Bill Gates thinks robots should pay income tax; do you agree?

While robot workers may have many advantages over their human counterparts, Bill Gates says that humans still have it when it comes to taxes.

Microsoft’s cofounder and the world’s wealthiest man is arguing for that to change, an idea popular with European socialists but perhaps gaining momentum in the tech world. Though Gates made his money by growing the PC and erasing many job categories, he’s advocating for the deliberate slowdown of technologies that may kill additional jobs.

In an interview with Quartz, Gates said, “It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm. That means they won’t shape it for the positive things it can do. And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some elements of it.”

While the idea of using taxes to sustain those out of work thanks to automation isn’t new, Gates would like to put a direct levy on robots that would be equal to what humans pay into the system. “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,” he said.

Gates argues that it only makes sense that a robot sent to do the same job should be taxed at a similar level, and he’d like the extra money to be used to retrain displaced workers. He suggests starting with communities where this problem has been particularly impactful. Gates goes on to say that this sort of funding could also fund jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools.

Gates isn’t alone in his thinking: French Socialist candidate in this year’s presidential elections, Benoit Hamon, has also called for a tax on robots to offer a minimum income for everyone.

Others in the tech industry want the cost of additional taxes to help displaced workers passed on to consumers. Current Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella told the Financial Times that she’d take a different approach. “Whenever somebody cuts cost, that means that, hopefully, a surplus is getting created. You can always tax surplus.” Gates agreed while maintaining his advocation for the levy, adding that he doesn’t think that robot companies will mind paying a tax.

“If you want to do [something about] inequity, a lot of the excess labor is going to need to go help the people who have lower incomes. And so it means that you can amp up social services for old people and handicapped people and you can take the education sector and put more labor in there. Yes, some of it will go to, “Hey, we’ll be richer and people will buy more things.” But the inequity-solving part, absolutely government’s got a big role to play there. The nice thing about taxation though, is that it really separates the issue: 'Okay, so that gives you the resources, now how do you want to deploy it?'” Gates said.

Source: Financial Times