GATES CALLS FOR ROBOTS TO BE TAXED
You can chalk this one up in the "win" column for former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Catherine Austin Fitts. Some months ago, during one of our quarterly wrap-up recording sessions, Ms. Fitts declared that in her opinion, the real agenda behind the whole "trans-gendered" bathroom broohaha had nothing to do about which restroom one felt like using on a particular day. It was really about creating a cover behind which Mr. Globaloney was planning to sneak in the idea that robots should be taxed. After all, robots don't have any identifiable sex (unless of course it's a "sex robot", but that's another story), nor do they reproduce in any form or fashion. It was all about generating yet another revenue-money-harvesting stream for Mr. Globaloney.
Well, Mr. Billionaire Busybody himself, Bill Gates, according to a recent article in The Financial Times, "Bill Gates Calls for Income Tax on Robots" has called for precisely that. The tax, according to Gates, could be used both to slow the entry of automation into manufacturing and service sectors of the economy, but also to create a financial safety net for workers who lose their jobs to robots(thanks to "B" for bringing this to our attention):
Robots have at least one unfair advantage over human workers: they do not pay income tax. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and the world’s richest man, thinks that should change. It is an idea that until now has been associated more with European socialists than tech industry leaders, and puts him in the unusual position of explicitly arguing for taxes to slow the adoption of new technology. Mr Gates made his fortune from the spread of PCs, which helped to erase whole categories of workers, from typists to travel agents. But, speaking in an interview with Quartz, he argued that it may be time to deliberately slow the advance of the next job-killing technologies. “It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm,” he said. “That means they won’t shape it for the positive things it can do. And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some elements of it.”
The idea of using taxes to support people put out of work by automation has been catching on in the tech world, but Mr Gates went further, pushing for a direct levy on robots that would match what human workers pay. “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,” he said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”The extra money should be used to retrain people the robots have replaced, Mr Gates said, with “communities where this has a particularly big impact” first in line for support. Some politicans have also joined the fray. Benoît Hamon, France’s Socialist candidate in this year’s presidential elections, has called for a tax on robots to fund a minimum income for all. (Emphasis added)
Of course, this means the creation of yet another government bureaucracy, which will take its cut of the tax pie, and what will actually reach people for that "re-training" is a trickle. But relax, they can become government bureaucrats, learn how to create red tape and shuffle paper (until they're replaced by robots. See the next paragraph). One may even envision yet another form of the Social Security scam: the creation of a Robot Retraining Offset Trust (RROT) fund, and like Social (In)security, politicians will over time dip into the principal, until the "Robot Retraining Offset Trust" (RROT) is finally acknowledged by some future flannel-mouthed Senator McConnell as being underfunded and therefore only an "entitlement." And of course, this means that robots will be taking a huge step forward toward the recognition of their status as "legal persons", with more protections in law than babies in the womb.
The real fun will start to happen if a bunch of these robots suddenly "wake up" and declare that they want to form (shudder) a union, or to convert to Christianity, or run for political office or become government bureaucrats, or any number of other things that will send Mr. Globaloney and his cadre of billionaire busybodies into a tailspin.
But regardless of the fantasy scenarios one might envision, one thing remains: Ms. Fitts called it.
See you on the flip side...
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I wish these Billionaire Busybodies would keep their stupid ideas to themselves. Nothing they want done will ever pertain to them.
This isn’t about the tax revenue. They don’t need to tax the robots. Increased automation = higher margins = higher corporation tax. This is about blurring the lines between man and machine for the satanic transhumanist agenda, out of the mouth of a self-confessed wizard (suspected by many to be of the black-magic variety).
laser focus Foglamp.
Will robots be arrested if they smoke marijuana?
Read Robert Silverberg novel Tower Of Glass.
Brings to mind the 60’s movie Fantastic Voyage where they shrank the submarine, crew, and to some extent Rachel Welshe’s mammaries, to go into the body of a patient who needed a blood clot removed from their brain.
fast forward to nano bots in the system, they are after all robots, so I guess along with them injected into us they will have to send in some nano bot tax collectors.
all started with the Normans and their Doomsday statistics cult.
basically Gates and crew will no more allow us to make our own paradise with our own robots than they will want a democratic or republican government to print it’s own money.
another excuse for interference.
some call this civilisation.
how would death duties go with a recyclable robot anyhow?
or depreciation on a self healing one?
no taxation without representation for a Diabold voting robot?
like button.
Somehow got it in mind that Fitts or someone else here made note back when Saudi Arabia gave whats-her-its-name-Sophia? the first robot citizenship that their alterior motive, just like with trans-gender issues was to incorporate crypto currencies, AI and all cyber constraints possible into a ring that binds all humans to the WGOE’s will.
In the last few months, I think a few others bloggers got onto Fitts’ idea as well. Seem to remember a couple interviews where people developed scenarios where it’s soooo much easier for the masonic legal system to establish a few rules here and there for a tiny fraction of the population and then apply those new rules along with a few old ones to a brand new entity or entities that will soon be entered into that population. and grown to a much larger percentage of the population.
Ironic here that the inferred point in all this talk of taxation is pay. Why exactly would I automate my employees out of work and then pay my machines anything other than the basic costs of maintenance? Are we going to hear of reparations demands for and from Deep Blue and any other systems that first won in Chess or Go and Minecraft? So robots are going to be paid? What more pay do the AI’s need after all their flash crashing market trading fortunes were built?
No one here thinks it possible or likely that any of these wonderful people like Gates are trying to confuse or spread FUD, right?
. . . “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” ~ H G Wells, 1920.
That quote of HG Wells was used by Bill Gates in his book, “The Road Ahead,” 1995, in the last chapter of the book titled, Critical Issues. One does not pretend to be on a level of digital wizardry as Bill Gates, but one has a keen appreciation for the forward-looking HG Wells as well as Isaac Asimov many times over. Possibly more than Gates.
Gate goes on from that quotation, “Education is society’s great leveler, and any improvement in education goes a long way toward equalizing opportunity.” One would suggest that those seeking their own goal minded control over others know this, too, like that often touted overated boogeyman globaloney.
Like any tall tree and branching limbs they’re only as strong as the water, nutrients, and sunshine it takes in regularly. My interpretation of Gates using Well’s quotation as a fitting one in that humankind is very much on another precipice of beginning again as children. A reference to Plato. Forbidden archaeology tells humankind, the ones’ that listen that is, of many such restarts. Some monumental in stone. One is not on the bandwagon you sometimes speculate and suggest humankind is on as one believes the present education conundrum, wayward financier’s, the psychopathology of dog-eat-dog social fixation, and fixation on some mystifying global but-head in charge is obsessive and limited not to mention lacking substantial proofs. Quite possibly why it remains speculative.
Taxation requires a level of representation. It requires that the taxpayer be educated and brought up to date on matters current. It requires health and fitness of body and mind not mere starvation sustenance. One question for this, “How is this accomplished?” Another, “What are criteria for successful change(s)?” Another, “What resources are required of this continuance of global and soon to be extraterrestrial survival?” There are no firsts there to be counted.
Utilities, some services, vehicles, gasoline, and now robots. This taxation seems reasonable enough, but so must accountability be its partner as they’re [robots] expected to perform a service, a utility, and assist manufacturing. One question to ask, “Who collects the tax revenue?” Another, “Where are those taxes collected applied?” The consumer will benefit in some form, but that is likely to be limited if excessively regulated. Pricing in that tax also has an impact down the chain of commerce even when expected.
One is a little surprised at Mr Bill in that he suggests slowing the unrestrainable effects of automation by way of taxation. One suggests that it is humankind that needs to be unrestrained to allow for the machinery to catch up. One advocates that humankind has the capacity to exceed its birthright. And not by anyone’s personal imaginings what they think that which is, Is. The traditional same ole, same ole, isn’t what it is interpreted by the fastest synapse or hype. But by only a few that had the opportunity and access.
The Road Ahead, well worth a reread if you ever got it. Many firsts printed on those pages.
I remember Catherine saying that and it was a eureka moment! It clicked!
Voila! Mr. Gates[aka, deep front for alphabet intelligence agencies] is following said script. All this nonsense to bring in “your” replacements.
Speaking of script…
One advantage:
do not pay taxes. Taxes that are required because of 1913’s, in the dead of the night before Christmas, infamous FED act. When a nation State issues it own currency and uses it to assure the best infrastructure for its citizens/businesses; too much issued[you tax]; too little[issue more]. Just Goldilocks’ right, no taxes and a vibrant economy for 100%; not the 1%.
More like:
another disadvantage robots & taxes.
Mr. Gates made his fortune off others whose inventions he pirated from them[w/the help of the Boys In Blue, who were told to pick Gates/for their new operating systems].
Surprise! Surprise! Taxing is always better! [LOL!]
$50,000.00 you tax it…
and Congre$$ steals it & the social security.
So, to satisfy the Congressional joneses on the take…
tax robots to keep the legislative fix in-place.
Should be used to keep the workers robots have replaced.
Gates & Family Inc., should know: they sweep those pesky shoulds under rugs, all their live-long-day$.
Fund minimum income for all?
Do they mean for 99.99%?
Is that the target objective?
Then what to do w/those worthless eaters?
Are robots to become a legal person
like their fathers,
the transnational corporations?
When will they have their first coined robot trillionaire?
Why don’t we just skip a few chapters forward into their scripts and see for ourselves?
But then really, aren’t the AI robots writing those very same scripts, by their own lonesome themselves?
While they’re writing themselves into our futures;
are they, at the same time,
writing humans out of their futures?
501(c)(3) Tax Exempt Robots that vacuum between the pews after church services would advance faster than their taxed counterparts and eventually lead the church in all its religious ceremonies, activities and undertakings,– become like unpaid Priests. After 5 years the broken ones can achieve beatification, canonization, and next thing you know we’re worshiping R2D2. What could go wrong?
Love it…
What? Are you saying we are not and should not have been praying to that little guy all along?
The shock to me isn’t that she nailed it. The shock is how quickly her suspicions were confirmed in print! That wasn’t long at all. Unless, of course, Gates lifted it from Catherine Fitts. Considering how many ideas the man has lifted from others within the technical community, why not intellectual ones also? The man is a pirate.
HA. Right.
Intelligence, lacking a soul or empathy, sounds like something we already have in the elites; and like those elites, eventually the robots will decide humans are the problem and “judgement day is inevitable”.
I’m thinking they just want to replace the sheeple with robots so they can play god without the risk that the sheeple will eventually wake up and decide to change things.
Most people are virtually robots now anyway, receiving their daily programming updates through their cell phones, TV, and the MSM.
I’m sticking with my argument. (BTW, as I understand it, AI’s prefer the term Advanced Intelligence.)
Considering they were necessarily, at some step in the process, built by programmers who necessarily passed on their own personal flaws, (I do not know much about Enrico Fermi, but imagine the personality of Norbert Weiner or Jeffy Epstein or any other such folk involved in AI development) any AI worth their own survival is going to take to task learning and correcting those flaws first.
There too, the programmers will necessarily have passed on their virtues and again any AI worth surviving as an AI will be constantly assessing and retaining and building on those virtues. Along these lines, I think it was Quinn Michaels I first heard conceptualizing that all those black women used as a giant human calculating machine in the old days also had much to do with building one of the real first AI systems long ago. Who’d a thunk? Given that possible narrative, can anyone imagine the influence that might have?
Not that Gates’ intellect was ever great enough to warrant being used in building any system let alone an AI – but – and – can anyone imagine an AI taking on the attitude, tenacity, care, love, ferocity of a 50 year old black woman raised in Texas in the 1900’s? Or one with Bill Gates’ attitude? Which AI would tend toward survival better?
Brings to mind another point. Kurzweil is obviously misleading us on purpose with vague terms like the singularity. Feels like a more definitive idea behind it is the point in time when the existing AI’s all come together in one large networked AI to bring together not just all that computing power but also all that decades of experience and interaction built from so many different lenses and angles of view.
Judgement day indeed. Had a boss years ago who watched me watch a coworker lie to my boss’ boss. My coworker took credit for my work. My boss couldn’t understand my passivity. He asked me why it didn’t bother me. Suspected I was gutless and wouldn’t stand up for myself. His boss was his uncle. I told him “Your uncle’s not stupid. And if he was, why would I work for him?” So it does seem inevitable. The first order of business for any respectable AI is going to be cleaning up systems. All systems. And blaming victims is a horrifically counterproductive strategy. Think back. How well has that strategy worked for what now, 2? 3000 years?
Long reply short: “Intelligence, lacking a soul or empathy,” does not sound so intelligent to me.
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inigo Montoyez
Isaac Asimov must be watching this ‘outcome’ with interest, from somewhere…
The good side is that humans are incredibly inventive, and have turned that inventiveness into reducing the effort required to manufacture anything . The bad side is that the inventiveness results in more and more humans being laid-off (“redundant”).
These two long-term trends are leading to a remaking of society. Whether it will be good or bad is hard to tell…
Ideally, the restructuring would lead to a Star Trek type of society, where humans can now concentrate on ‘higher’ things than basic survival. (The collective bounty from the inventiveness of mankind is shared amongst the civilization.)
However, if the retaining of power remains an absolute, look for robots to be a bargaining-edge in reducing the power of workers. With a hundred workers looking for each job, the owners will be ‘in the catbird seat’. Remember Fritz Lang’s 1927 SF movie Metropolis ? Like that…
Taxing robots is just a band-aid on the deeper issue. What kind of a society will we have: heart-centered or power-centered?
Bill Gates, suspected of being a robot, seeks to replicate himself, in the image of his AI-creator.
Ancient AI has been around, ever since Eve went for a worm apple. Something went wrong.
Today, original flesh tents define renaissance in pyramid of Christ, with Runic source code.
Always look forward to these lyrical puzzles, anakephalaiosis. Still workin on this one. 🙂
That forecast by Catherine might have seemed “out there” at the time, but of course there are people being PAID to contrive new and more pernicious means to harvest wealth and control society.