Saturday, February 18, 2017

No Robotization without Taxation - Bill Gates

Bill Gates has mostly been wandering around smiling a lot for the last ten or twenty years and he doesn't seem to remember much of the corporate world.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of  Microsoft and world’s richest man, said in an interview Friday that robots  that steal human jobs should pay their fair share of taxes.

“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. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d  think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

- Fox News:  Robots that steal human jobs should pay taxes, Gates says

Well, no, I wouldn't expect to tax it at a similar level ... because it's a fucking robot, Bill.

As a brief review, who owns the robots in the factory so who gets taxed by any tax on robots.  That will increase the corporate tax but Bill says no worries about that.

“Exactly how you’d do it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about now,” Gates said.  “Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there.  Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax.  I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax.  It’s OK.”

- Fox

There's the best in Billionaire Bollocks for the day since the robot companies won't care about the tax because it's the factories which use them which will be paying it.  Taxing the robot companies for each robo which is made is only a punitive price increase since there's no way to know how much financial benefit the robo will create for buyers before it's retired to its bit bucket.

Gates seems to think his tax idea may work like a payroll tax on the workers but it couldn't even come close to that when he's not given any thought to who will pay it.

Ed:  is this really going to the gigantic flaws in corporate taxation?

Nah, it's more interesting that first corporations were people and now robos are people for the purposes of taxation so the Rockhouse wants more things classified as people.

Ed:  how about the cameras on traffic lights?

Sure since they're as much people as the cops who sit in the middle of the road all day waiting to catch speeders.

Ed:  how about luxury yachts?

How does that work?

Ed:  they make promises they can't keep and what's more human than that.

Fair enough.  Luxury yachts should legally be people too.

Ed:  how about crocodiles?

(Fill in the punchline of your choice)

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