{"id":5336,"date":"2017-10-14T01:21:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T05:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=5336"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:52","slug":"robots-may-taxed-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/robots-may-taxed-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Robots May Be Taxed in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Human labor is increasingly being replaced by robots. Robots are cheaper to maintain, and can provide maximum efficiency. Yearly the public sees regular changes to every day experiences, like using a self-checkout line in a grocery store or automated coffee machines that use precise technology to make delicious latt\u00e9s. When workers inevitably lose their jobs to robots, how does the government obtain the revenue that was formerly generated by the human workers\u2019 taxes? This is where the concept of a \u201crobot tax\u201d<\/a> is introduced. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates<\/a> stated that he thinks that governments should have the right to tax robots. Jane Kim<\/a>, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, agrees. She thinks that \u201cautomation is a good thing.\u201d However, she warns that \u201cthere will be a downside to this technological progress and workers will be left behind.\u201d In an effort to fight against this, Kim has begun a committee called the \u201cJobs of the Future Fund<\/a>.\u201d She emphasizes that the committee is \u201cexploring continuing the payroll tax and extending it to robots that perform jobs humans currently do.\u201d The idea is that companies would input funds the same way that they did for payroll tax and social security for human workers. The ultimate objective, Kim states, \u201cis to help smooth this transition, help workers that are displaced by their jobs re-educate and retrain.\u201d She elaborated that the revenue generated from this could be used to help educate workers in their vocations, provide community college for free, and \u201cinvest in creating meaningful and high wage jobs in industries that are currently hard to automate like child care workers, which is currently a poverty profession.\u201d The national discourse about automation is gaining traction. Recently, two researchers at MIT conducted a study<\/a> in which they determined that adding one robot for every thousand human workers adversely affected both wages and employment. However, advocates for automation contend that there is no problem with unemployment. Jeff Burnstein, the president of the Association for Advancing Automation<\/a> stated that \u201c[w]e don\u2019t have a problem with robots causing unemployment.\u201d He is the leader of an industry group that works with over 1100 robotics and technology companies. He fiercely argued that the robot tax is \u201ca really big mistake, not only for California, but for the country. Robots are actually helping save and create jobs right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnstein stated that the data \u201cover twenty years shows whenever [industrial] robot sales rise, unemployment falls. The real problem we have is we have so many unfulfilled jobs that people don\u2019t have the skills for. The real threat to jobs in America is when we can\u2019t compete.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He argues that these taxes would not help innovation, but do just the opposite. \u201cWhy would we want to put disincentives on companies using the best technology available?\u201d Despite backlash, Kim still advises against the \u201cincreased uptick in automation of jobs.\u201d She said that this automation would be far-reaching, pervading fields such as \u201cretail, trucking, accounting, even stock broker jobs.\u201d Many are apprehensive<\/a> about job takeover by automation. 72 percent of Americans are worried that machines will steal their jobs, and 25 percent of those are \u201cvery worried.\u201d Burnstein is not sympathetic. \u201cAll the hysteria about job losses, this is nothing new. We\u2019ve been hearing these threats forever. But we\u2019re really good at creating new jobs. We can\u2019t always define them.\u201d Burnstein justifies his beliefs by alluding to \u201csearch engine optimization specialist[s]\u201d and \u201capp developer[s],\u201d people who would not have been able to have those jobs a quarter of a century ago. \u201cAutomation has been changing the nature of jobs forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Human labor is increasingly being replaced by robots. Robots are cheaper to maintain, and can provide maximum efficiency. Yearly the public sees regular changes to every day experiences, like using a self-checkout line in a grocery store or automated coffee machines that use precise technology to make delicious latt\u00e9s. When workers inevitably lose their jobs …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7026,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5336\/revisions\/7026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}