guardian | It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been
asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation
grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month,
the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.
The proposals vary, but they share a common premise. As machines and
algorithms get smarter, they’ll replace a widening share of the
workforce. A robot tax could raise revenue to retrain those displaced
workers, or supply them with a basic income.
The good news is that the robot apocalypse hasn’t arrived just yet. Despite a steady stream of alarming headlines about clever computers gobbling up our jobs, the economic data suggests that automation isn’t happening
on a large scale. The bad news is that if it does, it will produce a
level of inequality that will make present-day America look like an
egalitarian utopia by comparison.
The real threat posed by robots isn’t that they will become evil and kill us all, which is what keeps
Elon Musk up at night – it’s that they will amplify economic
disparities to such an extreme that life will become, quite literally,
unlivable for the vast majority. A robot tax may or may not be a useful
policy tool for averting this scenario. But it’s a good starting point
for an important conversation. Mass automation presents a serious
political problem – one that demands a serious political solution.
