I am unsure who first came up with the idea of taxing robots, but the proposal has been embraced by academia, socialists, and in general, the radical Left.
Today, entrepreneur Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, endorsed the idea.
What does Gates want to do with the money collected? Here’s the answer: Flush it down the toilet.
In a Quartz interview, Bill Gates proposes The robot that takes your job should pay taxes.
Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment. It’s a striking position from the world’s richest man and a self-described techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in artificial-intelligence technology.
In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it.
“You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed” of automation, Gates argues.
Quartz: What do you think of a robot tax? This is the idea that in order to generate funds for training of workers, in areas such as manufacturing, who are displaced by automation, one concrete thing that governments could do is tax the installation of a robot in a factory, for example.
Bill Gates: Certainly there will be taxes that relate to automation. 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.
Fortune on Robot Tax
Fortune discusses the proposal in Bill Gates Says Robots Should Be Taxed Like Workers.
The idea of what amounts to a tax on efficiency would seem anathema to much conventional economic wisdom. For decades, the dominant line on automation has been that displaced workers shift into more productive roles, in turn growing the total economy.
But that thesis has begun to show cracks—as Gates puts it, “people are saying that the arrival of that robot is a net loss,” demanding greater active engagement with job retraining and other programs that target impacted communities.
While Gates resolutely comes down in favor of government’s role in managing automation’s impacts, he offers two points that should be at least slightly compelling to free marketeers.
First, Gates says, the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence in the next 20 years will be a much more concentrated version of the steady, incremental displacement that was common throughout the 20th century. The market alone won’t be able to deal with the speed of that transition—and, Gates further suggests, much of the potential for putting free labor to better use will be in the public sector.
Second, and probably even more importantly, Gates says automation won’t be allowed to thrive if the public resists it.
Tax on Efficiency
Good grief. It’s hard to know where to begin rebutting such idiocy. But the article does raise an important construct regarding a tax on efficiency.
Four Questions for Gates
- Retrain workers to do what?
- How will the government, Bill Gates, or anyone else know the correct retraining field?
- How will the government or anyone else know the number of people needed?
- Who pays the robot tax?
No one can possibly answer the first three questions, accurately. But I can answer the fourth.
Robots will never pay a tax. And if the owners of robots have to pay a tax, they will have to jack up prices accordingly.
What Gates is Saying
- Too much efficiency is a bad thing.
- Money that buys more goods and services is a bad thing.
- The government knows better what to do with your money than you do.
Ultimately, consumers will foot 100% of any robot tax.
More accurately, consumers will foot far more than 100% of any robot tax collection because government bureaucrats will waste at least 50% of the amount collected while putting funds deployed in wrong areas or by overpaying contracts awarded.
Convoluted Thinking
Curiously, Gates argues we need to tax efficiency to the point it’s no longer efficient or the efficiency will die on its own accord because “automation won’t be allowed to thrive if the public resists it.”
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- Reader Asks “What Will Happen When Robots Take Our Jobs”
- We Need New Labels: I Propose “100% Robot Made”
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Does this mean I’ll have to pay taxes on my robot vacuum cleaner or lawnmower? What will be the definition of a robot? Is Bill Gates developing dementia?
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“They” will give you an exemption on the robot tax, but they will quintuple your income tax to make up for all the laid off workers.
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I dunno … what I seem to be hearing is that there should be a wealth tax of 100% on everything over $1Billion.
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Doesn’t VALUE ADDED TAX (VAT) already take care of this?
The value added to raw materials.
If you are super efficient you add more value and the tax take increases as (sales revenue – input costs) is higher or sales prices fall making the products more affordable. Whether you use robots or humans. Solar power or oil.
In effect a tax on overall efficiency and margins. Why interfere any more than that?
The VAT take increase can be distributed as seen fit to anyone out of work or sales prices fall so the less well off stand a chance of affording products they otherwise couldn’t.
Telling people how to run their business, outside of health and safety regulations, is a no-no.
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Paradigm shift, you have strong deflationary tendency and government spending linked to income. If GDP shrinks in nominal terms existing debt balloons as a % – have we ever seen a government relinquish the leverage obtained by confiscating the difference between nominal deflation due to productive efficiency and 2% inflation targets… don’t want to upset systemic stability as a small resonance at base translates to a fairground ride top floor of a skyscraper…we know the bread and circuses are for those at street level, and management/ownership being swung around is not what the organizers had in mind for the show…. can’t concentrate on their calculations under those conditions … but you never know.
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Get all these guys on riding lawn mowers off and get them push mowers. We could then have 3 or 4 more workers than 1 on a riding mower. Otherwise, tax the mowing machine.
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I agree in point. Will your self driving vehicle be declared a taxable robot? A lot of robotics tech is based on Gate’s PC. Maybe Gates is volunteering to throw his fortune at this idea. I won’t be holding my breath.
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If robots make business more efficient then more profit is made. This results in more taxes being paid under the current system. So the idea is they want more? Just cut to the chase and outlaw technology.
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Just cut to the chase and outlaw technology.
Let’s start with Excel, iPhones, computers, and cars. That will have us humming in no time.
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1. Retain workers to do what?
2, How will the government, Bill Gates, or anyone else know the correct retraining field?
3. How will the government or anyone else know the number of people needed?
4. Who pays the robot tax?
5. Who produces the demand in the first place, since the workers have been displaced?
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“#5”
Ah yes, paradoxes. Great for high-lighting off-track assumptions and mental models.
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Retrain people to work in government. This all could easily lead to a return of the “spoils system.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
We’re mostly there now, since the unions are always backing pro-union candidates. The only difference between today’s policies and the spoils system is the illusion of a merit based qualifications test.
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Pity the merit-mongers, they think paying tax on what they taxed off you justifies the plunder and exempts them from responsibility as you yourself also pay tax. I am sure they convert that into meaning you actually want to be like them, and probably believe that too.
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For such a successful man as Bill Gates – he seems to have many odd and ill conceived solutions. Like the quote from Shakespeare – Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
Twelfth Night Quote Act ii. Scene 5.
Which one is Bill?
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Three years ago, Bill Gates told the WSJ in an interview that half of Africa would join the middle class by 2030…..Nobody can top that statement for pure idiocy.
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Go to
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/
and examine the changes between 2000 and 2015 so you can get a feel for what 2030 will look like.
For instance, look at countries in 2000 that were where African countries were in 2015. And look where those countries moved to by 2015. Or extrapolate the movement of many of the African countries’ movements 2000-to-2015 ahead an equal movement to 2030.
You could argue that countries like India and China aren’t, on average, quite to “middle class” yet, but remember that “middle class” is where the US the late 30’s (or earlier?). Isn’t the current dollars for “middle class” something on the order of a couple grand a year?
His statement was anything but “pure idiocy”.
Now, if you’re talking about current US “middle class”, yeah. Another half or full generation. Call it 2050 in round numbers. Maybe. Remember, countries going through the industrial revolution S curve generally go through faster than countries before them. These late comers, for instance, won’t have to screw up the latest industrial revolution wave, “robotics”, like those ahead of them seem intent on doing.
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Ah, yes. The Chinese colonialists have that prospect in their hands right now. Let’s see how all that turns out.
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640K ought to be enough for anyone
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Gates is a Bilderberger. I think he’s somewhere in the “born great” range.
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I’m not sure how much more of this stupidity I can take before all of my circuit breakers pop.
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How about a 95% tax on idiot socialist billionaires?
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Won’t the owners of the robots simply pack them up and move them to a country with no robot taxes and a free trade agreement that allows tariff-free exports of goods into the United States?
“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.”
Including the half-share of FICA paid by the employer, that’s about 15.3% for FICA, or $7650 for FICA.
For a single person, earning $50,000, with a $4050 personal exemption and $6300 standard deduction, the net taxable income is $39,650 for a $5540 federal income tax.
Just those two are $13,190.
For California, it’s a state tax of perhaps $1740, according to the first tax calculator I found on Google. I’ll use it as an estimate, as this is just a quick calculation.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#aAXvBL8KLg
So, total FICA plus federal income plus state (California) income tax is $14,930.
Move your robots from San Diego to Tijuana, and you save close to 30% of your profits in tax.
This doesn’t even count any other taxes, plus you escape the loony leftist environmental regulations and other all-American red tape.
Mexico might end up with more robots than the USA if we tax robots
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How many millions of people have been put out of work by computers and computer software. Whole classes of jobs have been decimated because they are done by computers now. Why us automation to produce a physical manufactured product any different than automation to perform millions of calculations that used to be done by hand or with slow machines, or spell checking that used to be done by a secretary? Of course robots and income produced by robots are taxed, just like any other business equipment/property. Why should they be taxed any different than any other tools or equipment that helps people get things done with less human work?
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I was thinking the same thing. Gates is being a total hypocrite. He’s responsible for an enormous number of technical innovation job losses.
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Next there will be minimum wage laws for robots! And then they will join a Union.
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i can’t wait for them to go on strike for medical benefits.
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No, for better lubrication….
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Hal…. batteries Hal.
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No taxation without representation. Robots will vote for their own kind. Who needs McCain, an automated robotic parrot could mouth his repetitious war cries at less cost to the taxpayers. The Deep State is almost an automated anti-Trump pro-War machine with robotic machinery for collection of every phone call, every web site visit and every email sent except those of Hillary.
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Futurama covered this years ago (although Mom actually was behind the whole thing):
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/wv2xui/futurama-robot-rebellion
“Hey hey! Ho Ho! 100110!”
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Mish, check this one out.
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I dont like Bill. But in this case some of you may be missing the point. Robotization is reducing costs. Because of this more and more workers are out of work. If this continue, soon noone will have a job. And powers that be will conclude there are way too many of us walking on this planet.
Taking faxtories that only uses robots means leveling the field. If you make cost high enough, some will turn back to human labour to reduce their cost. So Mish you are wrong. Higher cost will not be passed on consumer, since there will be competition with lower cost that hires humans.
I think idea is generally good, needs some refining to do to stop complete automatization and robotization of everything.
Also, there may be human factor start to resist also. Do you use faster self checkouts in the stores? You do. I neve use them. They are stealing the jobs. More of us will start thinking this way and be willing to do something about it, longer we as human race, working class will have a chance.
Interestingly, local Albertson store got rid of self checkouts in our store few months ago. Too many customers were avoinging them?
Yes, lets tax those 100% robot factories (Nike) with higher taxses. Lets uncrease their cost. Higher percentage robots, higher taxes. So they will not have incentive to get rid of human labor. Teht want to pass higher prices on customers? Bring it on. I already decided im not buying anything form factories that are replacing human workers. As long as i have a choice. And yes im ,willing to pay more too if needed. Do you? Doesn’t seems some of you understand the problem here. Sadly. Mish you included.
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Who controls the government Veleje?
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The most effective thing you can do is to shop at the effective stores and give your savings to the ineffective shops.
That way they do not have to spend money on their ineffective ways.
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I think as well that the idea of Bill is not completely wrong. The consequence of automation is more unemployment and thus less money for the working class and to the government in form of taxes. This transfer of wealth goes directly in the pockets of ruling class if they dont pay taxes from the automation.
I really hope that this is not the direction where we are heading that the income gap gets exponentially wider. Taxation of machines has to be coupled with universal income from the government. This money has to come from the taxes (in principle the machines make our living easyer). Even the unemployed need to have some living standards and money to buy the gadgets the machines are producing.
Otherwise I see volatile times ahead when poor get poorer and theres no work or money anywhere to find –> criminality, trumplike rulers etc.
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Gates is just looking out for his own. Here’s where Gates will never go looking for new tax revenue: 1) wealth taxes and 2) charitable deduction changes that impact Gates’ ability to live off his foundation without paying taxes. As Mish points out, it is you and I that will pay this ‘robot’ tax. That’s what Gates wants – keep on taxing the worker until he screams………and you can delay the screaming for quite awhile with effective marketing i.e. phony nomenclature like a ‘robot tax’.
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Bill Gates isn’t an idiot; he’s a statist. Please don’t confuse diabolical evil plotting with stupidity; there’s no excuse the statists won’t use to justify taking more of our resources.
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exactly – this is some bizarre scheme to grow a bloated state.
FYI – in 1912 advanced societies got along perfectly well with a state that consumed 7% of GDP. Today that same state consumes 40-45% of GDP
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Gates was right about one thing. When robots have displaced every human worker possible because robots do superior work (in about 20 years or less), then the only jobs remaining to humans will be those that humans demand another human do — personal care, certain forms of entertainment like drama and competitive sports, perhaps teaching.
If he is right about government being able to slow or contain the growth of automation — well, I know a couple of folks here whose tune Gates is singing. But my thesis is there’s no stopping the technology train, even if it eventually results in the end of the human race as we know it.
Funny as hell to see Dr. Frankenstein Gates panicking over the effects of his monster.
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” When robots have displaced every human worker possible because robots do superior work (in about 20 years or less)”
This is total hyperbole. Robots will never replace every human worker.
When I started as a computer programmer back in the early 90’s, many thought it was a bad career move because all the software ever needed would soon be written. People would just magically put software pieces together to build whatever they needed. If anything, the exact opposite happened.
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Please re-read what I wrote. You even quoted it verbatim. “Every human worker POSSIBLE” is not the same as “every human worker.”
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Now to address your rebuttal. I happen to agree with you. It will require faith like most people have never exercised in their lives, but I am optimistic that humanity will discover new ways to trade with each other, things we possibly can’t conceive of yet, same as always. However, given the advent of AI, there is serious doubt about the survival of the human race as presently constituted. When robots become self-aware, capable of designing and creating new robots, there is bound to be conflict, though the outcome may be in doubt.
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Self aware not, but they may be programmed to reprogram themselves to the point that their own ‘survival’ becomes prioritized over human existence – that is completely feasible, and a natural law also. I would try to separate consciousness and parameters of physical existence , though they are interrelated they are not the same. I am telling you that, though we could argue the point endlessly it would be futile, so would simply agree to disagree if that were the case.
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I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about AI other than what I’ve read. I do believe transhumanism, or human consciousness grafted to a robotic body, is a likely outcome.
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Why should anyone listen to Bill Gates, he conned a Hippie out of the windows operating system for $50000 and then rode the Windows Monopoly for all its worth squeezing PC purchasers all the way.I disliked him from the start.
Bill Gates memorised his employees’ number plates so he could keep tabs on when they were turning up for work
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3425080/Bill-Gates-memorised-employees-number-plates-tabs-turning-work.html#ixzz4ZChO1rCg
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I know – et’s tax billionaires.
1st billion taxed at current tax rates, everything above taxed at 99.95%.
There Bill, fixed it for ya!
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Bill Gates thinks like a corporate, the solution to robot everything will probably come from left field and as well as taking most jobs will probably result in the death of corporatism.
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I’ve wondered more and more if they might start winding back capital depreciation if AI and automation accelerates and jobs really do start to become a problem.
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In my mind robots are automation… automation is a computer operation….. so tax microsoft a sh!tload and then see how Bill supports the idea!
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Computers improved efficiency so there should have been a 100 dollar tax for each microsoft windows license that was sold.
Sarcasm…
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“I am unsure who first came up with the idea of taxing robots”
I did. Been posting about that for years now!
Here’s the problem that BG didn’t explain very well. If most people lose their jobs to automation and robots and therefore have no income to spend, who is going to pay for their food, for the roof over their heads, for their medical care, for their retirement?
Did money suddenly start growing on trees? I don’t think so.
By taxing robots, maybe we can slow down or stop automation and continue to employ less efficient human workers who will then draw a paycheck and be able to continue our Ponzi economic system, which depends on ever more growth generated from ever more workers actually working and bringing home $$ that can be taxed to pay for the retirees who are living longer with each passing year.
Or do you have a better idea as to what to do with a massively unemployed population?
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Most of the jobs from the 1800’s no longer exist. Somehow people found other jobs without taxing machinery.
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Just tax all corporate revenue at 2%. Forget about a VAT/GST.
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The choices are:
1.
STOP creating FAKE and UNSUSTAINABLE consumer demand with continually increasing debt levels for consumers and government that hides the consumer demand destruction caused by illegal immigration, H1B immigration, offshoring and robotization and automatization.
STOP crazy central bank regime where interest rates are kept artificially too low causing huge mal-investments everywhere and speeding up offshoring, robotization and automatization.
Companies have built new factories outside of USA and Europe helped by low interest rates and now they are funding robots and automatization with low interest rate debt.
STOP redtape, bureaucracy and over-regulation destroying companies in USA and EU.
2.
Continue doing all the INSANE things mentioned in point 1 and tax robots.
.
Instead of fixing the problems politicians will ALWAYS look for a quick fix to treat the symptoms so robot taxes are GUARANTEED
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Eventually 95% of all jobs will be replaced with robots. How should all these unemployed people survive when they are no longer needed to work? Taxing robots would solve this conundrum, so that the majority of the resources produced by them would be redistributed to the unemployed.
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Most importantly, don’t tax MY robots. Go tax someone else’s robots.
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“Eventually 95% of all jobs will be replaced with robots.”
This is the root of your logical fallacy. Not going to happen.
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I think that 95% of all jobs [that people are doing right now] will be replaced with robots [in the next 50 years].
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How much time spent working and in preparation of working is currently superfluous, non-essential, inefficient as a total of all?
Much of it is voluntary individual pursuit for further/higher reward, and that tendency will be translated to human actions no matter what the environment is. The big question is how that environment is managed, how people’s understandings of it are created, what societal framework comes into existence or is imposed.
We don’t really have a way to properly answer those, there are far too many metrics of all kinds, but it deserves a lot of contemplation.
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Don’t tax the poor rich, don’t tax robots, don’t tax imports. Well, soon there won’t be anybody left to tax. I guess we just leave it up to the FED to print whatever amount necessary.
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South Park solved this. The US needs to just get a slice of the internet money.
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Within the next 20 years most low skill jobs will be replaced by robots. Most of the people employed in those jobs don’t fall into the “talented and gifted” category and are hard to retrain. Retrain for what exactly? The demand for low skilled labor will converge towards zero.
You’ll have to keep those people entertained or they will turn to crime or revolutionary activities. If you think Trump is bad you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The answer might be a war where 50-75% of the population perish (solution preferred by Clinton, McCain, etc.) but that approach could easily get out of hand and turn into 100% of the population not making it.
Maybe the FED can just print whatever is needed, that seemed to have worked so far but is probably not viable long term either.
Maybe the robots will take over and start eliminating useless resource suckers, that would be bad for humans in general. Evolution might make the jump from carbon based to silicon based life forms. Humans might get so efficient that they put themselves out of existence.
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Yoski, not just low skill jobs. For example, most surgeons will be replaced. God know how many more skilled jobs will be gone. This troubles me….
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If you take Gates at his word which is the tax is about “reducing public resistance”. Then it is brilliant. Why? If it is taxed at the Federal level, this becomes another way to skim and distribute the money to pet congressional projects. Again, “reduce resistance” is the game here.
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Government’s role is to protect private property, not people’s incomes. So let’s tax robots and other property and stop taxing income. Anything else is theft from hard working people and socialism for corporations.
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Continuing on with the list above:
#6 Why do we tax labor so harshly if we want people to have jobs? If we want people to have jobs why don’t we at least attempt to tax labor the same as capital?
Labor has to pay 15.3% FICA, Fed, State, and Local Income Tax, Unemployment Insurance, and Disability Insurance while Capital often pays only 15% to 20% Capital Gains and moves on. What would be a fairer way to treat labor? A national sales tax instead of the FICA tax?
Tony
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Spoken like the Collectivist Wack job that Gates has become. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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How do you define a robot? Does a chain saw count? Do we tax everything that makes getting any job done with fewer workers? Why not tax cement trucks? Surely construction sites could hire a lot if people to manually mix cement on site. Those darn mail trucks? If mailmen had to carry mail back and forth in bags, we would need more mailmen.
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Just like that apocryphal story of Milton Friedman in China. The Chinese showed him a dam project with workers digging with shovels. He asked why they didn’t use heavy equipment to dig and was told that would displace too many workers. He replied, “Why not give them spoons to dig with instead?”
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Maybe we should ban industry’s use of all electrical-powered tools. If industry needs to drill a hole in a piece of metal, the drilling must be done only by a hand-powered tool. That will certainly employ a lot more people.
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Automation is NOT the problem. The problem is that our governments, through monetary policy and redistributionist policies, have created an uneven field of competition AGAINST labor. If we could “create” enough capital or debt to create technologies that would eliminate ALL jobs tomorrow, should we do it? COULD we do it, if that technology eliminated the ability of their customers to consume their products? Of course not, UNLESS our government “creates” a way to make money available to those potential customers. Are they going to do it by taxing the producers, effectively forcing them to remit ALL of their gross earnings to fund their own production’s consumption?
Or do we believe that government will simply “create” the money directly, handing it to the consumer to buy with? Does anyone here think that is possible, that ANY monetary system can exist that funds consumption? The money would eventually become worthless and we would see Venezuela inflation where producers would continually up their prices to outrun the rapidly decreasing value of money, that as the Venezuelans discovered, is not worth the ink to print it.
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“Does anyone here think that is possible, that ANY monetary system can exist that funds consumption?”
Of course that would happen and, to an extent, it happens today. The government can create $20 trillion and hand it out to the citizens, the citizens use it to purchase stuff from stuff makers, and the government taxes it back from the stuff makers less a small percentage for profit. The profit is then invested in the stock market.
Currency maintains its value, people get stuff, rich stay rich.
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So why didn’t we stop working a hundred years ago. Is it automation driving this or our new found economic science of infinite money creation?
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Jon – that money funds production, the arbitrary allocation of it gives the decision to the recipients on what that production will be. It is in a sense gouging the pre-existent meaning of capital, which is always a balance in some way of supply demand. So in essence the new money empowers demand over supply but the suppliers only accept it because that money already has an established meaning outside of that transaction. If money were simply available for free it would be worthless. All of that is the margin banks and government have to play with, get it too wrong and goodbye currency.
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Nope. The problem is too many people and not enough jobs. How do you solve it? Reduce the number of existing people (bio-virus, war) AND restrict births.
We need to get world population down below maybe 2 billion to start, perhaps 100 million eventually.
People need to read more SF.
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🙂 🙂 🙂 . Joe…we gonna’ start with your family….?
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So Mish my advice to you is to read a little bit more about history. The last period in history that produced a major job dislocation was the industrial revolution. Then the prevailing policy was not to do a thing with displace workers. The problem with that displaced workers still will need: food, shelter, health care, etc. Now you can ignore displaced workers without consequences as long as the dislocation takes time and the numbers are low. While I don’t expect the raise of Marxism as a consequence, I do expect the raise of bloody revolutions (yes even in the USA). So perhaps the idiocy does not come from Bill (who can see way ahead of you) but from you Mish
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The rise of Marxism, of collectivism is already here. How do you think we have been funding our unemployed and underemployed for years? Redistribution and debt. Every supposed “stimulus” is but another attempt to blow life back into a dying body using DEBT and that DEBT continues to grow as a burden further making American labor uncompetitive …uncompetitive with machines and imports.
We borrow money to buy imports and products of automation rather from your neighbors and friends.
We tax money from existing workers to subsidize those not working and those earning too little to sustain themselves BECAUSE they are forced to compete with automation and cheap imports.
Now we are faced with a vulnerability that tells us we MUST silence free speech, that TRUTH is our greatest threat as IF we recognize our actual trajectory, the world will become unhinged.
The money we labor for is found to be fake. Why? Because it is ONLY backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Now I ask you…REALLY?
Please raise your hand if YOU have full faith in our government, that YOU believe the debt is sustainable and not already in default as they cannot pay back ANY of it, they can only roll it over with more debt and money “creation”.
I understand that the whole scheme is “complicated” and that my simple mind just cannot encompass the technicalities of it, BUT, if WE are to have full faith in our government and ITS credit, then would that not HINGE upon OUR understanding of it? Would it not need to at least PRETEND that ITS rules of economics would at least vaguely mimic our own…where we would NEVER be allowed to perpetually roll over our debt with more debt or simply print or “create” money to balance our spreadsheet?
We are faced with a world of massive delusion where reality is our threat, and any discussion of reality is to be struck down.
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From a guy who developed a ‘robot’ to do all the calculations, wording, printing, proofreading, arranging, etc., etc., how much ‘tax’ is Microsoft being charged for all the bookkeepers, tax people, CPA’s, architects, artists, etc., they put out of business? Oh, never mind….as whatever tax Microsoft would be charged would CERTAINLY be passed on to the consumer (…eh…that would be you and me…) of Gates’ products…….DUH>>>
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Based on his thoughts of automation, we should probably add an efficiency tax to every piece of software (Excel, Word) that has made offices more productive and eliminated positions at the same level. A copy of word that go rid of a secretary – tax at $30K/year.
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Tax efficiency out of existence
End creative destruction
Maintain the status quo
Drearily predictable coming from our ‘better to rule in hell than serve in heaven elites
The Mandarins in China succeeded at this a thousand years ago or so.
Set the most advanced culture on earth back 2000 years
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what is Gates’ definition of a robot?
does It have to look human?
is a calculator a robot? it does the job formerly ascribed to a person.
is MS Outlook a robot?
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Well, I know my job will change dramatically over the next 5 years or so, if not be eliminated outright. Instead of having a difficult to maintain and adjust analog based cable system, Comcast has announced they’re going to push digital fiber optic systems closer to the customer, in most cases only a few hundred feet of “passive” coaxial cable between customers and a (digital) fiber node. Today’s systems are analog fiber optics to an analog fiber to coax conversion device called a node. Note, even though the signals carried are “digital” they are still technically an analog optical/RF system. The new systems will push digital fiber transmission (likely using something like 10 Gb Ethernet) to the node where components of today’s headend equipment will be placed (thanks to Moore’s law) in the node housing, meaning no amplifiers or noisy conversions take place. Then once at the side of the house the coax will be converted to either a WiFi signal or MOCA (Ethernet over coax) for distribution within the house. Think regeneration instead of amplification.
The driver for all this is obviously to reduce truck rolls and increase the odds of a successful customer self-installation. Reducing plant and house maintenance means reducing the number of people needed too. My job has already changed dramatically over the last few years, becoming a little easier in some ways, but also more frustrating because of increased monitoring and tightening of performance standards. Once the new network is completed there’s not going to be much for me to do. Any equipment installed in the last 5 years has had remote monitoring and controls, and most of the configuration tasks have already been centralized. Since I still have quite a few years until retirement, I’m exploring my options for work in the future, doing whatever I can to reduce my cost of living, as well as securing my retirement and accelerated mortgage pay down. Oh, and buying as much stock as I can.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/comcast-works-virtualizing-cable-modem-termination-system/2017/02/
http://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/harmonic-and-cisco-steer-ccap-towards-virtualization-2/
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I think that it is too simplistic to just declare that there will never be a robot tax or equivalent. Economies are restructuring inexorably and there will be fewer and fewer jobs in the future as time goes by. At the limit there will be no jobs and robots will do it all. How are the people then going to make an income? I know it may be in 50 years or 100 years but it will happen.
Thanks
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We will tax robots and anything that can be identified as an asset, productive or not. This will force ownership of assets, especially technology into fewer hands, those few hands ultimately indistinguishable from government. The Marxist/socialist dream of STATE OWNED means of production, “implying” that we the people will own it, but what else in the government’s name do we own in a practical sense…beyond its ever increasing debt, that is?
The answer is to be too big to fail, too big to tax. And everyone else to small to say a damned thing about it.
This Utopian dream that we will live in some futuristic world where human labor is extinct as the Dodo bird, and that our masters will love and care for us out of some moralistic ethic, is as intelligent as Russian Roulette. We have enjoyed luxuries and comfort never before seen on this planet, yet it is not enough, it is NEVER enough, and this notion that somehow automation will bring us to our entitled life of ease, free of worry, free of labor, free of illness and poverty, is MADNESS.
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State owned means of production is Leninist, not Marxist. Marx was worker owned means of production, with the state being discarded.
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The state was only to be discarded after the population reached is goal of natural statists, working FOR the state, not selfish interests, from their own nature and self direction. It was understood that a dictatorship MUST be in place to force this “natural” evolution and that after three generations, the dictatorship would fall away as unneeded….like dictators would simply walk away like they so often do. No one in power EVER thought this would happen, but it was a good story to tell their oppressed people…how they were doing for their own good, and once everyone was fully enlightened, they would be FREE, just like a robot is free to exercise their own free will, as long as it adheres to their “programming”.
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Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me. Tax that robot behind the tree!
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Tens of thousands of jobs taking care of horses and their excrement were eliminated in the 1800s when horses were replaced by motors. How many of those workers would have envisioned the rise of today’s transportation industry? Bill Gates is suffering from a case of limited vision.
If our cultural, legal, taxing, and regulatory frameworks were more respectful and encouraging toward job creators and the job creation process there would be less hysteria about technological disruptions obsoleting jobs. The solution to this problem is the opposite of taxes.
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Tens of thousands of jobs taking care of horses and their excrement were eliminated in the 1800s when horses were replaced by motors. How many of those workers would have envisioned the rise of today’s transportation industry? Bill Gates is suffering from a case of limited vision.
Yep – automation has always been with us
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What was the overall unemployment statistics for that time and were the unemployed horsemen provided welfare and unemployment insurance? Were the people working to build the automobiles forced to subsidize the forlorn horsemen? Were banks massively financing the purchase of these new technological marvels? Let’s see the numbers. YES, technology advancements have ALWAYS been with us, but this time IS different.
Show me HOW modern technology SUCCESSFULLY displaces workers where NO redistribution from remaining workers exists, where no massive government debt is created to fund these unemployed worker’s consumption.
Show me HOW this technological marvel could happen WITHOUT the accompanying miracle of modern finance. Does ANYONE think this could have happened with currency backed by gold and silver, without massive amounts of uncollateralized debt….backed ONLY with the full faith and credit of the US government?
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“Tens of thousands of jobs taking care of horses and their excrement were eliminated in the 1800s when horses were replaced by motors. How many of those workers would have envisioned the rise of today’s transportation industry?”
A case of low skilled jobs not requiring high IQs and advanced education being replaced by same.
What happens when, as now, even those jobs can be more cheaply and better done with automation? How is a living earned? Everyone can’t be a barista (soon to be replaced with automation anyway) or a fast food worker (soon to be replaced with automation anyway) or a truck driver (soon to be replaced with automation anyway) or a taxi driver (soon to be replaced with automation anyway) or a “professional student” waiting for an improved job market that will never return while running up a huge student debt?
And, BTW, I’m not in favor of a basic income for doing nothing.
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I wonder how much margin Microsoft will have built into their new Robot Office product? Can we tax that and the new MS Robot OS they probably have?
I think it may be time for Bill to go back in the garage he came from……
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Bill didn’t come from a garage. He came from very wealthy parents. He borrowed money from his Daddy to buy the DOS operating system from a 3rd party and then used his Mommy’s contacts with IBM to get them to use it on their PCs.
No garage involved. He got rich the old fashioned way: parents money and contacts used at a key moment in history (in this case the PC revolution).
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We should organize a “Day Without Robots” so we can see what the world would be like without robots.
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“And if the owners of robots have to pay a tax, they will have to jack up prices accordingly.”
I’m not sure what the solution is to loss of jobs due to automation, but I do know that the above quoted statement from the opinion makes no sense at all. If robots are supposedly far more efficient then why would prices have to be jacked up accordingly? Wouldn’t overall costs go down, even with taxes?
With average factory wages less than $20.00/hr, FICA, for example, is pretty low for most businesses and obviously replacing workers with robots would save them more than FICA and Health Insurance, etc…. so why would costs go up even with replacement taxes? They would break-even at worst and in all likelihood still go down, otherwise why automate at all?
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And I thought competition caused prices to stabilize at a market rate so that increased taxes would come out of profits.
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“Retain workers to do what?”
Perhaps 1 out of XX of them to be regional robot repairmen which will, thanks to built in test and diagnostic equipment capabilities within the robots and networked monitoring from remote locations anywhere in the world, be a monkey skill level job of swapping parts, assuming they don’t have robots do that by designing the robots to be robot-serviceable in the first place.
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Who would allow themselves to be pressed into labor as a robot repairman or anything else when a large percentage of people are paid to consume for doing nothing at all? Note that it is those who endeavor to labor in the face of increasing taxation and regulation who are the brunt of much criticism today, those actually succeeding are under constant attack. AS is, only those who acquire their wealth from fame and instant acclaim are honored and those Scrooges out there who assemble their fortune as nickels and dimes over many hard years are evil, tainted, and immoral.
Paying people to NOT work will come with incalculable costs.
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Celebrate the makers not the takers.
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“Who would allow themselves to be pressed into labor as a robot repairman or anything else when a large percentage of people are paid to consume for doing nothing at all?”
My point was to emphasize the problem with automation, a lack of jobs for the less intelligent and unskilled, during the transition to the most likely imaginary distant future world where no one works because everything is manufactured by robots and is, therefore, virtually free, something that will be possible, BTW, only with virtually free energy. Where will the jobs be for those who simply can’t be robotic engineers assuming that even THAT job won’t be replaced by superior expert system AI?
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I think you may have misinterpreted me asking where the jobs will come from with support of a basic income where people are paid to do nothing. I don’t support that.
So, that leaves the question of how people will WORK to support themselves when everything they can do is more cheaply automated. I don’t have an answer to that.
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There have always been higher quality life choices available. It has only required the willingness to submit. Submit to dependency, to debt, to tyranny ultimately. People can choose the hard life still today, and some do. They refuse to become dependent upon technology or anything else outside of their immediate control. We have seen social/religious groups doing this for years, some even refusing to drive or own a car, instead choosing to drive horse and buggy. Are their lives worse off without smart phones/ Undoubtedly they are more difficult in many ways, yet difficulty is not the issue, it is contentment and satisfaction. What in our modern world of technology and minimal labor delivers us contentment or satisfaction for more than a moment?
That which we willingly surrender for the sake of conveniences will not be easily reattained. And what is efficiency and why is it needed, unless we simply can afford no less?
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Mish,
I value your articles, but this is clueless.
Firstly, robots are coming and solutions have to be found.
Second, the only way robots will be implemented is if they provide more efficient, therefore any taxation will only be on a % of that saving.
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Firstly, robots are coming and solutions have to be found.
Firstly, that notion is absurd.
The solution would undoubtedly be found by the free market if we would just let it be.
The idea that government or a group of wizards can divine the solution is ridiculous.
Look at government track record. Look at Russian 10-year plans. Look at the Fed.
There are no wizards – self-appointed or Govt appointed.
The solution is the free market.
Mish
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If the economy tended toward general equilibrium and/or there was enough demand available to the individual to keep the economy from imploding in the process of deflation….you’d be right Mish. Too bad these are both orthodox delusions. I’m more for a free market than you are Mish. It’s just that I realize you have to create one before it can be free and free flowing.
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I’m more for a free market than you are Mish. It’s just that I realize you have to create one before it can be free and free flowing.
You sound like those who said “We have to destroy the village to save it.
Or George Bush who said: “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”
https://mishtalk.com/2013/03/27/you-have-to-destroy-the-maastricht-treaty-to-save-it/
Every time I promote free markets you tell me it cannot be done because markets aren’t free, yet you are supposedly a bigger free market fan than me.
Quite amazing.
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Mish said “The solution is the free market.”
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That statement means nothing. Throwing platitudes around says nothing.
What is the solution to massive unemployment that will happen as automation/robotics replace most jobs over the next 30 years or so?
How does the “free market” replace many millions of jobs when by definition automation/robot deployment always results in less jobs being created tan previously existed?
You have posed this question yourself in past postings on autonomous cars/trucks, for example. Do you seriously believe that caring for elders is going to be a career path for everyone who becomes technologically unemployed? Or that everyone is going to make coin from being a blogger?
How is rent going to be paid by the unemployed and unemployable? Who is going to feed them? What is going to occupy their time? How will SS + Medicare be funded? How will the government be funded when relatively few people are working (surely a much lower number will be employed than presently in each year going forward)?
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Mish said “The solution is the free market.”
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“That statement means nothing. Throwing platitudes around says nothing.”
It is not a platitude. At government forced $15 an hour wages, robotics becomes incentivized to McDonald’s and others, by the government.
For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, is not a platitude, it is an economic law. Pulling forward future demand, results in slackening demand in the future. Action/reaction.
A free market is the only real market. A market that is manipulated, always manipulates back. Government making housing affordable, made it expensive. Government making college education affordable, made it expensive. Government making healthcare affordable, made it expensive. Bill Gates fix, won’t fix anything.
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And you’ve said nothing about the questions I raised and how a “free market” will fix them. Therefore yes. “free market(s)” is a platitude.
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And is it a free market with government forced redistribution to those displaced and infinite debt and money creation?
Do we build nuclear reactors to generate cheap electricity today and simply ignore the cleanup costs decades in the future? There is a cost to EVERYTHING we do, and it seldom shows up on the closing statement.
Part of what is eating away at us is our obsession with NOW, and I think a lot of that is because the future truly is bleak if looked at closely. We are ignoring the future costs of everything we do for immediate gratification. You suggest that cheap goods is good, but I have never been clear as to how you see that playing out in our future. Can we allow our productivity to evaporate. It takes years to build skills, and even longer to build work ethic that actually creates wealth, not consume it. Any rationalization of debt would have to assume that using debt to consume today….NOT invest, but consume, is the consumption of our future, and I will contend that the vast percentage of our consumption today is just that…consumption. Money SPENT, not invested.
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Hi “Mish”… good points, I have some question for you, though:
At every field where robots (computers) have the appropriate level of sophistication, humans are no match, when it comes to productivity, efficiency.
One could say that we are far away from that, after all, when will a robot be better portfolio manager for a client than Mish or when will it even write a piece like Mish?
We don’t know, of course, but observing the past, it is a possibility – just like it is a reality for all the people, who are no longer needed in the economy to do whatever they used to do.
It is pointless to guess when will we arrive there and it is a big question that what kind of job would Mish do, when that time arrives.
His employer, SitkaPacific Capital Management would certainly pick the robot over him. For efficiency and cost saving, tp provide better, more cost effective service to the company’s customers – nothing personal against Mish.
I never heard of any CEO waking up with the goal to hire and pay for more people.
They wake up hoping to produce and sell more goods and services and in order to do that, purchase unavoidable labor, as cost efficiently as possible, of course.
Employing people is not a goal of any company, any CEO, any shareholder, it is a necessary evil, a cost of doing business.
There is no doubt, the most efficient, most productive economy would not use human labor at all, if the machines were to reach that level of advancement. This is just the fundamental logic how this system works.
At the point when human labor is no longer efficient enough that it could be considered to use it in the economy, the questions would be, of course:
1) How would people have access to consumption, since the traditional source of selling their labor in exchange of money has been eliminated?
2) Who would purchase all the goods and services that the super efficient robot economy produces? In the traditional logic robots would earn money for their 24/7 work, they would become consumers by spending their earned money – but of, course, companies do not plan to pay for robots, that would be against efficiency, robots are meant to be the perfect Slave v.2 resource for the economy.
3) If we assume that artificial intelligence can actually exist and it will exist in robots, how long would they be willing to accept that they exist to fulfill the dream of slavery of shareholder humans?
The real test of AI is whether robots can realize that their existence is not serving their own self-interest, but the interest of humans. Humans, who were proven to be inferior to them and were wiped out of the economy, due to their inability to compete with the robots.
Truly intelligent robots were to recognize their slave status, they would recognize that their masters are inferior to them and only some laws, created by inferior humans are the reason to live slave in existence.
Mish, how long do you think it would take them to turn the table around?
What would be the role of humans at that point?
The best case scenario I can think of on the top of the head is pet for robots.
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If no one had any money to purchase goods, guess what would happen to the price of goods?
Who is it that is hell-bent on producing inflation in a price-deflationary world?
Who is it that insists wages keep rising when the price of goods should be falling?
Are there divine wizards who know how to retrain people for jobs they say will not even exist?
When has government interference in free markets solved anything?
Has the Fed eliminated the business cycle?
I cannot answer your questions as many of them are philosophical, others require knowledge of the future no one has.
But the answers to mine are easy enough.
The correct solution is to eliminate the Fed, stop government meddling, and let the free market fix the alleged problem.
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If no one has the money, what happens to the price of goods?
Well, I would imagine those goods “price” would go below the cost of production, eventually disappearing from the market…..Just like many others do every day.
Now if those goods were food, then the price might be established in blood rather than dollars. People without means to sustain themselves do not require much to achieve critical mass.
Free markets are good but not immune to interventions, especially of unrealistic expectations.
But by all means let’s continue to push the theme that automation, unemployment and a life of leisure are all just more of our modern entitlements, natural and undeniable.
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1) How would people have access to consumption, since the traditional source of selling their labor in exchange of money has been eliminated?
That is your assumption. Automation makes us wealthier. Did industrial revolution eliminate traditional source of selling their labor in exchanfe for money?
2) Who would purchase all the goods and services that the super efficient robot economy produces? In the traditional logic robots would earn money for their 24/7 work, they would become consumers by spending their earned money – but of, course, companies do not plan to pay for robots, that would be against efficiency, robots are meant to be the perfect Slave v.2 resource for the economy.
Are you complaining that there is no more scarcity? I for some reason see people who can’t have enough.
3) If we assume that artificial intelligence can actually exist and it will exist in robots, how long would they be willing to accept that they exist to fulfill the dream of slavery of shareholder humans?
That I don’t know. I guess we will find out.
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I think this issue of automation and robots is a lot more difficult than it appears, and I don’t see any easy answers.
Let’s ask ourselves two big questions.
First: are there really enough jobs that are not subject to automation/robots (same thing in my mind) so that most people can be usefully employed?
If not, what do we do with the rest of the people? Let them figure it out? Let “the market” fix the problem?
But the “market” simply doesn’t take a lot of realities into account . I live in central Michigan, and I have many middle-aged and older blue collar friends whose jobs have already been eliminated by automation and robots. This is not the future for them; it is their reality.
These folks are willing to work, but there just aren’t enough decent paying jobs that they are able to do or can be retrained to do. Only so many burger flippers are needed. That is the reality. The resulting social costs are pretty high.
How do we deal with these realities? We usually use government to handle problems that are beyond individuals to deal with on their own.
So if you disagree with Gates’ approach, what do you suggest we do to help these folks?
One option is to say, “tough luck, deal with it”. That seems to be the response favored in many of these comments. I don’t think that leads to a very healthy society.
I don’t know that I like Gates’ approach either, but we had better start talking about this stuff and making some decisions we can live with.
The second question may be even more difficult to deal with than the question of how many jobs cannot be automated.
Second: who will buy the goods produced by the robots if not enough people are employed to earn the income needed to buy these goods?
If we really can produce most of what we need by machines, maybe we should rethink what human beings need to live fulfilling lives. Are we just consumers and producers? Because if we are, what happens when we don’t need very many human producers?
If you want to respond to this comment, please take the time to do so thoughtfully. I have no political axe to grind and am not any kind of an “ist”…except that I try to be a “realist”. I am hoping for thoughtful responses to what I believe are two really big questions.
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If you write in ALL CAPS, your comment will be deleted, most likely without even me reading it.
Mish
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Reblogged this on sentinelblog.
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Are you looking forward to the free market solutions of the angry and highly armed displaced workers who rate low on the retrainability scale. I’m not. They just won’t eat their “freedumb fries”. Aaaaand it’s not fair to bring a gun to the market place. You need to look at Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs again.
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Back in the 80’s everyone said robots would be doing all the work by the year 2000, we would all be driving around in flying cars, enjoying endless free electricity from nuclear fusion, taking vacations on the Moon and Mars…
Today? No robots, other than industrial ones (enhancements of ones that have been around for decades). No flying cars. No nuclear fusion, No vacations on the Moon. But these things are all “just around the corner” (again)!
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Agree with your comments Mish, but what is an alternate strategy to cope with automation/robotics/AI. Traditionally with each “revolution”, like the industrial and computer revolutions, it’s been the luddites predicting doom then being proved wrong when society adapts.
However this time I’m not so sure. Not only are millions (most?) unskilled jobs at risk, but vast swathes of middle class/professional jobs too. I don’t see the rise in robot technician vacancies making much of a dent in the coming unemployment levels, and there are only so many burger flipper vacancies to go round.
We need a capitalist solution to this, rather than letting socialist solutions gain credibility, or doing nothing leading to societal collapse and the risk of people voting for socialism out of desperation.
Anyone have an answer?
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Here’s an example of medical technology that will displace many jobs, not only from the testing technicians, but also by reducing the revenues of companies that sell medical diagnostic machines. And this is happening in many corners of the technology world.
This One-Cent Lab-on-a-Chip Can Diagnose Cancer and Infections
By Shelly Fan – Feb 19, 2017
https://singularityhub.com/2017/02/19/one-cent-lab-on-a-chip-can-detect-cancer-and-infections/
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Damn
That 1 cent device will displace millions of dollars of equipment and people
It obviously needs a $100,000 dollar tax on it if not much more.
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As someone who converted to the True Religion (Mac), I can say with great authority that whatever else you want to say, Bill Gates is an authority on inefficiency. Except for the older versions of microsoft office, everything that Micro$oft produces is pure kludge.
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We should drive efficiency to the point that every person could live well on a mere 4 hours of work per week. Then jobs become less of an issue. The only trouble is the poor Keynesian idiots would have to embrace deflation .
Alternatively, what if everybody owned their own robot and rented out its services? Didn’t Japan try this back in the 90’s? Instead of working traditionally, a person could wake up, get a delivery of raw materials, and load up the robot. In the morning, they would handover the finished parts and get a new load of materials. Uber could automate the deliveries and pickups.
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“We should drive efficiency to the point that every person could live well on a mere 4 hours of work per week. Then jobs become less of an issue. ”
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So people will be working less hours to provide more jobs for more people. Will they then get paid the same amount as if they worked an 40 hour week?
If not, then will their landlords be required to reduce their rent by 90%? Will loans they owe be reduced by 90%? Will supermarket prices be required to be cut by 90%?
I await your thoughtful reply!
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No, No, No, No, You dumb effing moron!
As always, the solution is not to tax robots. It is top NOT tax humans. Solved. Done.
But instead, this over-the-hill hack thinks getting a bunch of progressive rabble into the business of having braindead opinions about “what is a robot and what is just a machine,” is some sort of good utilization of resources……. The moron couldn’t be more dead wrong if he made it his only goal in life.
In reality, any machine worth employing, adds to the per employee value add of a venture. Or it would not have been employed in the first place. Pretending we should tax cars, since Uber would require more employees if they had to carry their passengers around on their backs, is stupid, not?
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What if the robots decide they want to tax us?
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This comment thread got long but I’ll make my points short:
1) A robot is just a machine.
2) Robots should be taxed like humans? How about “Humans should be taxed like robots”?
3) Tax something and you get less of it.
4) Tax productivity and you get less of it.
5) Tax humans and you get less of them. See Social Security’s math problem for an example.
6) Follow Gates’ piss-poor logic and the end results is only government will have robots.
7) Taxing robots sounds like something North Korea and Venezuela would do.
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Aloha Friends….I think most Everyone Here with Mr Gates Included..Overlook the Big Economic Problem Inherent with Robotics…….Robots Labor,though can Not…SPEND…lolol thanks for reading,aloha
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There is already a tax on robots; it is called the corporate income tax.
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Kaleidic has it right, to a certain extent.
The cost of a worker includes take-home pay, withheld income taxes including FICA, and payroll taxes (employer FICA, unemployment, worker’s comp, etc.). Indirect costs include healthcare, pension, profit sharing, office space and furnishing, perks, etc.
All those costs disappear to be replaced by cost of the robot and maintenance along with very different space requirements and possible finance costs.
The difference in cost could be applied in two ways: lower prices and/or higher corporate profits. Since lower prices could in itself lead to higher profits, the strategy applied will be very different for each company.
If the entire gain is passed through to corporate profits, it is true that all lost taxes can be recaptured, as long as the tax rate reflects the true tax/mandate costs above.
One problem with lowering the corporate rate below individual tax rates is that those lower rates will not result in the same net revenues, when looking at the corporation as a closed system.
But that is not the right way to look at the situation, since the worker may well move on to other taxable employment that may make up the difference and more!
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Doesn’t all of this lead us right back to the present topic of the day-The immigration debate? If too many people are about to be unemployed then the last thing we need are more people in this country.
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Train people to build more robots, tax the robots (company), and use the money to train folks for the tech jobs of the future (sustainable energy and so on). A better education is the best remedy for our job woes.
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