As technology continues to advance,
the idea of taxing companies’ investments toward technological advances has
become a popular one. One of the supporters of robot taxation, Bill Gates, believes
taxation could help slow down automation’s rapid growth. He thinks rapid
automation would be destructive to workers in the workforce. Too many jobs
replaced by robots would leave a lot of people in unemployment, which could
have negative effects on the economy. While budgeting is a topic covered in many
curriculums across the United States, budgeting on a very tight budget without
a job is hard for even the most veteran budget makers. In a similar article for
Fortune written by David Z. Morris, he writes that Bill Gates wants the
proposed tax revenue on robots to help pay for labor force retraining. Workers
in certain industries that can be replaced by robots or other technology will
need to switch to industries like health services and education that require human
workers. However, the author of “Why taxing robots is not a good idea” written
for The Economist, who chose to remain anonymous, disagrees with Bill Gates.
The author argues that automation is not growing as rapidly as Mr. Gates
believes. The author also believes automation could be a good thing for workers
because they could have the opportunity to own robots and use the robots’
services as a source of income. In another article, “A Tax on Robots?” Yanis
Varoufakis agrees with the author of the article from The Economist. Varoufakis
believes taxing robots and other artificial intelligence (AI) will only
increase the price of production, and it would lead to companies bundling AI
with other machinery. He thinks automation would be beneficial for society as a
whole because of the costs that would be saved.
I thought
it was a very interesting concept about implementing a tax on AI. From learning
about taxes in my business classes, I understand that nearly everything has a
tax on it. Therefore, it makes sense to tax companies on their robots. However,
I do not agree with Mr. Gates. I do not think that a tax on AI would slow its
growth and popularity. I also think developing different technology to make
things easier within the business world is smart financially for both companies
and consumers. Costs of production would decrease with robots because companies
would not have to pay as many employees, so one can hypothesize that the price
of goods would drop if costs did. I think these articles will help in my
teaching practice because the idea offered of taxing AI challenged my way of
thinking. Challenging the thought process of my students will be important as a
future educator. I also think it is important to learn to look at the big
picture when trying to implement something like a tax on robots. The companies
that are developing these robots are not the only ones the tax affects, and
that lesson is important for business students to understand. The biggest surprise
for me was how simple Bill Gates seemed to think his plan was. He is a very
smart man, but it almost seemed like he was not thinking hard enough about this
potential tax and its effects on more than just the companies who create the
robots.
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