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On public policy issues, I usually agree with Bill Gates and admire his focus on the strength of the combination of market and technology. But I think that in a recent interview, his views were a bit outrageous. He proposed taxing robots (it seems not to be ironic) to ease employee unemployment and limit inequality.
Regarding the seriousness of the issue and the need for action, Microsoft's co-founder was right, but the solution he proposed was seriously misleading and highlighted the current public debate.
First of all, I think it is unreasonable to classify robots as job destroyers. What are the self-service terminals that issue boarding passes? Word-processing programs to speed up document production? What about mobile banking technology? Auto-driving cars? Vaccines that undermine the employment of the pharmaceutical industry by preventing diseases?
There are many innovations that can lead to higher or better quality output with less labor input. Why choose a robot? Does Gates think that anyone can distinguish labor-saving activities from labor-enhancing activities? Not to mention the United States Congress, the Trump administration, or a committee composed of technocrats like him. .
Even if experts can distinguish, the ability of the IRS to manage these differences is certainly questionable.
Second, a large number of innovation activities (including activities involving robots) are related to the production of better quality products and services rather than merely using the same inputs to obtain more output.
artificial intelligence
How to make artificial intelligence to benefit humanity?
Waters: Humans are often unable to define what they want, so it is difficult to ensure that artificial intelligence can benefit humans without causing unintended consequences.
For example, a self-driving car is likely to be safer than humans. Robots have been able to help surgeons perform certain operations and are doing better than human doctors. The online booking system is faster and more convenient than travel agencies.
In addition, due to imitation and competition, innovators have only gained a small part of their own innovation benefits. According to this reasoning, there are both reasons for taxation and reasons for subsidies for capital containing innovation.
Thirdly, this is perhaps the most fundamental point. Why should the tax be reduced by reducing the size of the pie, instead of ensuring that a bigger pie is properly distributed? Suppose 50 people can produce robots. These robots can make 100 people. work. Heavy taxes on robots will prevent them from being produced.
Wouldn’t it be a better way for society to enjoy additional output while setting up reasonable taxation and transfer mechanisms to protect laid-off workers?
It is hard to understand how narrowing the pie (rather than making it as big as possible and then redistributing it) can be the right way forward.
For a long time, the latter view has been the standard content of the international trade theory system. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that having a country open to international trade is like having it obtain technology to process one product into another. Therefore, the claim here is that protectionism is a bad thing because people certainly do not regard this kind of technological change as a bad thing and trade is not a bad thing. Gates' view of taxation of robots may in essence be a kind of protectionism against progress.
None of this will minimize the problem of job destruction and rising inequality (but there is a major contradiction here: on the one hand, we seem to be witnessing the unprecedented and immediate employment disruption of the machines. On the other hand, we also see productivity growth. Particularly low).
On the contrary, this shows that to help less fortunate workers, preventing progress is a bad strategy. In addition to the difficulties and associated damages of the definition, there is a problem that, in an open world, taxes on technology are likely to push production overseas, rather than create jobs in the country.
There are many better strategies. However, the government has to worry about the problem of structural unemployment. Compared to the practice in the United States, they may need to play a more prominent role in ensuring full employment.
Among other measures, this will mean large-scale reform of the education and retraining system, considering targeted salary subsidies for groups that are particularly vulnerable to unemployment, large-scale infrastructure investment, and possible direct public employment programs.
This will be a major debate. I think it will largely determine the politics of the industrialized countries in the next 10 years. Everything is uncertain now. But it is better to go forward than to go backwards.
This means making the United States greater, not great again. And this means accepting (rather than rejecting) technological progress.
Taxing robots is illogical
Updated at 07:37 on March 16, 2017 Author: former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers • British "Financial Times" writer