this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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This is a bad, regressive argument.
We need to legislate the benefit of automation for society.
Trying to bury the technology never works if it is indeed an improvement. Technology is benign, people twist it for malice.
This is the same argument as still using oil based street lamps, just to maintain a the lamplighting jobs that don't need to be done anymore.
It's a Bizaare hill to die on to fight to maintain jobs a robot can do faster and better, rather than fighting to make society the beneficiary of such advances through taxation. Either way, you have to fight the billionaires and will probably lose, so why not fight for a better outcome than maintaining shitty, menial jobs?
I would love a "robotax" where automation is encouraged, but with the caveat that it is also heavily taxed. Not so much that it's cheaper to have employees, but enough so that the people who's jobs have been replaced can still get an income. Be it through major subsidies or the ultimate subsidy: universal basic income
Your instinct to use a systemic solution is good. My concern would be the tax gives corporations the wrong incentive (Some percentage of jobs could be automated but would still be cheaper to hire people). As another approach I like worker cooperatives because if they automate some task the financial benefit goes to the employees. The problem is there aren't enough large scale worker co-ops, so I'd like to see them get tax advantages, preference on government contracts, grants, etc to drive their development.
I think the idea is the tax applies only to any money saved through automation. So if an employee costs $2500/mo and automation costs $500/mo, the company saves $2000/mo. Lets say the tax is 75%, the government takes $1500/mo from the company, but the company is still saving an extra $500/mo from automating, so they are still incentivized to do so.
Then that money from the tax could be used to pay for things like job retraining courses for people displaced by automation, or even maybe UBI.