Member-only story
It’s Time for A Robot Tax
It’s simple; the robot that replaces every worker or reduces their pay, will be taxed.
Taxing robots sounds unnatural, almost sci-fi like. While I use “robots’ to personalize automation, the reality is that workers, human beings, are being replaced by automation, often in the form of robotic functions in our major industries.
The coronavirus pandemic will push the automation of work into hyperdrive as a huge section of our employment force is laid off. As of May 7, 2020, over 33 million workers have applied for unemployment benefits out of a labor force of 165 million that peaked in February 2020.
The number of unemployed with no benefits will also go higher as federal aid is reduced because many will no longer be eligible. In 2016 there were about 26 million were nonfarm (unincorporated) sole proprietorships, with an estimated three-quarters of them with no employees. Many of these people had not been eligible for unemployment insurance. Because of congress’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) self-employed workers, including independent contractors, can now collect unemployment benefits.
Those benefits will stop long before the pandemic does if the Republicans control either chamber of Congress in 2021. In the push to restart our…
