Sekėjai

Ieškoti šiame dienoraštyje

2017 m. birželio 24 d., šeštadienis

How to live with rampant automation and outsourcing?

Every time when American president Trump accuses China taking jobs from Western middle class the neoliberals blame automation instead. You know what? Neoliberals are partly right. Automation is taking a big share of our jobs. China does that too.The end result is not pretty. Many in the Western middle class lost their well paying jobs, particularly the young ones. Since government is mostly financed by taxes on citizens, no job means no taxes (Greece, anyone?).

What to do? Tax the assets used by companies and other job creators who stopped creating jobs because of automation and outsourcing. Profits become huge when you do not need to bother to hire anybody. One could hide those profits with help of good tax advice. It is difficult though to hide real estate, cars (even self-driving), factories, stores, merchandise, ads, online selling platforms, computers, robots and so on. Without employing artificial intelligence in these real life assets even leading artificial intelligence developers in America and China are powerless. So let us tax the assets. These taxes should be big enough to compensate absent job income from displaced workers and taxes from those absent displaced workers. States must agree to avoid creating tax havens harmful to everyone. What could replace the income for displaced workers?

"...Conditional universal basic income: welfare offered to those who have a financial need, on the condition they either show an effort to receive training that would make them employable or commit to a certain number of hours of “service of love” voluntarism."
It means we should start paying volunteers taking care of other human beings (elderly, children, sick, poor and others). Only this way can we return political stability to Western communities. Only this way the rich can save their wealth, and the rest of us save our human dignity and health.

Komentarų nėra: