Indeed, such concerns underpin Gates’s suggestion for a robot tax and he recognises the role government will have to play in addressing it. “There are enormous problems in operationalising the idea of a robot tax. It is the same logic as a carbon tax: by putting a price (a tax) on robots, the use of them is discouraged. A robot tax would be one way of correcting this free-rider problem, but Varoufakis prefers the idea of what he calls a “universal basic dividend” (UBD). No new tax, no complications in the tax code, and no effect on the existing funding of the welfare state.

Source: The Guardian March 12, 2017 21:11 UTC