alt Hacker NewsInteresting how this argument is only popping now that technology is threatening white collar workers.
Automation has been shoving blue collars out of the job market for a century.
A single farmer can do with his machinery today what took a dozen of people just 50 years ago.
Manufacturing has been super automated long ago.
Even in commerce automated checkout has been replacing workers for more than a decade.
In any case such a tax is not only pointless but actively dangerous, as all it achieves is making countries without such a tax more competitive.
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It's been around for nearly a decade.
Taxing Robots : Easier Said Than Done (2017) https://www.ctf.ca/EN/EN/Newsletters/Canadian_Tax_Focus/2017...
Robots, technological change and taxation (2017) https://www.taxjournal.com/articles/robots-technological-cha...
Why robots should be taxed if they take people's jobs (2017) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/22/robots-tax-...
I think the current debate is less about whether automation happens and more about where the gains go
What makes you think this argument is popping? Or that it's only being discussed now, because of 1 article on a domain I've never heard of?
I'm open to the idea that companies need much larger barriers to functioning internationally. Not just because of their ability to pump money overseas, but also because they are often used to blatantly further the security goals of their parent countries (looking at you two USA and China, but everyone able to, seems to do it).
Maybe the current system would've worked if it was built on many more small companies. These monolithic corporations funneling power upward are the death of civilization, and leadership are clearly high on their own farts. Or just want to be on top in a new feudal age.
It's dangerous but not pointless. If we get human mass unemployment, someone has to pay for them, and if the companies offering the AI sit in the US, most countries won't be able tax OpenAI & Co directly.
This has been a question since at least the industrial revolution.
Perhaps the more interesting bit is that you only seemed to have noticed it when it is asked about white collar workers?