Bill Gates an entrepreneur that founded the world’s largest software business, Microsoft, and one of the richest men in the world. Gates responded on the issue about robots taking over the human jobs. He suggested that the robots should be taxed like humans were. Further explaining his suggestion, Gates added that if a worker does $50,000 worth of work, that is taxed. Robots could not be taxed at the same level as humans. He said that if we think about it it does not make a lot of sense.
Robots are taking away jobs from humans, so in order for the government to create jobs for these people. The companies that are using and distributing them will continue to pay taxes for their employment. Through this, there will be continuous support for the rest of the society. Plus humans will then be required to do jobs with more affinity.
Gates cites nurses and doctors as best examples, this job is better done by humans than machines. It also introduces the idea of a universal basic income. Under that scheme, citizens will be paid a certain amount of salary by the government. Pierre Omidyar, one of the founders of eBay, invested $ 500,000 to test the idea in Kenya. Elon Musk also showed interest and agreement with the scheme.
According to the CNBC, self-driving cars and robots running things in the factories are some examples of robots taking over. Depriving humans of job opportunities. Factory owners get richer, so it would just be a good idea to tax them accordingly. Gates says “ tax the robots.” He said that he thinks the companies won’t mind all that much if we do. Companies will still save up a lot of money because they won’t have to for robot pension, robot health cares and robots won’t be needing maternity and paternity leaves.
According to the Forbes, what we should look forward to is the possibility of emerging products and services that are at low cost. They can maximize the use of the robot labor and at its 100 percent capacity and the price of things should decrease. Funded from the robot taxes the universal basic income will provide humanity with the monthly payment they need. Bill Gates suggestion seems to be clear enough but it won’t be achieved without a rough transition.
