Imagine an economic system in which people come first
New York congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes that people should welcome robots taking their jobs — but not the economic system that can make it financially devastating. During a talk at SXSW, an audience member asked Ocasio-Cortez about the threat of automated labor. “We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work,” she said in response. “We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem.”
The congresswoman referenced a proposal from Bill Gates, who has discussed a tax on robots that replace human workers. (While she stated that Gates suggested taxing robots at 90 percent, that’s not a number we’ve found in his statements.) Gates isn’t the only person who’s floated a robot tax. French politician Benoît Hamon suggested taxing automated productivity gains and using the money for a universal basic income. More generally, large parts of Silicon Valley support basic incomes as a fix for automated unemployment.
Nobody’s specifically implemented an automation tax so far, though. In 2017, the European Parliament rejected a proposal that would tax robots and use the money to re-train workers, arguing that it would slow innovation. Ocasio-Cortez argued that a “robot tax” might just be a less politically charged way to propose higher taxes on businesses. “What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations,” she said. “But it’s easier to say: ‘tax a robot.’” And while Gates’s vision involves freeing up humans to take other jobs, Ocasio-Cortez downplayed paid work altogether. [Continue reading…]