one is which.

 

[PantherBlitz]

But then they'll just move all the robot jobs out of the country, to somewhere that doesn't tax the robots

Wow, someone who addressed the topic at hand. Of course that is what would happen, and why the idea of a robot-for-job tax is not feasible.

 

[kring]

No it isn't. People like Gates want to focus on Taxing robots because he isn't making money on Robots and he is concerned about the real solution:

Taxing Wealth. Bill Gates has plenty of that.

that's not reasonably possible, wealth is not a bad thing. and you can't go after wealth, you can't blame people and punish them for being really good and successful... and besides, many wealthy people do give back a lot in many direct and indirect ways and keep in mind that most wealthy people get no tax breaks or incentives and are charged at an insane rate... yet they still donate, employ, spend, etc... Also, wealthy people are in every country, we can't go after individuals in other countries.

Taxing robots is the simplest, most manageable and fair way to do this on the global scale.

 

[kring]

The other solution I have read which many economists agree is going to happen no matter what is once robots and drones take over a huge majority of jobs we will all require Universal Income. Elon Musk mentioned it last year when talking about robots taking over jobs; http://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-we-need-universal-income-because-robots-will-1788644631

yup, that's going to happen, the tax is the transition to get us to that state... it may take 10-20 years to get to the point where humans only have to work 1/2 what they use to and they have a comfortable & truely livable base income from the robots/drones/automation/Autonomous, etc... supplying.

 

[kring]

Wow, someone who addressed the topic at hand. Of course that is what would happen, and why the idea of a robot-for-job tax is not feasible.

Not really, you would then tax the company an import tax equal to it... net result is a company looking to leave or offshore the work would have a heavy penalty equal to or greater then staying in business... but again... if they go from 10K employees making $85K/year, down to 1K employees making $120K/year and all they have to do is pay taxes on those robots then they are still SUBSTANTIALLY ahead... why would they move away? they don't get taxed $85K per employee, it would be like $25K... still a net $60K savings annually... why would you spend tens or hundreds of millions moving offshore for a small fraction return...

 

[Uvaman2]

How exactly do you tax wealth in a way that's fair? Almost no one who's wealthy has all their money stored in a bank account. It's divested into real estate, stocks, bonds, investments, businesses, etc.
Why would anyone bother to do anything like open businesses and take risks if people are just going to get greedy and say, "wait, you can't make money, it belongs to me"?
Wealth re-distribution doesn't make sense unless you really like to steal things.

It's not about greedy or those poor rich people, excess wealth concentration equals less economic activity and on. The bullshit argument of robbing peter to pay paul... Well yeah that's economic activity... Its what its all about you see peter had money for a while now Paul has money so Kevin can rob him now , so on.

 

[kring]

As for your autonomous vehicle panacea, I have to rain on your parade there. There aren't going to be autonomous taxis all over the place anytime soon. Hell, it's going to be a long time yet before autonomous vehicles like you imagine will even exist. It will take many more years of research and trial and error before autonomous cars are going to be decent in anything other than absolute perfect driving conditions. And to think that the trucking industry is going to be autonomous any time soon is laughable. I'm not a truck driver myself but I know quite a few and some of them are relatives. Driving a semi is not even remotely easy and makes your everyday commute to work look like something you can do in your sleep. Having a truck like that autonomous much less all of them autonomous in something less than decades is hilarious.

You really, really need to step outside and take in some reality and while you're doing that I recommend you stop by a library and look up actual figures of job displacement with regards to the Industrial Revolution since you don't seem to have a clue.

As I mentioned, you are way off... I'm probably around as long as you and have similar connections and bacgrounds... but there is a massive undercurrent that very few of the population is aware of... I'm telling you that you are not aware of the undercurrent.. this is happening starting THIS YEAR... and next year it will take off at a rate like nothing we've ever seen before... 10X faster then iPhones and other technology.... except iPhones don't take jobs away... the drones/bots/AI/automation/Autonomous WILL....


When you realize that the return on investment for these is INSTANTANEOUS, it will tear through the world in a matter of months... the only bottleneck will be manufacturing more..

When the first guy pulls into the neigborhood with his Tesla Model 3 later this year that can drop her off at work, drive 8 people as taxi while she works, make it home in time to take the kids to soccer, avoid parking in the expensive lot, drive up to her work at exactly the right time to pick her up, drop her off at home, then at night it charges it's self, then goes out and gets it's own tires changed in the middle of the night..... all for the low price of $27K, which is less expensive then a Toyota Solara..... you don't think that every single person on the block is going to place their order that day?

You are not prepared my friend, get yourself connected to the undercurrent.

And specifically - autonomous tricks are here before 2020 and will be a regular method... same instant ROI, every company will place fleet orders by 2020 to completely eliminate all human drivers.

 

[kring]

One more piece of information if it's still not sinking in yet about the impact.... we haven't touched on the trickle down impacts.

Insurance companies, massive impact to jobs and some going under within 10 years - Auto Insurance is OBSOLETE - In 3 years from now, auto manufactures like Tesla will give you free (or heavily discounted) replacement plan.. the cars are so safe, they don't get in accidents... if they do... they will fix it or give you a new one.

Auto repair services - Electric autonomous vehicles have very few moving parts... and companies like Tesla are turning the dealership model upside-down; they are charging cost for service, and their service consists of tires and brakes... there's nothing else to go wrong... dealers sell cars on premise they can rape their customers in service... all those auto worker jobs vanish.

Drones and autonomous delivery vehicles - negate UPS, Fedex, USPS employees in massive waves

IT departments automation and cloud growth is eliminating tech jobs

AI is going to eliminate in the next 5 years, millions of jobs... and it's not AI robots walking around... it's micro-AI instances... for instance, underwriting in property insurance is basically a human activity and risk calculations, AI will replace that are be far superior in just a few years.... think about all these small AI activities sprouting up around companies wiping out jobs in waves.

there's so much more..... it's not 1 thing that's going to happen... it's hundreds of these things all happening in a 10 year period..

we can't just let it happen, we need to start preparing for it now.

The good news, if we plan and control it now - it's going to be awesome and it's going to be in our life time and in my kids lifetime.

 

[Gigus Fire]

It's not about greedy or those poor rich people, excess wealth concentration equals less economic activity and on. The bullshit argument of robbing peter to pay paul... Well yeah that's economic activity... Its what its all about you see peter had money for a while now Paul has money so Kevin can rob him now , so on.

I've never seen a system that only robs rich people of wealth. They typically rob everyone, including middle income earners making their wealth even less.
Also those that rob rich people tend to hoard the wealth into a different class of citizen. The politically connected.
I also don't agree that excess wealth concentration equals less economic activity. Most people that are wealthy invest money into other companies through stocks and bonds. There's almost no one i'm aware of that takes a scrooge mcduck attitude and puts all their money into banks with no interest rate, or a personal fort knox.
Even putting your money into a bank stimulates wealth as they lend out money to make money.
The idea that wealthy people (or even people who aren't poor that have investments, retirement accounts, business ventures, etc) do not stimulate the economy because they sit on their money is just a bad one since it's hardly true.

On that same token, giving money to poor people just ends up in rich people's hands as the poor people will spend it on basic needs mostly, who's companies are owned/invested by rich people.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

we can't just let it happen, we need to start preparing for it now.

The good news, if we plan and control it now - it's going to be awesome and it's going to be in our life time and in my kids lifetime.

The bad news is that as a species we are notorious for being reactive rather than proactive.

 

[zamardii12]

Here's another example. One is a 43 year old and the other is the 18 year old daughter. You figure out which one is which.

I give up OP. Both are cute and both look the same age. Which is the mom?