how should automation be taxed and what should the tax system look like?
asking this for a research project i'm doing
Discussion
Taxation is theft.
fruitless argument
doesn't fix anything
Ok, I have extensive experience in automation. I’ve been an assembly line mechanic since the 90’s. I work with robots, automation control. I even do programming adjustments for engineers when they screw things up 😂
Me and the company I work for pay taxes on my income. We all pay property taxes. The company pays corporate income tax and property tax on the equipment. The company pays sales tax on the goods it sells. Sales tax is paid on the goods used for production.
What other taxes would you like us to pay?
so the workforce that is getting replaced by automation is taxed purely on profit right now?
what about licensing and patents?
and what about monopoly worries?
Robots and supporting equipment require maintenance and repair. Bring back trade schools and elevate the workforce. It is nearly impossible to find a qualified technician under 50 years old. Factories across the country are severely understaffed. Instead of a bunch of uneducated workers earning low wages we would have an educated workforce earning higher wages with more efficient production.
oh i absolutely agree with you on this a hundred percent
think "trade schools" will be the new "study programming" agenda
Licensing and patents increase monopolies through “regulatory capture.” Huge corporations that donate to the political class ensure there are so many regulations that average people can’t compete. A free market economy, without too many regulations would allow workers to compete with employers instead of being beholden to them.
They shouldn’t but rather be on purely donation basis should they want to give
donations don't work
But if there was incentive that favors the automotive industry wouldn’t more companies in this case automotive be more inclined to donate in their best interest
as the ceo, your singular goal is to be as profitable and efficient as possible and make the investors money
donating is completely against that
True but if they are experiencing more growth than they can sustain, one possibility could be to give back to their shareholders or community so their internal growth matches their sustainable growth 🤷🏽♂️
What automation? But no, and doesn’t matter because no.
well for example self-checkout machines at the store
you used to have 5 cashiers, who worked and paid tax
now you have 1-2 self-checkout machine managers, and machines that do way more work without any breaks, yet there are no taxes for that efficiency
Right, so there’s less W2 employees.
Let’s say the company becomes more efficient, does more sales, then more sales tax, then grows revenue, more corporate tax, expands to other locations, more property tax, generates a dividend for shareholders, more capital gains tax.
It will be ok, the government theft is safe.
hmm, never heard the term W2 employees before 🤔 learning a lot here
what about the monopoly risk and also what would it be like if no taxation took place on automation?
I think the real monopoly risk is the state’s monopoly on violence, which enables it to tax without end.
Taxing a vague concept like workforce downsizing due to automation is a slippery slope indeed. You could essentially levy “automation taxes” on anything that increases productivity, which is pretty much all technology.
be taxed?
Is this a trick question to determine if you’re a member of the statist religious cult ?
purely talking from government budget and spending case here
workforce is increasingly getting replaced by automation, decreasing the amount of tax payers
even if you disagree with this completely bc fuck taxes etc, then just bounce it back to me as a logic exercise atleast
taxation should be based on the amount invested by the company in the automated devices and funds saved by replacing biological humans with said automated methods.
The entire conceptual framework here doesn’t really compute in my brain. I dont think i can reliably offer anything back.
It’s not obvious to me the first statement is reliable or true. Ie automatjon replacing workforce. I think it would be more true to simply say the workforce is changjng. Which is a constant. But are humans being less unit producing per moment of time? I do not know how this would reliably be quantified but i doubt it.
And the idea of the output of that work regardless of who is doing it being arbitrarily redistrubted via a system of legitimized theft called tax makes absolutely no sense to me.
Sorry 🤷♂️
well jobs like being a cashier are being replaced with self-checkout machines that can work 24/7 and a lot of the cashiers don't have many back-up skills do rely upon for example 🤔
but maybe the whole argument of this project is flawed, this is really good and beneficial thought process from your behalf, thank you for sharing it
here to learn 🤗
Yeah i think it would be a huge error to extrapolate an area or two where this is obvious ie a cashier at a shop to “the entire workforce”. And even in those cases where they need less cashiers does it mean they need less people stocking shelves or more? Do they need less or more people performing other tasks etc? All these things depend on sales, customer guest counts and many other things. To narrow the frame down to automation bad we need to steal from somewhere else seems suboptimal
🤔 you make a lot of wonderful points, making me understand things i didn't even think to consider
as this project needs to be done for a university course, then i'm considering pivoting, as i want to keep the topic of automation and the state, and the future of that is like
It shouldn't be
hmm interesting, why not in your opinion?
Because there are too many taxes already. Why more?
this is a lazy journalist question
Because free markets matter and taxing increases in productivity is akin to inflating the currency which steals time and work from people. What if the automation helps small business owners and the tax decreases their profitability? Then you have only the big corps who can pay for high priced lawyers to defend them from said tax creating regulatory capture by a monopoly. Besides the fact taxation is theft and immoral.
won't the big companies be able to offer so much cheaper prices through uncompetitive efficiency compared to smaller business and also wouldn't they implement licensing and patent fees? 🤔
Central planning can be more efficient but it always fails at some point. There are plenty of unintended consequences of tax and regulatory schemes.
Service fees are more effective in allocating capital than taxes and they don't distort market prices. I'm not sure how automation can be priced to begin with tbh
Also, taxes are a deflationary mechanism that pays interest on Treasury bills and nothing else. Central banks increase the number inside of Fed account balances to fund public works. Governments would be much MUCH better off mining bitcoin to fulfill revenue needs
Listening to Lawrence Lepard he mentioned perhaps the govt should have enough funding to defend the country and run a legal system. Perhapsb10% tax would cover this he suggested.