• slipperydippery@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What would you tax exactly? Robots don’t earn an income and don’t inherently make a profit. You could tax a company or owner who profits off of robots and/or sells their labor.

    • RatzChatsubo@vlemmy.net
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      1 year ago

      It would have to be some sort of moderated labor cost saving tax kind of thing enforced by the government

      • devzero@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Should we tax bulldozers because they take away jobs from people using shovels? What about farm equipment, since they take away jobs from people picking fruit by hand? What about mining equipment, because they take away jobs from people using pickaxes?

        • RatzChatsubo@vlemmy.net
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          1 year ago

          If the machine replaced the human, yes. That’s the argument being made currently.

          Imagine if we simply taxed machine profits after 40 hours of work. You not only can give kickbacks to large companies, but you could also rewire profits to UBI

          • pitninja@lemmy.pit.ninja
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            1 year ago

            It’s the wrong way to go about it, though. Just tax businesses’ profits and close the bullshit loopholes they exploit to avoid paying them.

          • devzero@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            But 40 hours of “work” is poorly defined. If you had everyone digging with spoons on your construction site, then you might need 100 people at 40 hours per week. If you have everyone shovels, you would only need 10 people at 40 hours a week. Do you want to tax shovels for “taking the job” from 90 people?

      • PlebsicleMcGee@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        If we think of production as costing land, labour and capital, then more efficient methods of production would likely swap labour for capital. In that case then we just tax capital growth like we’re doing now (Only properly, like without the loopholes). No need to complicate it past that

    • veganzombeh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m not sure how feasible it is but I’ve seen a sort of “minimum wage” for robots suggested which is paid to the government as tax.