Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates floated the idea of instituting a “robot tax” as the world increasingly turns to automation to perform low-skill jobs.
“If a human worker does $50,000 of work in a factory, that income is taxed,” Gates told Quartz in an interview published week. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”
In the U.S., a 2013 study from the Oxford University and the Oxford Martin School concluded that “47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category” of being lost to “computerization.”
But, the billionaire opined that the world wants to maintain the current level of goods and services available in order to free up labor to deal with tasks like teaching, taking care of the elderly and helping kids with special needs.
“If you could take the labor that used to do the thing automation replaces and both financially and training-wise and fulfillment-wise, have that person go off and do these other things, you’re net ahead,” he said.
“You can’t give up that income tax,” Gates continued, “because that’s part of how you’ve been funding that level of human workers.”
“Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there,” he said. “Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax.”
Gates added that he doesn’t think robot companies will be “outraged” about a robot tax.
Watch the Quartz clip below:
