Bill Gates believes that robots have to pay taxes

Robots gradually release people from work, taking up their jobs. Automation is a natural process that goes on for many decades. A few centuries ago, the main occupation of people was agriculture. Then the machines freed people from heavy physical labor - now 1% of the population with the help of technology will easily feed the remaining 99%. Or recall the recent past, when one of the most popular professions in the USA was a telephone exchange operator. Thousands of girls worked in huge areas, connecting millions of subscribers with each other. Soon they were replaced by automatic switches.

But if earlier technical modernization went gradually, slowly - over centuries or decades, the situation at the beginning of the 21st century develops much more rapidly. People have a lot less time to adjust. Perhaps society will not have time to transform so quickly to give work to millions of people who will simultaneously be fired in the coming years: truck drivers, taxi drivers, factory workers, notaries, cashiers, cash collectors, traffic police inspectors, translators, waiters, builders, cooks and many others.

The well-known IT business guru, billionaire and techno-optimist Bill Gates agrees that technical progress cannot be stopped. Software is becoming more advanced. AI is developing very quickly. Gates offers some measures that will help slow this progress, cushion the shock for society and finance alternative types of employment.

Bill Gates fully supports the idea of ​​additional taxation in the field of industrial automation.
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The logic is as follows. Take a simple worker in a factory that produces $ 2,000,000 per year. He is entitled to a “dirty” salary, for example, $ 50,000 a year. About $ 20,000 of contributions to the state budget is paid from this “dirty” amount. These are income tax, contributions to the Social Security Fund and other contributions. Receiving $ 30,000 in hands, the worker continues to make deductions to the state budget, paying excise taxes on goods and VAT on every purchase in the store. As a result, the worker is much less than half the money accrued to him by the employer. The state receives more than half of his salary, withdrawing it at different stages. This money is necessary for building roads, maintaining the police and the army, manufacturing weapons, protecting state borders, exploring space, paying for free health care, education, research, developing sports, paying pensions, maternity capital, building preferential housing for the majority of the population, etc. All this requires huge government spending - and therefore the worker gives his chosen state more than half of his salary in order for it to fulfill the social contract taken on.

But what happens if this worker is replaced with a robot? The state immediately loses significant income. There is no money to support old men, build aircraft carriers and repair roads. There is no money even to pay unemployment benefits to millions of people who have lost their jobs.

Bill Gates argues that if a robot does the same job as a dismissed worker, then it should be taxed the same way. Although Bill Gates does not talk about this, but in theory, “a tax on automation” should be taxed and software that performs the work of a dismissed person.


The state will use this money for "humanitarian purposes", including the employment of the unemployed. For example, you can hire several times more social workers who will help retirees, homeless people, dying people, care for children in kindergartens and schools. Classes in schools will be four to five people per teacher instead of the current 20-25, what is bad? Children with disabilities and those with disabilities will receive full attention and good care, and even in developed countries there is now a shortage of staff in these areas. If you send people there and drastically increase the states, the society will become more humane, says Bill Gates. Automation tax will help finance this process.

Bill Gates supports automation and the widespread adoption of robots. It is really more profitable - they do not need to pay salaries, and they often do their jobs better than people. But this does not mean that the company is exempt from taxes that it paid earlier when a person worked here.

How to tax robots? There are several different approaches. Bill Gates believes that there is a place for discussion to find the best option. For example, a tax can impose additional profits that the company received after the introduction of automation. Or fixed tax rates for each model of the robot, based on its technical characteristics. The more efficient, more powerful and productive the model, the higher the fixed tax. Bill Gates believes that manufacturers of robots will not be against the introduction of such a tax. Many understand its need to relieve tension in society and solve social problems.

It's time to think about how robotization will affect specific cities and communities of residents, in which areas unemployment will grow most. How to help these areas, what infrastructure for this need to build? In the next 20 years, robots will replace several mass professions at once, therefore, the state should develop programs of assistance to the population in advance.

The goal is that people are not afraid of losing their jobs. This is not their problem. Technical progress and innovations are not a threat to society, but a great blessing. People need to understand that they will not lose anything if their workplace is occupied by a more efficient machine.

And, of course, taxing robots is a much better option than simply banning the use of robots with the dismissal of workers. Although some politicians see such bans as a simpler solution to the problem, but this is not the case, Bill Gates believes. Innovations come in different forms, so it’s impossible to cover them all with bans.

The market cannot solve this problem by itself, Bill Gates believes, so government regulation is necessary in this area. Otherwise, all the profits from the introduction of robots will be received only by their owners, and not by society. This will only increase social stratification.